Well today we headed to Sheepworld after a nice breakfast on the deck. It was a glorious day weather wise so we thought we'd head up Hwy 1 about 30 minutes to see a sheep shearing, herding demonstration.

It was nice to see those dogs, two distinct dog types - one of the typical Australian border collie but with a whippet mix. The another dog that was a much larger dog, but with a throaty, deep bark that apparently chases the sheep out of the bushes and thistles.

Then it was back to the sheds for the sheep shearing demo. Sure enough I was selected to do the sheep drawing - opening and closing the chutes for separate the "blues", the "pinks" and the "blondes". I was wondering why people were always selecting me for things, now I find out that Renetta was sitting behind me with her finger pointing at the back of my head - thanks Netta.

This young girl did the shearing demonstration with this 70kg ram. They provided us with some numbers about shearing.

• A few years ago there were 21,000,000 million sheep in New Zealand but in recent years the numbers have declined to around 12,000,000.
• The record shearing is around 44 seconds per sheep and they can shear upwards of 800 sheep in an 8 hour period;
• They get $2.00 per sheep to shear so that can work out to about $100.00 per hour and the best make in excess of $100,000 annually.

After the show we drove over to the west coast for our return trip home. We stopped at the Copper Tavern for dinner and then headed home for drinks on the deck. As I said, we're off to the airport tomorrow and then we're booked into the Sudima Hotel near the airport, so this will give us some relax time before we get on the plane tomorrow.