I’m a shearer, yes I am, and I’ve shorn ’em sheep and ram,
From the Wimmera to the Darling Downs and back,
And I’ve rung a shed or two when the fleece was tough as glue,
But I’ll tell you where I stuck the ’ardest tac.

I was down round Yenda way killin’ time from day to day,
Till the big sheds started movin’ further out;
When I struck a bloke by chance that I summed up in a glance
As a cocky from a vineyard round about.

Now it seems he picked me, too; well, it wasn’t ’ard to do,
Cos I had some tongs, a-hangin’ at the hip.
‘I got a mob,’ he said, ‘a mob about two hundred head,
And I’d give a ten pun note to have the clip.’

I says: ‘Right – I’ll take the stand’; it meant gettin’ in me hand;
And by nine o’clock we’d rounded up the mob
In a shed sunk in the ground – yeah, with wine casks all around.
And that was where I started on me job.

I goes easy for a bit while me hand was gettin’ fit,
And by dinner time I’d done some half a score,
With the cocky pickin’ up, and handing me a cup,
Of pinkie after every sheep I shore.

The cocky had to go away about the seventh day,
After showin’ me the kind of casks to use;
Then I’d do the pickin’ up, and manipulate the cup,
Strollin’ round them wine casks, just to pick and choose.

Then I’d stagger to the pen, grab a sheep and start again,
With a noise between a hiccup and a sob,
And sometimes I’d fall asleep with me arms around the sheep,
Worn and weary from me over-arduous job.

And so, six weeks went by, until one day with a sigh,
I pushed the dear old cobbler through the door,
Gathered in the cocky’s pay, then staggered on me way,
From the hardest bloody shed I ever shore.