HE’S A SHEAR THING
Snow and his Golden hands
It’s not a stretch to imagine a million sheep have passed through shearer Ian “Snow” Harrison’s hands in his lifetime, but there are four frisky ewes the Southlander will never forget.
The great-grandfather of eight and New Zealand’s oldest surviving Golden Shears finalist still has a chuckle recalling the crazy episode outside a TV studio in downtown Sydney when a few unruly sheep made a bolt for freedom ahead of a filming session.
“I was in a shearing and wool handling team that went to Australia. Godfrey Bowen was with us and he got two of us to shear on TV in a farming programme one night. It was a show similar to our Country Calendar. There were about three or four sheep on the loose. They’d got out on William Street and the staff had to catch them so we had to give a hand there. They had them sort of half caught by the time we got there but we helped take them inside where the cameras were set up,” tells Snow, who’s been known by his nickname since he was a youngster.
“They just didn’t know how to handle them. You’ve got to work with sheep to know how to handle them.”
It’s something that the experienced Dipton-born man knows a great deal about.
Having spent his life on farms, Snow decided to become a shearer early on after realising it could be just the ticket to bankroll his own slice of paradise.
“I was brought up on a farm and wanted one of my own and I could see that you could make money shearing.
“I was working on a farm and the next-door neighbour ran a shearing school and I learnt from him,” he tells.
In turn, that led to a sixdecade association with the country’s premier competition, the Golden Shears.
“I’d had a bit of success in our small shearing shows around Southland and we heard about the Golden Shears. We were bulletproof then, us young fellas, and we went up to the North Island − never been to Masterton before − and entered; it all started from there.”
Pitting his clipping skills against fellow shearers, he ended up in the top six in the very first year of competition and earned a place in the grand final, where he finished sixth.
“I was only in the final once in 1961 and the next year was the one that I just missed out and placed seventh. I went farming in 1965, so I only competed in five Golden Shears.”
Nowadays he’s the only living finalist from that inaugural year.
“Ivan Bowen and I were at the 45th anniversary and sadly he was gone by the 50th. That would be 10 years ago now. I’ve been on my own since then. I was one of the younger ones.”
After selling the family farm and moving to Invercargill to retire, the spritely 86-year-old says he’s seen a fair amount of change in the wool sheds since he started out.
“The equipment has improved. Like everything else it’s evolving all the time. It’s just getting better and easier for the shearers,” he says.
While Snow’s best tally was 300 sheep in a single day, he knows it’s not a patch on the current crop of shearers, who seem to have more in common with professional sportsmen.
“We just shore in the shed and if you got a good mob of sheep you did that tally, but now they have records and train a lot before they attempt new records.
“They’re like Olympic athletes. They train in the gym and swimming pools and have dieticians and physios. It was nothing like that. We trained on the brown liquid,” he jokes.
“When I shore you didn’t travel much but now they go to the UK and America, wherever. Some of the young ones shear all year round.
“I started in July and finished in March and then you had crutching in the winter. I used to shear about 30,000-odd a year. Nowadays they do a lot more than that.”
He’s also seen the ranks of women swell, something that didn’t exist in shearing gangs back in the 1960s.
“When I started out, there were no women shearing. This year in the Golden Shears a lot of women were competing.”
Though he gave up the show circuit to focus on farming,
Snow made a point of keeping one hand in the shearing community, taking on a judging role in the mid 1970s.
And this year he was surprised to learn he would be back as a competitor once more.
“Unbeknownst to me, I was entered in the 76 years-plus Evergreens. You have to shear one sheep in the heats and two in the final. I struggled because I hadn’t shorn in a long time but they appreciated me,” he smiles, telling that he accomplished his task in four minutes and 51 seconds.
He’s enjoying retirement and making the occasional visit to Stewart Island, where his grandchildren live, and pursuing his other passion, lawn bowls.
“I was farming just out of Wynton in Southland when I joined a bowling club. It keeps you young,” he chuckles.
So after so many years handling sheep are his hands beautiful and soft?
“Well, they are when you’re shearing with the lanolin in the wool. They’re not anymore!”