Jamestown in South Australia's mid north sets up a training centre for shearers and wool handlers in 2019
Jamestown Agricultural, Horticultural and Floricultural Society president and local farmer Matt Scharkie with a trainee at the local shearers and wool handlers training centre (inset).
Young would-be shearers and wool handlers gained a head start in the industry from 2019 through to a state-of-the-art training centre at Jamestown in South Australia's mid north.
Jamestown Agricultural, Horticultural and Floricultural Society president and local farmer Matt Scharkie was a driving force behind starting the education centre. He was part of a small group from the Jamestown show committee that realised filling the need for a shearers and wool handlers training centre was an extra opportunity as part of upgrading its old wool pavilion.
The group secured a Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal grant to cover three quarters of the cost of the training centre. Shearing supplies company Heiniger fitted out the shed with equipment including handpieces, wool presses, grinders and shearing plant, and the show committee funded some of the overall project.
Local farmers gave $40,000 towards the training centre. Scharkie said: “They could see that eventually, as a result of this training centre, there would be shearers coming out to their sheds who had been trained the right way, with the right tools and most importantly, the right mindset.”
The shearing and wool handling schools were run by the Jamestown Show with Shearer Wool Handler Training Inc. Since its opening in 2019, three shearing schools had been conducted at the training centre, with 13 trainees at the 2020 school drawn from across South Australia. Scharkie said it the centre was already exceeding expectations.
The focus was on attracting potential shearers from a non-agricultural background, as well as those already been exposed to the industry. A big impetus for the training centre was the Covid-19 pandemic preventing New Zealand shearers coming over. The training centre also made it easier for shearers leaning the trade to go straight into a job.
Jamestown Show had reinvigorated itself into a two-day show format, aiming to be the state’s “premier sheep and wool event”. The 2020 and 2021 shows, traditionally on the October long weekend, were cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions but Scharkie said Jamestown had proved itself a very resilient agricultural community over a long time.