Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a real shearing operation taking place at a large sheep station in New South Wales as a backdrop for the 1933 feature film The Squatter’s Daughter. Dogs help herd a large mob of sheep into a holding yard, then to pens inside a large woolshed. While a team of shearers and helpers attend to the sheep, two actors (the overseer and the owner’s villainous son) discuss a plot to poison sheep at the neighbouring Enderby Station. Shorn sheep are moved from the shed, and a team of horses pulls away with a cart loaded with wool bales.

Educational value points

• The clip features the central role of the shearer in the Australian merino wool industry. The wool industry quickly became one of the country’s major primary industries, leading to the expression that Australia ‘rode on the sheep’s back’. The shearing process is served by itinerant teams comprised of shearers, shed hands (called rouseabouts), wool classers, wool pressers and a cook, most of whom can be seen in this clip.

• The clip reflects the different working roles of a shearing team. An overseer is in charge of making sure the operation runs smoothly and handles any disputes. Rouseabouts with dogs yard and pen the sheep, keep up a constant supply of sheep to the dozen or so shearers in each stand and sweep the boards. Wool-handlers toss the fleece to remove any second-cut wool, then a wool classer classifies it according to its strength, fineness, length and whiteness.

• The sheep are shorn using mechanical shears, an invention from the mid-1880s that revolutionised the wool industry and led to the first unionised strike action by shearers. Previously, shearing by manual hand shears took about 20 min per sheep. Mechanical shears are faster and less tiring to use with shearing times of less than 5 min. The shearer’s skill lies in making a continuous cut of the wool without making a second cut.

• The clip shows the wool bales being transported to market by a team of 16 horses. After the wool is classed it is placed in bins, then pressed into a bale by the wool presser. The bales are stencilled with codes to describe the wool. A bale shown here is labelled ‘Waratah Supercomb 68’, a fictional prop to suit the story. Although transport would largely have been by truck in the 1930s, the filmmakers chose the more romantic and historical image of a horse team.

• The feature film The Squatter’s Daughter, produced in 1933, was a landmark Australian film that was hugely successful at the time. Produced and directed by Ken G Hall (1901-94), the storyline is about a woman’s battle to save her family’s sheep station. While The Squatter’s Daughter is a fictional dramatised story, it was set on a real station. Beautiful landscape shots by cinematographer Frank Hurley (1885-1962) created a sense of realism.
• The Squatter’s Daughter reflects the iconic Australian pioneering spirit that formed part of the Australian identity in the 1890s. The term ‘squatter’ means a settler who laid claim to bushland and turned it into farming land. A romanticised bush ethos is widely reflected by Australian writers and painters. One of the shots here mirrors Tom Roberts’s painting Shearing the rams (1890), and the title of the film reflects George W Lambert’s painting The squatter’s daughter (1923-24).

Farmers and their dogs are rounding up a herd of sheep for shearing. A herd of sheep enter the shearing shed. Outside, a sheep dog jumps on the backs of the herd to get them moving. A sack labelled ‘Waratah Supercomb 68’ is moved, revealing the sheep in pens. As the sheep are sheared, armfuls of wool are carried away. Fletcher and Clive Sherrington walk away from the shearing. Fletcher holds some wool in his hands.
Clive Sherrington Well, we’ll be shearing in Enderby next season too.
Fletcher Maybe this year. By the time we’re cut out here, that lease will be nearly up. Oh, there’s a parcel in the car you might drive over and give it to Morgan.
Clive What is it?
Fletcher Oh, babies’ food for Enderby lambs.
They walk away. The freshly shorn sheep skip and jump as they return to the farm from the shearing shed. The men load the wool onto a large wagon and the horses struggle with pulling the heavy load of wool.