Former shearing great and showman Colin Bosher, last week in his cabin near Boyup Brook, in southern West Australia. Photo / Doug Laing
Legendary shearer Colin Bosher didn't shear a lot in Hawke's Bay.
But almost 40 years after he did shear in the area, before disappearing to Australia, his name remains one of the first to be mentioned whenever shearing and shearers are discussed.
Invariably it's accompanied by the many stories surrounding the man, the antics and pranks, physical strength, retentive power of the grey matter, the betting associated with them all, such that anyone who hadn't seen the power of the tall Taihape-born man who can barely read or write, would struggle to believe it.
Hawke's Bay wool industry identity Lew Willoughby also grew up in Taihape, about 15 years younger than Bosher, and captures the stories thus: "They're all unbelievable, but they're all true."
Growing up in Masterton, I first met Colin Bosher before I was 7-years-old. He and my father, a founder of the Golden Shears and also a journalist, had become good mates from the time Mr Bosher first came to town for the big event. He'd come around home each year on the Sunday morning after the shearing was all over. We, and other children from the neighbourhood, were intrigued by the tricks, including being able to name every card in the pack without seeing them.
Thus it became an ambition later in life to find the man, for few had seen or heard of him since he left to shear in Australia in 1977, after making working for Charlie Pearse around Eskdale, Te Pohue and Tutira one of his last stops before departing New Zealand.
Some had heard he'd died, or had faked his own passing.
Well, Colin Bosher is still alive, living between Boyup Brook and Kojonup, almost 300km southeast of Perth in West Australia, where I finally did catch-up with him on Good Friday, realising a dream which seems certain to go a second round, possibly more. He's 85 in October and lives in a cabin at a piggery, shore till after he was 75, even after breaking his neck in two places when a vehicle in which he was a passenger with a mate and a staffy called Chewy rolled into a paddock.
"It was the hip that buggered me," he says, revealing he'd had a hip replacement some time later. When he could no longer shear, he says in a 12-hour yarn over several cans of Carlton, the family that owns the piggery offered him a bit of work to do, and the cabin, and when respiration started to pack-up - he now has regular fixes from an oxygen tank - they said he was welcome to stay-on even though he was no longer up to the work.
It was through Facebook that I found him, not that he has any interest in social media. He doesn't have a phone, and his most significant branch into modern technology is his TV and a Foxtel subscription, to watch sport, and the races.
I had been told some time ago he was in the Boyup Brook area, but with shearers ... ? Well, they can move about a bit. Heading to Perth for family reasons and asked again, a response coming from Rebecca Thompson, of Boyup Brook, that he could be found in the Boyup Brook Hotel most days of the week.
I drove to Boyup Brook last Thursday, but "Col", as the locals called him, had left an hour or so before I arrived. One knew exactly where I'd find him, at the piggery 36km away. I found it, banged on the door, no response, not a soul in sight anywhere on the property - hardly surprising given the flies, the hundreds of squawking white cockatoos, and the odours of the piggery that attracted them. I left a note, saying I'd be back in the morning, and returned to town to enjoy a night with the locals - the "enemy," as one put it, jokingly. They all had stories about Col, including that every day he'd be outside before opening time in his car, swotting his form guide.
The man was more than pleased to see me when I returned, aware that as it was Good Friday I wouldn't be finding him at the pub, which would be closed for the day.
Colin Bosher did not shear in the first Golden Shears in 1961. He had never shorn in a competition and despite what became his legendary reputation for bravado, he couldn't see himself getting up and shearing in front of a crowd.
But, with a shed-shearing reputation of some stature and sparked by a perceived snub from the record-breaking Godfrey Bowen when Bosher first shore in competition at the Taranaki show late that year, he would over the next five years shear in four Golden Shears Open finals, he would in 1963 shear in front of the Queen at a Royal Command Golden Shears in Lower Hutt, and he would shear record-breaking tallies of 606 lambs on one day and, on April 13, 1964, 565 ewes, smashing a record held by Bowen.
He was second in the 1964 Golden Shears Open, won by Brian Waterson, but reckons he would never have won the title. Too much of a drinker, smoking on the shearing stand an indication of the rascal within.
Not the sort of bloke to represent New Zealand, he thought, despite being an extraordinary crowd favourite, not least for one occasion when he easily beat the others in a teams event, realised his mate was dragging the chain, pinched his last sheep, and shore that as well, before most of the others had finished.
As for the legends. He'd finish a day's shearing, leap up to the rafters, hang upside down by his feet, and drink a bottle of beer. The needle through the ear trick, best left to the imagination. And famed for his whisky, gin, rum and brandy, all neat, followed by a beer chaser - "the burglar," so named, says daughter Donna, for creeping up and knocking you over. Just the "medicine", he reckons, for a good night's sleep, with shearing the next day.
"I also loved his scull a schooner of lemonade and a schooner of beer then bring them back up, separately," wrote old acquaintance Jimmy Hawthorn on Facebook this week, repeating a story told in varying forms over the years.
He was also handy with the fists, but doesn't shy away from it. He is at times a bit ashamed, but there's a sense of justice about 1970 when he went into the Taihape pub, just out of hospital after breaking both arms when a drunken "farmer's son" crossed the road and crashed into his vehicle head-on near Taumarunui. In the pub another farmer, not known for his charity, was running down shearers - calling them "thieves and robbers," Bosher recalls. Devoutly loyal to his staff, shearing contractor Bosher is said to have let the cockie have it, and ended-up in the local cells for the night.
Bosher says he never faked his passing. One story that wasn't true. Between shearing in every state in Australia, he returned home several times, most recently for the funeral of son Kevin in 2009.
Everyone wanted to know where he was. But in the Boyup Brook pub, local contractor Dave Johansen, revelling in the chance to talk about the man, says: "You wouldn't want to play cards with him." It was fine if he was on the same team.
Firefighters are keeping a close watch to ensure the piles of debris do not reignite.