Today we made our way to Te anau with some farming activites along the way. We stopped off at Shearing South which a museum for sheep shearing, and it was run by a man who had been a cheep shearer for 35yrs. At first i thought it was a joke, and another quaint side of New Zealand, but sheep shearing is a serious business! On arriving we were shown a dvd of the sheep shearing championships, shearing is considered a serious competative sport and the championships is on par with the likes of Wimbledon Tennis in the UK. There were all these men up on a stage dripping with sweat as the manicly sheared sheep after sheep and there were hundreds who had just come to watch and cheer them on. The champion had won 15times in a row and could shear something like 900 sheep in 9 hours. We then watched all these men try and go for a world record, which is currently rumoured to be 1100 sheep in 9hours- they get 2dollars per sheep, and at first i thought that was a tiny amount, but when you find out they shear several hundred, its actually a pretty hefty income! The guy who ran the museum had travelled the world shearing sheep, he was hilarious and told us some funny stories and painful stories where people had had nasty accidents with the shears. The man he worked for, for 10yrs, made his first million in 3months shearing sheep and he bought a house in a street which is the equivalent to Mayfair in London and he said he wouldn't stop shearing until he owned every house in the street- he now owns 36! I was amazed, i had no idea sheep shearing was this lucrative................ i think i have found my career! We then headed off to a Pahau shell jewellery factory where we were given scraps of the shell to design a shape on and then file down using a wet sander machine- this shell is everywhere over here, its not really my kind of thing, but it was an interesting place. Finally we headed to a working farm, where we got to watch a sheep dog round up the sheep, over in New zealand the dogs are also trained to run across the sheeps backs which i have a couple of photo's of on here. After Claire tried to sort the sheared sheep from the hairy ones ( hairy being the technical farming term of course) a coupld of people had a go at trying to shear the sheep which was quite eventful! We arrived in Te anau late afternoon, Milford sound day trip tomorrow- but the weather is looking a bit sus! fingers crossed!