NEW ZEALAND
WORK*SONG 		This  Woolshed!
  Derek Kirkland   1996
Derek Kirkland has been a shearer, C&W singer and composer of work songs for many decades. Here he describes working in a rundown 1950s shed.

 
They'll tell you this woolshed's a wonderful place1
But the way this farm's run is a rotten/blimmin'2 disgrace
On the fence leans the cocky3 and his shepherd too,
Just rolling their durries4 for something to do.
The wool on their sheep's full of prickles and grit6
And at their back ends it's all covered in **it5,
There's sheep of all ages, both coarse wool and fine7
But no gate on the race just to draft off a line.8

The catching pen door9, it won't close by itself
And that skin10 on the railing's not too good for y'health,
While that bag in the corner, it smells a bit high11
So just don't try and move it or you'll reach - for the sky12  
So you empty your pen and they bring in some more
Which try to escape through that hole in the floor13
I'll tell you this woolshed is no end of fun
The gate wasn't latched, and out they've all run 

And if you complain about maggots and dags14
Or the aerosol sprays and the smoke from their fags15
They say "Ring up16 the union17, -  mate, if you like
'Cause round here it's only the flies go on strike18"
Now you've finished your cut19 but there isn't a tap
Just an old rusty drum20 by the drain round the back
No guard on the grinder21 the papers are whacked.
I expect they've been trying to sharpen their act.
   
Well things might so better with a nice cap of tea22
There's one on that table where the mice poo and wee
You reach for your sandwich but here comes the crunch
Some flea-bitten mongrel's just eaten your lunch. 

Yeah, the way this farm's run is a bloomin' disgrace
But they'll tell you this woolshed's a wonderful place

Notes
1. A wonderful place
This list of complaints about poorly-maintained woolsheds is yet another variant of "The Irish Maiden's Lament" or Carrigdhoun, about the flight of the 'Wild Geese' to France in 1691, with words by Denny Lane in the 1840s set to music by Ellen Mary Downing, and ending ...But I'll follow you, my Donal Dhu, For still I'm true to you mo chroidhe.

Lines from the 1815 'Persian' romance Lalla Rookh by Thomas Moore were put to this tune in 1893 as Bendimeer's  Stream.

In 1902, Percy French modified the lyrics, and Houston Collisson the tune, to create the nostalgic lament, Mountains of Mourne, (1902) about an Irish navvy in London, Oh Mary, this London's a wonderful place...

There is also Kiwi soldier's WW2 lament Oh mother, this Egypt's a terrible land.

2. Bloomin'
a euphemism for bloody as an expression of disgust.


3. Cocky 
After rich English invaders had stolen thousands of acres of the indigenous black Australian land-owners' grassy plains, they were pestered by swarms of white squatters, who could not be got rid of by shooting them dead, the way the black families were. The small farmers were compared to Australia's white cockatoos.

4. Durries
Strong-as-a-bull tobacco was  processed for roll-your-own cigarettes in Durham, North Carolina, during WW1, and NZ soldiers  picked up the habit and the name from US troops.                                                        Click to view full-size poster







5. Back ends all covered in shit.
    Well-managed sheep usually excrete firm pellets of excretia, with only about 25% water. But sheep put under stress by poor management:- bad food, extreme weather, intestinal parasites, or being worried by dogs - excrete more runny faeces (scouring) that stick to the wool and form hard smelly balls called dags.

6. Prickles and grit
These get into fleeces of sheep in paddocks with gorse, rosehip and poorly-grassed soil. The prickles injure the shearers free hand holding the sheep, and the grit blunts the blades of the shearer's handpiece.

7. Coarse wool and fine
Coarse wool was sold for hard-wearing carpets, and fine wool for clothing, while lambs' wool is softer than ewes' wool. Each fleece requires a different shearing technique, so a mixed flock prevents a shearer from getting into a steady rhythm, is a nightmare for the wool
handler, and bales of mixed wool sold for a much lower price.

8. The drafting race
If sheep are separated into similar groups, then the shearers can work much more efficiently, and earn more money in a day. But a raceway needs a gate, or two, at its end that can be moved from side to side.




9. The catching pen door 
The rousie moves about 20 sheep from the flock into small catching pens about 2 m wide and 3 m deep so that shearers can catch their next sheep quickly.

A catching pen door was usually a single sheet of plywood about 1.5m high, with a spring or stretched rubber bike tubes to return it to a closed position. Newer sheds have double doors and spring-loaded hinges.


10. That skin
On small farms, the farmer often used the shearing shed to kill, skin and gut a hogget, and then butcher the carcass to feed his family, workers and dogs. The skins were hung on a fence to dry (sold for making leather?)

For the first 12 years of my life, roast mutton from the hogget my grandfather killed in his 2-stand shearing shed was the mainstay of our evening meals and my school sandwiches the following day. The skins were hung on a fence to dry (sold for making leather?)

11. That bag smells high
If wet dags or wet sheepskins are left in
a woolsack, they can start decomposing. Phew!


12. Reach for the Sky
This line avoids using the word to retch,
or to vomit, by connecting it with the
title of this 1950s book.




13. That hole in the floor Catching pens were usually about 2.5m above ground level and had grating floors to allow sheep excrement to fall through, and in old sheds the gratings were untreated native timber. Borer ate away at the floor gratings, causing them to break.



 14. Maggots and dags
If a sheep becomes badly scoured with runny faecal matter, blowflies lay eggs in the wet dags, and the fly maggots start eating away at the sheep's skin.

The unfortunate animal is than said to be 'flyblown,' and it is a slow, difficult and unpleasant task shearing several of these unfortunate animals in a row.

15. Sprays and cigarette smoke
Shearers are athletes working hard, and need to breathe fresh air to maintain their pace. Fly spray squirted on flyblown sheep and cigarette smoke from someone smoking inside the shed interferes with their work rate - and health.

16. Ring up
Before pocket cellphones, a phone in hallway and the ringing of its large mechanical bells could heard a considerable distance away.

17. The Union.
Shearers frequently moved from one side of the Tasman to the other, and the Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia was an early Australia/NZ trade union formed in the 1880s, A special effort was made to recruit Maori members, who were highly represented in the shearing industry.

In the early 1920s, the rural, mostly Maori, Shearers Union merged with the urban, mostly Pakeha, Workers Union, with the motto Tatou Tatou Altogether.

        

After the Employment Contracts Act waas passed in 1991, union membership dropped from about 50% of all NZ workers to about 20%.

18. Flies go on strike
When blowflies lay their eggs in sheep's wool, it is called flystrike.

19. Finish your 'cut'
Shepherds muster enough sheep for the next day's shearing in the afternoon and leave them overnight in covered pens so that their wool is dry the next morning. After 24 hours without food or water, they must be returned to their paddock the next day. So the shearers cannot finish until the wool has been cut off the very last sheep.

19. Rusty old drum
Often an open-topped 44 gallon drum collectedrainwater running off the roof. There was usually a weatherbeaten longdrop dunny close by as well.

20. The grinder
Rotating circular sheets of sandpaper (one coarse, one fine) are used to resharpen
the comb and cutter of a shearer's handpiece. The grinder must be correctly aligned to get them properly sharpened.
A shearer generally changes his blades about 6 times a day, after each 90 minute run.

21. Cup of tea and Your lunch
In 1979, when I worked in a shearing shed (as the rousie for crutchers), the farmer's wife, Joan A, would turn up at 10am with a big wicker basket full of scones, and a 2-gallon billy of tea. We sat on the clean, newly-pressed wool-bales and drank the tea from big enamel mugs.

For lunch we walked over to the farmer's house, and ate a dinner of roast mutton, potatoes and pumpkin, plus boiled carrots and cabbage, followed by a steamed pudding and stewed fruit covered in custard, and tea in proper cups and saucers Afternoon tea and the evening meal at 6 pm were repeat performances.

We started each day with a cup of tea and hot toast at about 5am, and Joan had a cooked breakfast ready for us at the end of our first run:- mutton chops, bacon,  fried eggs, Watties beans and tomato sauce, and lots of toast. Plus tea.

The crutchers wore moccasins they made from hessian wool bales, and I can't remember whether or not they tied their saddle-tweed trouser-ends with bowyangs like my grandad did.


Other sheep-farming songs