Click go the shears

 

I'm back from Adelaide in South Australia and  Kangaroo Island which is off the coast of the South Australian mainland, 75kms south of Adelaide

I'll put up most of the photos from Kangaroo Island over the next two weeks but I'll start with photos of sheep shearing which I shot there.

The photos were taken with my Leica Q3 43 and although they were shot in colour I feel that monochrome better suits the subject although I'm not 100% convinced this was the right call.

Along with an estimated one million kangaroos, eighty thousand koalas and thousands of seals, sealions and birds, Kangaroo Island is home to hundreds of thousands of sheep. Sheep farming, is the major industry on the island followed by tourism.

The sheep are predominantly Merinos bred for their highly prized wool. Eighty percent of the Australian wool clip is exported to China.

The photos show the farmer with one of his working dogs, an Australian Kelpie, mustering sheep and shearing.

 "Click go the shears" is the title of a traditional Australian bush ballad which describes a shearer's work using hand shearing scissors in the days before shearing cutters were electrically driven.

In the photos the shearer is putting on his shearing mocassins which protect the sheep's legs when the shearer stands on them to keep them down during the shearing.

Back problems were, and still can be, the bane of a shear's life but the development of the Back Aid, seen in the photos, significantly reduces but does not totally eliminate, the strain on backs.

The shearer removes the fleece in one piece and an expert or "gun" shearer can shear a sheep in under three minutes. 

The shorn sheep look naked but it is said they are relieved to lose their thick coats as they can hear better, feel lighter and are generally more comfortable.

After the fleeces are shorn they are individually assessed for wool quality and then pressed into a bale in a mechanical press. Details of the contents of the bale are stencilled onto it and then it is ready to be shipped most probably to China.