By Hugh de Lacy (snr)

May 5, 2021

Life is changing for world record holder Sarah Hewson. By the end of winter, the award-winning Marlborough business Higgins Shearing will be no more. Hewson, née-Higgins, who founded the business in January 2016, is in the process of selling her rural service company and, more significantly, has adopted a new name. 

“It wasn’t the name change,” she laughs, “it was just the right time.” Hewson will continue shearing for the new owner, fellow Marlborough shearer Angus Moore, while she adjusts to married life with new husband Ben Hewson. One thing, however, remains constant. The chase for world shearing records will continue. “I’m not setting a date yet,” she says, “but I definitely will have more time to prepare without having to organise the business.” 

In January last year, she and three other women set a world record by shearing 2066 lambs in nine hours, at Waihi-Pukawa Station near Turangi in the North Island. Hewson shore 528, Natalya Rangiawha from the King Country 507, Amy Silcock from the Wairarapa 423, while 23-year-old woman wonder Megan Whitehead of Gore rang the board with a phenomenal 608.

“Shearing is a physically and mentally challenging activity and to get fit, you just have to keep on shearing sheep. You can’t always train, but you can do things outside of the normal workday to get your body ready. That and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is very important. For the record in January, I trained every day, having signed up with a trainer from the UK to do workouts at home. Because of where I live, it’s too hard to get to the gym,” she says.

Shearing is widely considered the hardest physical work ever devised by man, with an Otago University study measuring the output of the average shearer as equivalent to running seven kilometres an hour. This may not sound much, except that shearers do it for eight hours a day, equivalent to running 56km (or 63km in a nine-hour day).

World record attempts, which cost around $25,000 to stage, are overseen and verified by the World Shearing Council, which sent chief referee Martyn David out from Wales to ensure the quality of the work was up to standard. It was, with David reckoning the women were shearing better and faster at the end of the day than the beginning.

Hewson, 28, born on a Havelock beef and sheep farm, was first drawn into the shearing sheds by her mother, Fiona Higgins, a qualified wool-classer, at the age of 14. Over the next few years Hewson began to think how good it might be if she could shear just one sheep.

She asked shearer Chris Jones, now one of the Higgins Shearing gang, to teach her, but he wisely refused. The physical stress of shearing on a teenage body can cause long-term health problems. Once Hewson turned 18, Jones started the training and within a couple of years she had become the first person to win both a shearing (novice) and a wool-handling (junior) title at the Masterton Golden Shears.

Arguably Hewson’s greatest achievement, though, was Higgins Shearing winning the Supreme Award in the 2020 NZI Rural Women NZ Business Awards. “I’d heard there was an opportunity here in Blenheim; a couple of guys wanted to sell their shearing runs. I was pretty green, and I’d never done a full season, but when I looked at the opportunity to start my own business, and with encouragement from Chris, I decided to go for it. Having the right people and the right dynamic to make it work well is the main thing. It’s been a natural process,” Hewson says.

A ‘natural process’ but no accident. Before she took up the shearing handpiece Hewson put herself through Lincoln University, graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in agriculture and marketing. Her studies kindled an interest in wool-marketing, and at one stage she took an office job to learn more about it, only to quickly tire of the environment in favour of the relative freedom of shearing for a living.

“The combination of Sarah’s commitment to her business, leadership in her industry and support for her rural community make her a very deserving winner,” NZI executive manager Christina Chellew said in announcing the award at a Wellington ceremony.

Given that shearing is a male-dominated industry, Sarah waves away any notion of especially wanting to encourage women to get into shearing. “I like to encourage anyone to get into shearing. It doesn’t make any difference whether they are male or female,” she says.

Hewson’s love of wool underlies her commitment to shearing, and she sees the fibre as being on the cusp of a revitalisation driven by the combination of a growing awareness of wool’s environmental friendliness, and a wave of new uses coming on-stream.

“Life is changing for me,” she says, “but wool remains the same. I’d be happy to break more records but much happier if the world understood the importance of wool as a natural, renewable fibre.”