Tuesday comes "big with fate." As the sun tinges the far
skyline, the shearers are taking a slight refection of coffee and
currant buns to enable them to withstand the exhausting interval
between six and eight o'clock, when the serious breakfast occurs.
Shearers always diet themselves on the principle that the more they eat
the stronger they must be. Digestion, as preliminary to muscular
development, is left to take its chance. They certainly do get through
a tremendous amount of work. The whole frame is at its utmost tension,
early and late. But the preservation of health is due to their natural
strength of constitution rather than to their profuse and unscientific
diet. Half-an-hour after sunrise Mr Gordon walks quietly into the vast
building which contains the sheep and their shearers--called "the
shed," par excellence. Everything is in perfect cleanliness and order--the
floor swept and smooth, with its carefully planed boards of pale
yellow aromatic pine. Small tramways, with baskets for the fleeces, run
the wool up to the wool tables, superseding the more general plan of
hand picking. At each side of the shed floor are certain small areas,
four or five feet square, such space being found by experience to be
sufficient for the postures and gymnastics practised during the
shearing of a sheep. Opposite to each square is an aperture,
communicating with a long narrow paled yard, outside of the shed.
Through this each man pops his sheep when shorn, where he remains in
company with the others shorn by the same hand, until counted out. This
being done by the overseer or manager supplies a check upon hasty or
unskilful work. The body of the woolshed, floored with battens placed
half an inch apart, is filled with the woolly victims. This enclosure
is subdivided into minor pens, of which each fronts the place of two
shearers, who catch from it until the pen is empty. When this takes
place, a man for the purpose refills its. As there are local