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45-582: A shearer is someone who shears, such as a cloth shearer, or a sheep shearer . Origins of the name include from near Bergen in Norway 1600s [Sweden of that period] as Skea (pronounced "Skeg" meaning "beard") and Heddle (meaning market place) as migrated to The Orkney Islands where the name 'Shearer' is found in Church marriage records of the time and as quite prolific for the overall population. Members of those family Shearer migrated to Australia and New Zealand in

90-462: A day. A learner (shearer) is a shearer or intending shearer who has shorn less than a specified number of sheep. In 1983 the Australian shearing industry was torn apart by the wide comb dispute and the ensuing 10-week strike that followed. The offending combs had been introduced by New Zealanders who were weaker union supporters. In 1984, Australia became the last country in the world to permit

135-470: A long way from anywhere, or a long way away. The well-watered north of the continent is often called the " Top End " and the arid interior "The Red Centre", owing to its vast amounts of red soil and sparse greenery amongst its landscape. The outback is criss-crossed by historic tracks. Most of the major highways have an excellent bitumen surface and other major roads are usually well-maintained dirt roads. The Stuart Highway runs from north to south through

180-464: A low human population density, a largely intact natural environment and, in many places, low-intensity land uses, such as pastoralism (livestock grazing) in which production is reliant on the natural environment. The Outback is deeply ingrained in Australian heritage, history and folklore . In Australian art the subject of the Outback has been vogue, particularly in the 1940s. In 2009, as part of

225-545: A record of 321 sheep shorn in 7 hours and 40 minutes, using blade shears. He had previously set a weekly aggregate record of 1,437 sheep over a total working week of 44 hours and 30 minutes. While Howe's weekly aggregate record remained until at least 2005, his daily record tally was broken using machine shears by Ted Reick in 1950. Kevin Sarre (1933–1995) was one of the world's greatest 20th Century machine shearers. He won many shearing championships including five Australian Titles,

270-490: A shearer trainer and teacher. Australian Dwayne Black holds six world records, mainly in shearing endurance or marathon events. On 6 October 2002 he shore 570 Merino lambs in 9 hours at Yeeramulla, Badgingarra, Western Australia . In April 2005, he spent 9 hours shearing 513 Merino ewes, six more than the previous world record. In October of the same year he shore 519 crossbred lambs at the showground, Bendigo, Victoria . On 2 March 2007, Broomehill shearer Brendan Boyle set

315-405: A sheep from a catching pen, positions it on his “stand” on the shearing board and operates the shearing hand-piece. A shearer begins by removing the wool over the sheep's belly, which is separated from the main fleece by a rouseabout while the sheep is still being shorn. The remainder of the fleece is taken off in one piece by following an efficient set of movements. In the case of powered shears,

360-593: Is a major component of national tourism incomes. Tourism Australia explicitly markets nature-based and Indigenous-led experiences to tourists. In the 2015–2016 financial year, 815,000 visitors spent $ 988 million while on holidays in the Northern Territory alone. There are many popular tourist attractions in the Outback. Some of the well known destinations include Devils Marbles , Kakadu National Park , Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), MacDonnell Ranges and Uluru (Ayers Rock) . Other than agriculture and tourism,

405-452: Is claimed that the saloon, named after the nearby Black Stump Run and Black Stump Creek, was an important staging post for traffic to north-west New South Wales and it became a marker by which people gauged their journeys. "The Never-Never " is a term referring to remoter parts of the Outback. The Outback can also be referred to as "back of beyond" or "back o' Bourke ", although these terms are more frequently used when referring to something

450-622: Is considerable. Major mines and mining areas in the Outback include opals at Coober Pedy , Lightning Ridge and White Cliffs , metals at Broken Hill , Tennant Creek , Olympic Dam and the remote Challenger Mine . Oil and gas are extracted in the Cooper Basin around Moomba . In Western Australia the Argyle diamond mine in the Kimberley was once the world's biggest producer of natural diamonds and contributed approximately one-third of

495-430: Is full of very important well-adapted wildlife, although much of it may not be immediately visible to the casual observer. Many animals, such as red kangaroos and dingoes , hide in bushes to rest and keep cool during the heat of the day. Birdlife is prolific, most often seen at waterholes at dawn and dusk. Huge flocks of budgerigars , cockatoos , corellas and galahs are often sighted. On bare ground or roads during

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540-513: Is in Outback Australia, was fully certified as organic farm production, making Australia the largest certified organic production area in the world. Tourism is a major industry across the Outback, and commonwealth and state tourism agencies explicitly target Outback Australia as a desirable destination for domestic and international travellers. There is no breakdown of tourism revenues for the "Outback" per se . However, regional tourism

585-651: The Q150 celebrations, the Queensland Outback was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as a "natural attraction". Aboriginal peoples have lived in the Outback for at least 50,000 years and occupied all Outback regions, including the driest deserts, when Europeans first entered central Australia in the 1800s. Many Aboriginal Australians retain strong physical and cultural links to their traditional country and are legally recognised as

630-557: The Woomera Prohibited Area . Mineral exploration continues as new mineral deposits are identified and developed. 2002 was declared the Year of the Outback. While the early explorers used horses to cross the Outback, the first woman to make the journey riding a horse was Anna Hingley , who rode from Broome to Cairns in 2006. The paucity of industrial land use has led to the Outback being recognised globally as one of

675-484: The 19th century and represents the highest concentration of nation for the name globally. Additionally, shearers are some kind of mining machines used for continuous mining. Additionally, Shearer is a surname: Sheep shearer During the early years of sheep breeding in Australia , shearing was carried out by shepherds , assigned servants, Ticket of Leave men, and free labourers using blade shears. As

720-416: The Australian women's shearing record, having shorn 392 sheep in a day. Henry Salter (1907–1997) MBE won the first organised shearing contest at Pyramid Hill in 1934 and in 1953 was a machine shearing champion. He continued to use blade shears until he was well into his 80s. In 1946 Salter organised the first Australian shearing school at Kerang, Victoria . During the next 26 years he taught 6,557 students

765-563: The Federal Government. While small areas of the outback consist of clay soils the majority has exceedingly infertile palaeosols . Riversleigh , in Queensland, is one of Australia's most renowned fossil sites and was recorded as a World Heritage site in 1994. The 100 km (39 sq mi) area contains fossil remains of ancient mammals, birds and reptiles of Oligocene and Miocene age. The largest industry across

810-416: The Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a number of climatic zones, including tropical and monsoonal climates in northern areas, arid areas in the "red centre" and semi-arid and temperate climates in southerly regions. The total population is estimated at 607,000 people. Geographically, the Outback is unified by a combination of factors, most notably

855-401: The Outback, culminating in successfully reaching the north coast of Australia and returning without the loss of any of the party's members' lives. This contrasts with the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition in 1860–61 which was much better funded, but resulted in the deaths of three of the members of the transcontinental party. The Overland Telegraph line was constructed in the 1870s along

900-675: The Outback, in terms of the area occupied, is pastoralism , in which cattle, sheep, and sometimes goats are grazed in mostly intact, natural ecosystems. Widespread use of bore water, obtained from underground aquifers, including the Great Artesian Basin , has enabled livestock to be grazed across vast areas in which no permanent surface water exists naturally. Capitalising on the lack of pasture improvement and absence of fertiliser and pesticide use, many Outback pastoral properties are certified as organic livestock producers. In 2014, 17,000,000 hectares (42,000,000 acres), most of which

945-648: The Traditional Owners of large parts of the Outback under Commonwealth Native Title legislation. Early European exploration of inland Australia was sporadic. More focus was on the more accessible and fertile coastal areas. The first party to successfully cross the Blue Mountains just outside Sydney was led by Gregory Blaxland in 1813, 25 years after the colony was established. People, starting with John Oxley in 1817, 1818 and 1821, followed by Charles Sturt from 1829 to 1830, attempted to follow

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990-416: The adverbial phrase referring to the back yard of a house , and came to be used meiotically in the late 1800s to describe the vast sparsely settled regions of Australia behind the cities and towns. The earliest known use of the term in this context in print was in 1869, when the writer clearly meant the area west of Wagga Wagga , New South Wales . Over time, the adverbial use of the phrase was replaced with

1035-646: The art of shearing. In 1968 Henry Salter was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his services to the wool industry. John Hutchinson from South Australia is a former Australian Shearing Champion who won the first of six Australian championships and demonstrated shearing at the Osaka World Expo. In 1999 Hutchinson was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his contribution as

1080-524: The centre of the continent, roughly paralleled by the Adelaide–Darwin railway . There is a proposal to develop some of the roads running from the south-west to the north-east to create an all-weather road named the Outback Highway , crossing the continent diagonally from Laverton, Western Australia (north of Kalgoorlie , through the Northern Territory to Winton , in Queensland. Air transport

1125-520: The environment, so time and money is spent eradicating them in an attempt to help protect fragile rangelands. The Outback is home to a diverse set of animal species, such as the kangaroo, emu and dingo. The Dingo Fence was built to restrict movements of dingoes and wild dogs into agricultural areas towards the south east of the continent. The marginally fertile parts are primarily utilised as rangelands and have been traditionally used for sheep or cattle grazing, on cattle stations which are leased from

1170-555: The lack of proper medical facilities and trained personnel. In many outback communities, the number of children is too small for a conventional school to operate. Children are educated at home by the School of the Air . Originally the teachers communicated with the children via radio, but now satellite telecommunication is used instead. Some children attend boarding school, mostly only those in secondary school. The term "outback" derives from

1215-631: The largest remaining intact natural areas on Earth. Global " Human Footprint " and wilderness reviews highlight the importance of Outback Australia as one of the world's large natural areas, along with the Boreal forests and Tundra regions in North America, the Sahara and Gobi deserts and the tropical forests of the Amazon and Congo Basins. The savanna (or grassy woodlands) of northern Australia are

1260-508: The largest, intact savanna regions in the world. In the south, the Great Western Woodlands , which occupy 16,000,000 hectares (40,000,000 acres), an area larger than all of England and Wales, are the largest remaining temperate woodland left on Earth. Reflecting the wide climatic and geological variation, the Outback contains a wealth of distinctive and ecologically rich ecosystems. Major land types include: The Outback

1305-532: The main economic activity in this vast and sparsely settled area is mining. Owing to the almost complete absence of mountain building and glaciation since the Permian (in many areas since the Cambrian ) ages, the outback is extremely rich in iron, aluminium, manganese and uranium ores, and also contains major deposits of gold, nickel, copper, lead and zinc ores. Because of its size, the value of grazing and mining

1350-573: The movements used are those devised by Godfrey Bowen , in approximately 1950, or the “Tally-Hi” method. In 1963, the Tally-Hi shearing system was developed by Kevin Sarre and the Australian Wool Corporation who promoted the technique using synchronised shearing demonstrations. Sheep struggle less using the Tally-Hi method, reducing strain on the shearer and there is a saving of about 30 seconds shearing each sheep. When finished,

1395-610: The present day noun form. It is colloquially said that "the outback" is located "beyond the Black Stump ". The location of the black stump may be some hypothetical location or may vary depending on local custom and folklore. It has been suggested that the term comes from the Black Stump Wine Saloon that once stood about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) out of Coolah, New South Wales on the Gunnedah Road. It

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1440-500: The route identified by Stuart. In 1865, the surveyor George Goyder , using changes in vegetation patterns, mapped a line in South Australia , north of which he considered rainfall to be too unreliable to support agriculture. Exploration of the Outback continued in the 1950s when Len Beadell explored, surveyed and built many roads in support of the nuclear weapons tests at Emu Field and Maralinga and rocket testing on

1485-426: The shearer is one of a contractor's team that go from property to property shearing sheep and preparing the wool for market. A workday starts at 7:30 am and the day is divided into four “runs” of two hours each. “Smoko” breaks of a half hour each are at 9:30 am and again at 3 pm. The lunch break is taken at 12 midday for one hour. Most shearers are paid on a piece rate, i.e., per sheep. The shearer collects

1530-538: The sheep and the shearers due to the advanced techniques used. A professional or "gun" shearer typically removes a fleece, without badly marking or cutting the sheep, in two to three minutes depending on the size and condition of the sheep, or less than two in elite competitive shearing. Shearers who “tally” more than 400 sheep per day when shearing crossbreds, or around 200 for finer wool sheep such as merino, are known as “gun shearers”. Gun shearers using blade shears are usually shearers that have shorn at least 200 sheep in

1575-615: The sheep industry expanded, more shearers were required. Although the demand had increased, conditions had not improved and shearers had to contend with terrible working conditions, very long hours and low pay. In 1888, Australia became the first country in the world to have a complete shearing, at Dunlop Station, finished using machines . By 1915, most large Australian sheep station shearing sheds had machines that were powered by steam engines. Later, internal combustion engines powered machines until rural power supplies became available. In most countries like Australia with large sheep flocks,

1620-405: The shorn sheep is removed from the board via a chute in the floor, or wall, to a counting out pen, efficiently removing it from the shed. The latest shearing patterns which are used by some of the most efficient shearers around the world, world record holders, world champions, etc. have fewer blows due to better sheep control and positioning. These patterns ensure that there is less strain placed on

1665-447: The specific purpose of ensuring records are set under the same rules and consistent referees in these countries. In competition sports shearers, using blades or machine driven hand-pieces, can usually achieve short-term rates that are greater than for day shearers. Outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia . The Outback is more remote than the bush . While often envisaged as being arid ,

1710-858: The use of wide combs, due to previous Australian Workers' Union rulings. The Shear Outback, Australian Shearers' Hall of Fame and museum, was officially opened on 26 January 2001 at Hay, New South Wales in recognition the great wool industry and the great shearers of Australia, especially those of the Outback . The inaugural inductees into the Australian Shearers’ Hall of Fame are Jackie Howe (1861–1920), Julian Stuart (1866–1929), Henry Salter MBE (1907–1997), Kevin Sarre (1933–1995) and John Hutchinson OAM. These inductees were chosen because they had won world championships or had shorn high tallies. The shearers’ protective clothing and footwear usually includes: or On 10 October 1892, Jackie Howe set

1755-492: The westward-flowing rivers to find an "inland sea", but these were found to all flow into the Murray River and Darling River , which turn south. From 1858 onwards, the so-called "Afghan" cameleers and their beasts played an instrumental role in opening up the Outback and helping to build infrastructure. Over the period 1858 to 1861, John McDouall Stuart led six expeditions north from Adelaide, South Australia into

1800-446: The winter, various species of snakes and lizards bask in the sun, but they are rarely seen during the summer months. Feral animals such as camels thrive in central Australia, brought to Australia by pastoralists and explorers, along with the early Afghan drivers . Feral horses known as ' brumbies ' are station horses that have run wild. Feral pigs , foxes , cats , goats and rabbits and other imported animals are also degrading

1845-536: The world 24-hour sheep shearing record by shearing 841 full wool Merino sheep, and in the process raised over $ 20,000 for the fight against prostate cancer. It was the first time a record has been set in 24 hours sheep shearing. However, for the record to be officially recognized, it needs to be overseen by the World Sheep Shearing Records Committee. This committee has a set of rules, and official referees in three member countries for

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1890-554: The world's major manganese mines. Aboriginal communities in outback regions, such as the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands in northern South Australia, have not been displaced as they have been in areas of intensive agriculture and large cities, in coastal areas. The total population of the Outback in Australia declined from 700,000 in 1996 to 690,000 in 2006. The largest decline

1935-516: The world's natural supply, but was closed down in 2020 due to financial reasons. The Pilbara region's economy is dominated by mining and petroleum industries. The Pilbara's oil and gas industry is the region's largest export industry, earning $ 5.0 billion in 2004/05 and accounting for over 96% of the State's production. Most of Australia's iron ore is also mined in the Pilbara and it also has one of

1980-529: Was a Golden Shears Winner in 1963 and held World Shearing Record in 1965 of shearing 346 Merinos. In 1963, Kevin in association with the Australian Wool Board , was instrumental in the development of the revolutionary Tally-Hi shearing technique, and went on to supervise the training of this technique throughout Australia. The Tally-Hi shearing technique reduced the time taken to shear a sheep by approximately 30 seconds. Kevin's daughter Deanne holds

2025-544: Was in the Outback Northern Territory , while the Kimberley and Pilbara showed population increases during the same period. The sex ratio is 1040 males for 1000 females and 17% of the total population is indigenous. The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) started service in 1928 and helps people who live in the outback of Australia. Previously, serious injuries or illnesses often meant death owing to

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