be appalled by it as well". More recent footage and images of Australian workers abusing sheep have been released by anonymous sources, some of which was included in Dominion, a recent Australian documentary on animal farm abuses. No comment has been made about this by the Shearing Contractors Association of Australia. Shearing in culture A culture has evolved out of the practice of sheep shearing, especially in post-colonial Australia and New Zealand. The sheep-shearing feast is the setting for Act IV of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. Thomas Tusser provides doggerel verse for the occasion: Wife make us a dinner, spare flesh neither corne, Make wafers and cakes, for our sheepe must be shorne, At sheep shearing neighbors none other thing craue, but good cheer and welcome, like neighbors to haue" In Australia Shearing the Rams, a painting by Australian painter Tom Roberts is like an icon for the livestock-growing culture or "life on the land" in Australia. It was parodied in Michael Leunig's Ramming the Shears. The expression that Australia's wealth rode on the sheep's back in parts of the twentieth century no longer has the currency it once had. In 2001, Mandy Francis of Hardy's Bay, Australia, constructed a blackbutt seat for the Street Furniture Project at Walcha, NSW, Australia. This seat was inspired by the combs, cutters, wool tables and grating associated with the craft and industry of shearing. During Australia's long weekend in June 2010, 111 machine shearers and 78 blade shearers shore 6,000 Merino ewes and 178 rams at the historic 72 stand North Tuppal station. Along with the shearers there were 107 wool handlers and penners-up and more than 10,000 visitors to witness this event in the restored shed. Over this weekend the scene in Tom Robert's Shearing of the Rams was re-enacted twice for the visitors. Many stations across Australia no longer carry sheep due to lower wool prices, drought and other disasters, but their shearing sheds remain, in a wide variety of materials and styles, and have been the subject of books and documentation for heritage authorities. Some farmers are reluctant to remove either the equipment or the sheds, and many unused sheds remain intact. Contests Sheep shearing and wool handling competitions are held regularly in parts of the world, particularly Ireland, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. As sheep shearing is an arduous task, speed shearers, for all types of