In which I learn to shear a sheep. Sort of.

After the decision to make a spontaneous road trip with Jackie for a day away from the city, we picked the small town of Greytown after recommendations on it being a lovely wee getaway spot in the Wairarapa region of the North Island, surrounded by vineyards and rolling farmland. We drove out and around to the southernmost spot of the north island, to the lighthouse at Cape Palliser. It was a perfect day to ride the winding road along the coast, to almost run out of petrol in a place that was a good 45 minutes away from the nearest filling station (I seem to have a recurring theme here), to walk up the 250 steep steps to the view of the candy cane coloured lighthouse, to freak out over a massive dead bird along the beach, to play my ukulele Zadie and walk amongst a pack of fur seals playing in the water, to listen to a soundtrack of The Shins, The Animals, Velvet Underground and Bowie, and to try on hobbit robes and drink a bottle of white wine at the oddly decorated hotel we booked. The rest of the night followed.

 

Jax enjoying the view from Cape Palliser.

 

Sheep shearing, according to Wikipedia, is the process of cutting off and removing the wool from a sheep. It then goes on to list the history and a brief description of how to do it. If you are the type of person who learns by sight, put yourself in Greytown and you can have a first-hand lesson. On a Sunday night. At a bar and hotel called the Turkey Red. By a guy called Jay and his rosy-cheeked mate Kurt. This was Jay and Kurt:

Jay by way of introduction: To Jackie: “Are you my mate Blaire?”

Jackie: “No”

Jay turns away and says nothing more. A little while later…

Jay comes back over and when he asks where we’re from and we say Wellington, he throws up his arms in anger and says, “I hate having to drag information out of people. Why can’t you just say I’m from Wellington, and I work here and do this and that. It takes too much effort!”

When he tells us he and Kurt work at a dairy farm we ask him if he has to work 7 days a week. His response: “No, I work more than that.” Um, okay.

Kurt just sat there staring off into space and sipping his beer.

Then we ask Jay about his day. His story (said in complete seriousness): “We had a pig shooting competition. Then went back to the bar and weighed them to see who won the biggest. My mate Becky won. She got $1200 in tramping gear, a $900 pig shooting gun, some dog collars, and then had the nerve to say she deserved a drink, and made me buy her one! And I’m so mad because she said she was going to sell it all on TradeMe. Why doesn’t she think of the future? What if her boyfriend in the future needs all those things, then what is he going to do?”

Then came a game of darts. Jay decided to show us his dance moves, and in the process grabbed Kurt and said he was going to teach us to shear a sheep. Poor Kurt had to be the dummy. “First you shear their belly. Then you grab their neck and twist it like this, so they don’t get away. Then you want to watch out down there. And then you flip him over and do his backside.” And so it went. He turned and reached out to Jackie and said, “Okay let me show you how.”

We ran away and hid in our room drinking the rest of our wine and laughing.

 

A perfect place to perch and pluck a tune on my lovely ukulele Zadie. (Photo courtesy of dear Jax.)

 

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