Shear determination
Shearing ace Jills Angus Burney wouldn’t be where she is today if she hadn’t picked up a handpiece nearly 40 years ago.
That’s what the Feilding-born barrister and shearer told audiences as she surprised them during a hometown screening of her movie She Shears at Focal Point Cinema last weekend.
The film, which premiered earlier this month at the New Zealand Film Festival, follows the fortunes of five female shearers as they prepare for New Zealand’s annual Golden Shears competition.
In the gruelling world of competitive sheep shearing there is no women’s section. Women and men competed together, she said.
The 58-year-old once held the women’s world record for shearing 541 lambs in nine hours.
When an orthopaedic surgeon told her that her shearing days were over she forged a second career as a High Court barrister and solicitor, but she can’t resist the pull of the wool.
Each year she returns for another crack at the Golden Shears, an international shearing and wool handling competition in Masterton – the Oscars of the sheep shearing industry.
Angus Burney said she had ‘‘sheep s... for brains’’ as a teenager, when she started working as a rousie during school holidays.
It was at Erewhon Station in Taihape where she learnt to shear back in 1979, and she used the skill to travel the world.
She later saved enough money to study journalism at Auckland Technical Institute, but saw more promise in the shearing shed, where she spent another 12 years in New Zealand, Australia and Britain.
After years of study, Angus Burney has an extensive lineup of qualifications, but when she hangs them on the wall of her office, its her trade certificate in shearing at the top.
‘‘That is the one I value most.
‘‘I wouldn’t be where I was today without shearing – the resilience you learn when sheep after sheep kicks you about each day.’’
Under that certificate is a masters in social science and a masters in law, for which her thesis was on shearing contractors and ACC.
She settled in Wairarapa, where she established a private practice as a barrister, specialising in employment, ACC, mediation and grievances.
Angus Burney said She Shears had shown audiences a side of rural life not many knew about – the gutsy women who shared a passion for an industry dominated by men.
She was in Feilding for her brother’s 60th birthday when she caught wind of a showing at Focal Point Cinema the same day.
At the film’s conclusion she surprised the audience of about 30 people with a question and answer session.