Islander aircraft arrived at 9:35am with contract shearers, rousie and tablehand. Our shearing gang for this run is Lee Molks one of the Falklands fastest shearers and our own son Shaun who is doing his first season contract shearing. Lee has a biggest day tally of 400 plus and Shaun in his first season has shorn 12,000 sheep so far since the beginning of November and has a personal best of 236. No new tallies will be set here as island sheep are generally larger then mainland animals. Our contract rousie is Charmaine and our extra table hand for shearing is Tanya, Shaun's girlfriend, a hairdresser by trade.
We had smoko then headed straight over to Barren and started shearing at 11:00am. We arrived back on George at 4:30pm but decided it was to late to start another spell.
Tanya and I worked on the rolling table cleaning and rolling the fleeces and Christopher filled pens and pressed. The press on Barren is a very old hand press. You have to put the fleeces in in layers of four and after each layer get in the box and jump them down. Then you press the second box into the first box with a large lever. Not easy, I personally cannot press a bale to completion.
Christopher showing my nephew Macaulay how to shear a sheep.
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