Longwood wool buyer and classer Keith Robertson has not only drawn satisfaction from a lengthy career to start his retirement, but has dabbled with his nib in the ink to bring to life a local story that celebrates three quarters of a century of another local, but more iconic, tale of a partnership behind the shears. By KEITH ROBERTSON Way back, a long time ago, three quarters of a century ago in fact, a fella named Bill Harris - Taggerty Bill he was known as then, but that’s another story about goldmines and shafts and cave-ins, it’s not this story - set off from home to start his working adventures. The year was 1950 and Taggerty Bill was contracted as shearer to the Clunes Estate. No satellite assistance would help him find his way there, just a road map and a bit of nous and he’d have made the journey from Euroa in a bit under three hours. Nowadays with the modern motorcar and google maps guiding the way it’s been known to take over seven hours. That’s progress. Being a contracted shearer, Taggerty was away from his home and his family for extended periods, and after one of these particularly long absences he was greeted home by his nine-year-old son John with: "The cow's dead and Mum’s had a baby.“ So that introduces John to the story who as a twelve-year-old in 1952 accompanied his father back to Clunes Estate to help with the shearing. At this time the property was owned by a third generation member of the Fraser family - we’ll call him Joe. Now, Joe had a son called Robert who was born within a month of Taggerty’s son John. The two boys didn’t meet until 1954 when they were both fourteen years young and Robert had had enough of boarding school so chose to came home to work on the family farm. Clunes Estate has a lot of history as far as any Australian shearing shed can have history. Built in the 1850s for blade shearing and converted to machine shearing in the 1920s, it could manage shearing up to fifteen thousand sheep in the 1960s. Made from bluestone and timber, it stands as a monument to the skill of the craftsmen that erected it. In early October of this year, John returned to Clunes Estate to shear four thousand sheep - give or take a few - for his now lifelong friend Rob Fraser. It marked the 75th time the Harris family have shorn for the Fraser family and the 85th year both of these gentlemen have been on this earth. To say John has shorn a lot of sheep in his career is a massive understatement. He’s shorn a helluva lot. In a discussion with John on a topic loosely about the ageing process and the time it takes now to do what we once did in no time came the reply: “There is no substitute for youth, but it’s wasted on the young.“ There are numerous records achieved in the shearing game; it’s always been highly competitive, highly traditional. But loyalty and comradeship are words that also come to mind. So for the last three quarters of a century, John Harris and Robert Fraser have built a memorable relationship; and when you add local wool classer Tom and the roustabout Julie who have been turning up for the past twenty six of those 75 years, it says something about the longevity of this tight-knit outfit. Along the way, John and Rob witnessed the decline of the shearing industry in this country, dropping from over 170,000,000 sheep to now under 70,000,000. But that’s another story for another day.
