Lifelong Elaine resident Shane Dunne – also known as ’Shane the Shearer’ – shears and maintains sheep, alpacas, and goats. Oscar Parry spoke with Shane about his connection to his home town and what he enjoys most about working in this field.
What is your connection to Elaine?
I’m a long-term resident here … I’d be the fourth generation at Elaine in my family.
What do you like most about Elaine?
I went to the little primary school – [we had] about 40 children here at the little primary school and it closed, but I was involved in the Elaine Tennis Club and I’m still in the Elaine Fire Brigade and I played a handful of games for the Elaine Cricket Club and … back in the Kennett years when he closed all the primary schools, I saw it all the way to nothing.
I grew up on a sheep farm out here, so I learnt to shear – and if you’re going to stay at Elaine, you might as well shear sheep because there’s not much other industry out here!
Tell us a bit about your farm.
I’ve got about 880 mainly Merino ewes and this is Merino country really, and I’m growing 70 acres of barley as well – mainly to feed the sheep in the dry season or when they lamb. And I’ve also got a hobby farm shearing and maintenance service business in predominantly the Macedon Ranges … which stretches right out to the Moorabool area. I also go into Geelong and Bendigo and Ballarat as well with that business.
I do sheep, alpacas, and goats – so, there’s a lot of hobby farms, they need their grass mowed, so a lot of hobby farmers have a couple of alpacas or a few goats or a few black Suffolk sheep to keep the grass down, and they can’t get anyone to shear them any more, so I shear hundreds and hundreds of alpacas and also sheep … and a handful of goats. It’s a really good little business. And my son does the same thing over in Gippsland and he also does a little bit up in Sydney as well, so it’s a bit of a niche business
What do you enjoy most about your lifestyle?
I guess because I grew up with it – I grew up on a farm and I grew up in a shearing shed, I can always remember being around sheep, so that’s been my passion. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, so my farming business is great for the off-season, so I shear predominantly on the hobby farms from September to March and in the off-season I mainly do my shearing and my crutching of my own sheep, and usually in about March too you’ve got to start feeding the sheep because they get hungry at that time, so I’ve kept pretty busy.
So, I suppose my whole life is sheep … there’s not many things I don’t know about sheep and alpacas to be honest. I’ve also got alpacas of my own as guardians to keep the foxes away from my lambs … they hate alpacas … especially the wether alpacas, they’re great guardians and they stand over the little lambs when they’re born and if they see a fox or a dog in the paddock they’ll chase them, and they’ll kill a fox … they’re really good.
I do a lot of drenching. In the winter time people tend to forget about drenching their animals, so you should really drench them in the winter as well. And also, of course, if you keep up the nutrition by giving them some grain or some lucerne regularly, then that will … keep the parasites away … I do know a lot about animals. I’m in the right job.
Everyone can check out what I do on www.shanetheshearer.com.au
