Goodooga’s Tyron makes shearing history
Goodooga’s Tyron Cochrane has just taken the shearing world by storm, winning the National Junior Championship of New Zealand against international contenders.
Tyron and Bourke’s Jolie Orcher made shearing history at the weekend, with Tyron the first to win the Junior Championship and Jolie the first Aboriginal woman to compete at the titles.
Eighteen-year-old Tyron took out the coveted award at Masterton, beating all other competitors from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, and Australia.
He and Jolie have been in New Zealand since before Christmas, training on the specific breed of sheep used in the competition – and the hard work paid off.
Tyron’s achievement is even more remarkable, because he has only been shearing for 18 months and was competing against shearers with many years of experience under their belts.
“The event judges the quality of the sheep, how clean you can shear it and I have been training for that competition every weekend for the past six or seven weeks leading up to this,” Tyron said.
“I moved to Dubbo about a year ago, but grew up around shearing out west, with my dad Terry, who is my inspiration.
“At school I was studying an automotive course to be a mechanic, but I didn’t really like it, and one day my dad asked me to come out shearing with him - and I never looked back,” Tyron said.
When he moved to Dubbo with his family, Tyron did a couple of days’ work at the Regional Enterprise Development Institute - REDI - with shearing instructor Samson Te-Whata.
Samson has been a professional shearer since the 1980s, when he came to Australia from New Zealand under a special employment program, which aimed to have enough shearers to handle an estimated ten million sheep during the boom times. […]
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