All through autumn, all through the cold months, all through spring you looked ahead to shearing season – so much looking forward it made you sick. And when I went out to feed Pet and Kipi and saw that the puddles in front of the kennels had dried up and the ground was getting hard, I knew the time was near. By the time the sun got round to blasting against the shed so the tin of it could burn a hole in your hand it was all under way.

Already there’d been stuff set aside from last year’s garden. Now the tents needed a shake out, camp ovens needed a count up, blankets needed sorting.

One day the shed doors were hooked open and the gear unwrapped from cloth or taken out of boxes and off shelves. There was the oil and grease smell in your nose. Out of rags in the big hands of my father, grandfather or uncle came the shearing handpieces – all the separate bits that had been loosened or taken apart, waiting until the new season came round. They were clean and sharp already, but it was done all over again – the washing, oiling, greasing, doing up combs, examining; the touching up and putting together, while you waited to grow up enough.

But that year when I was ten, I was struck down at the last minute, with everything ready to go. And how could Mum not be going? She was the best fleeco for miles.

All right, Mum was about to have a baby. I could see that for myself, though no one had mentioned it. And, yes, someone had to stay with Mum, but why not one of my two older sisters? The answer to that question, which I worked out later, was that Mina and Ti were needed to take Mum’s place in the shed, although I couldn’t remember them being any good at wool-handling.

‘Look here, Aki,’ Mum said when she found me snotting by the chimney, ‘when the season’s on everyone helps with the shearing whether they’re at the sheds or at home. It’s the whole family.’

‘Bunkum,’ I said to myself.

‘There’s the shearers, the sheepos, the sweepers, the fleecos, the pressers, the cooks. And there’s the ones at home keeping everything going while they’re gone, getting the wood and the water, feeding the animals. Or having a baby. So what’s the difference?’

‘All bunkum.’

‘Every year it’s been Grandmother and Uncle Harry staying home, looking after our houses and all our dogs and pigs and chooks. Well, now Uncle Harry’s not here. You know that. Nunu has to have a helper and I have to have someone in the house to run and get her if I pop, so don’t be silly, Aki.’

And she left me there. I had to boil down, pull my lip in and find myself a new face.