TOM Roberts' iconic painting, Shearing the Rams, came to life under the gaze of thousands of people at North Tuppal Station, writes XAVIER DUFF

Tom Roberts might have been a bit confused by the sea of blue shirts but everything else about the scene in a Riverina shearing shed last week would have been familiar to the renowned artist.

The historic North Tuppal Station shed with its ancient timbers, pens full of woolly Merinos, smell of wool grease, even the new-fangled whirring machines - introduced to the wool industry when Roberts was painting his iconic masterpiece Shearing the Rams in 1890 - would not have been out of place.

The only modern addition to the scene was the sky blue shirts and singlets identifying the dozens of volunteer shearers and shed hands as they re-created a turn-of-the-century shearing shed in full swing.

For the first time since 1910, North Tuppal's 72 stands were all occupied by blade wielding shearers clicking their way through the creamy fleeces of their sheepish charges.

But shearing was never a spectator sport like this in the late 1800s, when Roberts was putting the finishing touches to his painting.

The organisers optimistically expected 5000 visitors to witness the re-enactment but even that was a gross underestimate.

Across the two days 15,000 people shuffled and jostled for a view of the golden days of wool when the sheds were as big as cathedrals and shearing teams as big as congregations.

At one stage on Saturday the queues of cars were backed up nearly all the way to Tocumwal, 30km away, and people waited patiently for up to two hours to get a peek at the scene inside the shed.

As well as this rare sight of 72 blade shearers in full flight, there was also a re-creation of the actual Roberts' picture.

With the exception of the blue shirts, the subjects of Roberts' painting were just as he depicted them: the shearers doubled over, concentrating hard on their task, the eagle-eyed overseer thoughtfully sucking on his pipe as he checked their work and the sole female in the scene, the girl dressed as a tar boy.

This "duck on the pond" - as women were referred to in the days when wool sheds were all-male domains - was Kaycee Artridge.

She was one of the brains behind last weekend's huge event.

Kaycee's husband Peter came up with the idea to raise money to send a shearing team to the world shearing titles in Wales next month.

Kaycee and the shearing competition committee, Sports Shear, planned the event that involved more than 320 volunteer shearers and shed hand coming from across Australia and New Zealand to shear 5000 sheep during the two days.

The shearers worked in relays using both machines and blades, with each run lasting about 15 minutes.

Some shearers knocked over their allotted sheep in times that would have made Jackie Howe, the greatest blade shearer ever, proud.

Others who hadn't shorn for years took a while to coax their creaking backs and arthritic hands into the familiar rhythm.

"It's an awesome sight, isn't it?" said John Williams from Western Australia.

John Kennedy, of Timaru in New Zealand, said he was just happy to be there although "showing the Aussies a thing or two about blade shearing" would be a bonus.
 
Tuppal Station, now owned by Bruce Atkinson and his family, was chosen for the re-enactment for its magnificent 110-year-old shed.

The original shed at Brockelsby Station near Corowa where Roberts painted his masterpiece burned down in the 1960s.
Roberts, one of the renowned Heidelberg School artists, was inspired by the golden age of wool at that time, which underpinned the economy and defined Australia's rural life.

It was also a time when wool was a hotbed of political and even violent confrontation.

In the late 1880s shearers began a series of strikes over wages and the introduction of machine shearing which led to the creation of the trade union movement and the birth of the Australian Labor Party.

As the last sheep was pushed down the chute on North Tuppal station on Saturday and the dust settled once again on the long board it was the perfect time to reflect not just on Robert's legacy to the nation but the wool industry's as well.