‘Living legend’: Boyup Brook’s Bob Johansen still shearing at 76 after starting at 15 years old

When Collie’s Bob Johansen was a youngster living in New Zealand, his first job was in a woolshed. Sixty-five years later, the “living legend” is still on a stand with a handpiece, his passion for the job second to none. It all began when his late father Robert taught him how to shear a sheep in the South Island town of Colac Bay at 11 years old. It was a skill he would soon need when at 14, his father broke his back in a fall and as the eldest of nine siblings, Mr Johansen took over his father’s run to provide for the family. The next 60 years would see him travel far and wide in his home country and then Australia where he immigrated in 1967, back in the days where they earned 20 cents per sheep. Mr Johansen — who twice shore 450 sheep and once 400 — still remembers his first encounter with Australian Merinos. “I got the biggest shock of my life,” he laughed. “I went to Esperance and we were using narrow gear on big wethers full of sand — I didn’t know what I was doing with them. “We actually had to sweep up wheelbarrows of sand and take it out of the shed.” It was soon followed by his first trip to the northern Wheatbelt in somewhat rustic conditions — on the back of a truck on a plank of wood over hundreds of kilometres of gravel roads with about a dozen other shearers and shed staff. “We used to stay in a hotel in Perth and the trucks used to pull up and all the shearers and roustabouts got on the back of these trucks and away we went,” Mr Johansen said. “And it was cold, you only had a bit of canvas over the top of you. “The fancy ones got to sit in the front — the classer, the cook, the expert — they got the soft ride.” He recalls the first leg of the trip — Perth to Pindar, 450km north — taking 23 hours because of truck breakdowns, before spending the next few week shearing at Mullewa, Mt Magnet, Payne’s Find, Merredin. The following year he moved to Collie, where he would become one of the most well-known shearers in the South West. His late wife Pattie was also known for her “beautiful” cooking, with Mr Johansen joking that she fed them so well that despite shearing more than 200 sheep a day, they would come home from a trip two stone heavier. “Their wives would think they’d just been slacking,” he laughed. They sheared all the way up to Carnarvon when the Pilbara and Mid West were still sheep country, but now operate around Collie, Boyup Brook and Darkan. At the time, he was one of 35 shearers in the coal-mining town. Today, he is one of three. Mr Johansen’s legacy can be seen in shearing sheds across the region, with three generations of Johansens carving out careers in the hard yakka industry. His son David — who sheared for 25 years before his back started giving him grief— runs the family’s shearing team, his daughter Renae Miller is a master classer and his granddaughters Taneisha and Tahlia work as roustabouts. He has also trained up more than 40 learner shearers over the years. “I’ve always been pretty passionate about teaching the young ones,” Mr Johansen said. He was also the first to introduce New Zealand’s “wide gear” to the Collie area, during a time when the comb was causing quite a controversy among those using the narrower Australian gear. The New Zealand comb — which had 13 teeth to the Australian comb’s 10 — was the centre of a landmark industrial dispute which saw shearers strike for 10 weeks in 1983, but ultimately led to their use being allowed because they increased productivity. Mr Johansen said he would use the Australian gear so as to not upset anyone, but would show farmers and shearers the benefits of the wider comb he had used back in New Zealand. “It was like a tourist attraction,” Mr Johansen said. “They all came down to see how this wide gear was going to work and I was shearing pretty well at the time too.” “The bottom tooth of the New Zealand comb slides out to the side and along the skin while the Australian comb was straight and wasn’t hard to push it into the skin. “A New Zealand comb will lay on the sheep and slide, and it balances all of your handpiece up but with the Australian comb you sort of balance it with your hand and you had to shear it quick and with a lot of speed to try and get the numbers.” Today, the whole country uses the wider model. Dave believes his father “should be in the hall of fame” for his lifetime of achievements. Today, the grandfather keeps up with the best of them, working full-time on the stand, shearing 150-160 head a day and more than 200 on a good run. He has no plans on slowing down any time soon. “I don’t get any aches or pains at the moment, so while I’m still enjoying it I’ll keep on going,” Mr Johansen said.