Steve Handley: Final bell sounds for giant of the shearing world
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In full flight on the shearing board, Steve Handley was a sight to behold.
And when he shore, Handley was only ever in full flight. As he pushed a newly-shorn sheep through the chute and into the counting-out pen, he would lurch speedily forward towards the catching pen for a woolly replacement.
Within seconds he would have the next sheep held firmly between his knees, and with his hand-piece moving at furious pace, in less than two minutes he would have another gleaming white merino added to his tally.
And so it would go in a frenetic, bustling, breathtaking manner, from the first sounding of the woolshed bell at 7:30am, marking the start of the shearers' day, to the final bell at 5:30pm.
"No-one's on par with him and he just keeps himself to a regime that I don't think that anyone could keep up with," his long-time friend Noel Dawson once observed.
"He works like a Trojan for eight hours a day."
By then Handley, who died suddenly last week, would usually have about 250, sometimes 300 shorn adult sheep to his name.
A top shearer can turn out a daily tally of 150. Some days Handley shore 400.
"I've shorn 400, but they were good, they were just right and I was probably a bit younger and better at the time too," he told me in 2004.
"They were weaners and they suited me and I wanted to do it, so there was a few things in my favour that day."
"He did this day-in, day-out for 11 months of the year," recalls Noel Dawson, a principal with shearing contracting company NGS.
"Steve Handley was an ironman. To do that year-in, year-out, I rate him the fastest shearer in Australia," he said.
A large man with a powerful physique, Handley was also remarkable for his after-hours physical regimen, no matter how gruelling the day's work.
"I've seen him stacking weights on his chest and doing a couple of hundred sit-ups. Or going for a 20k bike ride," Mr Dawson recalls.
Handley shore across the eastern seaboard
Handley shore all over Queensland; from the Gulf of Carpentaria, throughout western Queensland, across New South Wales, Victoria, and as far south as Tasmania.
From low-roofed tin sheds where shearers glisten and drip with sweat in sapping outback heat, to the inland plains where cold winds whistle through the gaps in the corrugated iron-clad sheds - wherever and whenever he shore, the intensity was always the same.
In the macho world of the shearing shed the fastest shearer, known as the "gun", holds a prestigious title. There's often intense, unspoken rivalry between a shearing team.
Handley had a celebrated rival in Dave Grant, a gun shearer from Longreach. The two shearers usually met annually at Barcaldine Downs in western Queensland.
"That big red fella coming?" - Grant would ask Mr Dawson that question each year before shearing began.
Mr Dawson recalls Grant groaning at the thought.
Steve Handley was an ironman. To do that year-in, year-out, I rate him the fastest shearer in Australia.
friend Noel Dawson
Just as skilled, Grant could keep pace with Handley for a while, but Handley's determination, in league with his extraordinary fitness, would always prevail. Handley would always shear more sheep.
"He used to do a lot of psyche work on rivals," Mr Dawson recalls.
"He had these eyes that could burn holes."
Handley once told me when questioned about his highly competitive nature: "I haven't seen anyone get a medal for it, but it's just human nature, they want to get up there and shear as many as they can."
With his carrot-red hair and imperious air, Handley would glare and glower at rival shearers on the board.
Mr Dawson recalls how recently, a foreign backpacker was working as a roustabout toiling valiantly to keep up with Handley and his cohorts to get the fleeces and remnant wool away from the path of the shearers.
When she narrowly avoided a collision with Handley as he rushed to catch his next sheep, she felt the gun's steely glare of rebuke. The young girl burst into tears.
But the fiercest of competitors on the shearing board was a gentleman at all other times. I vividly recall interviewing him for Landline at Bimerah Station, south of Longreach, in 2004.
Known affectionately throughout the shearing industry as "The Chinchilla Killer" for his ferocious appetite for work, he replied with a slightly bashful grin: "Oh yeah, they do call me that."
In 2007, Handley and his wife Monica had a daughter, Rhianna.
Mr Dawson recalls Handley lovingly cradling his newborn baby, the tiny infant dwarfed by her father's large powerful hands.
The family travelled around in a caravan from shed to shearing shed until Rhianna reached school age and the trio settled back in Charleville.
Handley began shearing at 17
Handley grew up in Chinchilla, left school at 15 and began shearing at 17.
He soon showed his immense talent for shearing and extraordinary appetite for work. His reputation as a gun shearer soon grew.
I haven't seen anyone get a medal for it, but it's just human nature, they want to get up there and shear as many as they can.
He was the outright winner once at a Quick Shears in Blackall, one of the few times he competed in official competition shearing. He was too humble, too self-conscious for that.
There is an old saying that shearers require a strong back and a weak head.
Handley had a keen mind and an exceptionally strong back. But a few months ago he sustained a serious back injury. The thought that he might never shear again was intolerable to him.
Despite medical help, he spiralled into deep depression.
He was found dead, aged 49, at Charleville last week.
Handley's funeral was held on Saturday in Chinchilla, where shearers, graziers, shed hands and mourners from across the pastoral industry gathered to remember a giant of the Australian shearing world.
As Mr Dawson said in his eulogy to his champion of the boards: "There'll be many big stories told about him today. And all of them will be true."
Watch Landline on ABC1 at midday on Sunday to see a brief clip of Steve Handley at work.
Topics: wool, rural, sheep-production, agricultural-crops, suicide, mental-health, depression, chinchilla-4413, qld, australia
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