Sheep Shearing in Australasian Culture
A culture has evolved out of the practice of sheep shearing, especially in post-colonial Australia and New Zealand. Shearing the Rams, a painting by Australian impressionist painter Tom Roberts is considered to be iconic of the livestock-growing culture or "life on the land" in Australia.
For an inversion, Michael Leunig's Ramming the Shears can be seen as a sign of the shifts in Australian culture, and the extent to which the dominant rural culture is being eroded by an increasingly urban population.
The expression that Australia's wealth rode on the sheep’s back in parts of the twentieth century no longer has the currency it once had.
Many stations across Australia no longer carry sheep due to lower wool prices, drought and other disasters, but their shearing sheds remain, in a wide variety of materials and styles, and have been the subject of books and documentation for heritage authorities. Some farmers are reluctant to remove either the equipment or the sheds, and many unused sheds remain intact....ref
|
