Shear guts: Shearer puts in marathon effort to help injured mate

Ariki Hawkins shears in the middle of the night to his tally of 1052. Photo / Doug Laing

It was a deserved a beer for Hawke's Bay shearer Ariki Hawkins, even if it was 6am on Wednesday morning.

It had been the biggest day and night of his shearing career.

On Wednesday, Hawkins completed two-standard eight-hour woolshed days back-to-back, starting at 7am on Tuesday and finishing at 3.45am on Wednesday after running out of sheep.

He broke some personal records along the way, shearing 500 in a day for the first time with a 7am-5pm tally of 585, shearing 1000 lambs two hours ahead of time and finishing with 1052 lambs in 14hrs 45mins.

It was all to raise funds to support a workmate who was badly injured in a quadbike rollover on a farm in Southland.

A nap for 10 minutes on the shearing board, before starting again at 12.30am. Photo / Doug Laing

It was also the last of about 21 consecutive days shearing with Napier contractor Brendan Mahony. The effort was needed after the impact of Covid-19 restrictions and without shearers from overseas to help make-up the numbers.

Farmer Ben Lee, whose Waipunga Rd farm was the scene of the shear, highlighted the enormity of the job, saying: "It's tough shearing up here. No one's done 500 [in a day] in his shed before."

Having grabbed just 10 minutes sleep in the effort spanning 22 hours, a nap on the shearing board, in the overnight 11.30pm-12.30am "lunch" break, 36-year-old Hawkins looked throughout as if he could do it all again.

Just before 11.30pm he was still occasionally shearing lambs at about 40 seconds and overall averaged just over 50 seconds a lamb caught, shorn and dispatched throughout the 14hrs 45minutes on the board.

Two hours after the last of the average 35 blows with the hand piece for each lamb he said, "I'm still at the shed mate just having a couple beers with the crew."

He was joined by farmer Lee and wife and woolhandler Tania, and son Roydon, the fourth generation on the property since his great-grandfather moved in 1918 after returning from World War I.

A celebration all around about 6am, at the end of a day's shearing, about the time they would have normally been going to work. Photo / Supplied

Another was fellow shearer Mike Stephens, who'd driven about 570km overnight from Tangiteroria in Northland to arrive by 7am on Tuesday, to sit on a bucket throughout as chief clock watcher, keeping the shearer up to the task.

It was the challenge that kept on giving, with donations still being made to an associated Givealittle account, over $2400 being added to the wages for the day, all to injured workmate and injured Southland shearer and farmer Darryn Gutsell and family.

Born and raised in West Australia, but from a Mohaka family, Hawkins wasn't the only Ngati Pahauwera shearer ticking over the numbers on Tuesday.

Working for Hastings contractor Farrell Chrystal, Hemi Lambert, 21 and also with more than three weeks' of daily shearing behind him without a break, shore 800 lambs in just under 9hrs at Omahaki Station, west of Hastings, having never before done more than 700 in a day.