GLENCOE WOOLSHED

As Ian Telford straddles the old post and rail fence outside the historic Glencoe Woolshed in the southeast, the memories come flooding back, of days when he was a gun shearer on his property at Glenburnie near Mt Gambier.

His family's connection with the southeast goes back to 1850 to the early Scottish pioneers who opened up much of this country. Glencoe goes back even further to 1843 when Robert Leake and his brother Edward crossed the Glenelg River in Victoria in search of sheep grazing country. And the magnificent Glencoe shearing shed is proof that they found it.

For 80-year-old Ian it's time to get to work as Molly waits in the nearby pen. He's kindly agreed to give us a demonstration but not with any machines, he does it the old way with hand shears. But a shearer is only as good as his tools and so the ritual begins. The grooves in the old Blackwood tell the story of thousands of men shearing thousands of sheep.

"Hello Molly. Molly was the cloned sheep wasn't she?"

"Have a look at the gender to see what you're going to run into"

"You've got to take it easy with shears"

"Yer, you've got to be careful"

Ian first learnt hand blade shearing from his father when he was fifteen, way back in the depression years. He may have slowed down a tad, but imagine 36 shearers in a shed like this going hell for leather, with the sound of the blades cutting through the air on a cold southeast morning. Then that old Tom Roberts painting and that classic ballad make so much more sense. Glencoe was never merchandised. Some of the blokes who worked here probably knew Ian's dad and they, like Ian, would have swapped a few good yarns.

"It was a time of story telling and one thing and another because the place was quiet. There wasn't any noise in the shearing shed as much with blade shearing so a lot of joking, singing and whistling and that sort of thing stopped once the machines started. It put an end to all the story telling".

"It was just hard work then?"

"Oh yer, it seemed to be more like hard work than a picnic".

Ian remembers the stories, some funny and some sad, as shearers travelled the country in search of work and though shearing has an aura of romance now, Ian's father told him tales of the 1890's depression and the events that led to the great shearer's strike.

"Chaps that died in the sheds"

"What did they die of?"

"They got the flu and those sorts of things and they had no-one to look after them"

"And because they were travelling around the country, they could get pretty crook?"

"And not well fed - bread and treacle"

But in the good times the wool clip made some people very, very rich and Glencoe is testimony to that wealth. In its heyday 53,000 sheep were shorn here each season, in a shed made from hand sawn Blackwood beams cut to exact measurements, identified by roman numerals, and then meticulously assembled.

"It's fantastic. It looks like a cathedral and Edward Leake did describe it as such when he wrote a letter to some of his relatives in England".

Robert Leake hadn't intended establishing his property this far into South Australia, but his colleague John MacIntyre, a Scot, told him they should press on.

"When John MacIntyre was asked how he knew that this country lay further ahead, he told Robert Leake of the dream he'd had as a wee child at Glencoe in Scotland, in which he saw a faraway country with clover flats surrounding a lake".

And so Glencoe was born, the dream of a Scottish lad tucked away in the State's southeast. The Glencoe Woolshed in on the main road at Glencoe which is half way between Millicent and Mt Gambier. You can obtain a key at the Glencoe General Store, which is open daily. For more information email info@postcards-sa.com.au