Catherine Mullooly (Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, Ngāti Kahungunu), 35, mother of two and women's shearing champion, has loved shearing from a young age. Photo: Supplied / Ella Grogan (Ngāti Kahungunu)
Catherine Mullooly (Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, Ngāti Kahungunu), 35, mother of two and women's shearing champion, has loved shearing from a young age. Keen to introduce more mental wellbeing awareness into shearing training in Aotearoa, Catherine recently held a women-only shearing workshop in Tairāwhiti. In 2024 she set a new solo women's eight hour strongwool ewe record of 465. She told her story to Arpége Taratoa-Rangikura (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rārua) for Shepherdess magazine.
I grew up in Mātāwai. My partner Ardy, 31, and I now lease the farm that once belonged to my grandparents. I grew up on the farm with my Dad, and I was a real tomboy. I hated high school - I loved horses and dogs; being on the farm around the animals was where I wanted to be. If the shearers came to the farm over the weekend, I'd wake up and hear the speakers - boom, boom, boom - and I'd run down the driveway to the woolshed. I'd stand by the door on the landing and just watch them.
I was always a little shy, but I was also so interested. I was waiting for an opportunity, a job, anything to help out.
I remember my dad got some sheep in one day, just some stragglers, and I said to him that I wanted to shear a whole sheep. He's always given me the opportunity to just give something a go no matter what, which was pretty cool, but I remember he looked at me like, 'Are you sure'?
It was a big ewe and she had a full fleece - and it took me a LONG time to shear her. I remember every single muscle in my body was shaking. It was full on!
Dad got me into a Tectra shearing school just out of Gisborne and I caught the bug. It can be really hard to get your first stand as a shearer, and sometimes even harder when you are female - it just wasn't as much of a thing back then. If you are not fast, you slow the whole gang down, so the faster you are, the more likely you are to get on a stand. Generally, you want to be able to get through at least 200 sheep comfortably in a day.
Catherine Mullooly grew up on the farm with her Dad. Photo: Supplied / Ella Grogan (Ngāti Kahungunu)
It took me about seven or eight years before I started travelling overseas to shear. Shearing is seasonal, so you follow the sun. Starting the summer here, then I went over to the UK and then Aussie, then back to New Zealand. It was during a season in Kingston South East, South Australia, that I met most of my really close friends and my partner. We had been shearing for different contractors around the area, and I met Ardy at a speed shear after party.
He was from New Zealand, too, and we had mutual friends and kind of just hit it off from there. When we came back to New Zealand, I was supposed to go back and shear in Gizzy, but a stand came up in Piopio where he was from, so I took that and stayed for about three or four years before coming home to Mātāwai. We have two boys now - Bryn is four, and Cole is two.
In 2023, I trained for the Solo Women's Eight-Hour Strong Wool Ewe World Record, and I had to be away from them for a wee stint, which was really hard. We had planned it so that I could stay with the boys most of the way through my training, but there was a point where I had to go down south for about eight weeks.
I've never been away from them longer than a couple of days, and when I first decided to do the record Cole was about four months old. So, it was really hard. I used it as a kind of mental toughening exercise and made sure to use the time away from them to train hard and learn as much as I could.
Catherine and Ardy with their sons, Bryn and Cole. Photo: Supplied / Ella Grogan (Ngāti Kahungunu)
I knew I was there for a reason, so that really helped me get through that time away from them.
When I was doing my record, Elite Wool Industry Training sponsored me, and Tom Wilson, my boss, did up all my combs and gear for the day. He used to do that full time, and I don't think there is anyone better in the game than him!
After the record, I was invited by the Shearing Contractors Association of Australia Shearing Woolhandler Training Inc. as a guest trainer at the 2024 Women's World Shearing Workshop held in Telopea Downs, Australia.
The facilities were amazing - it was a brand new, fourteen-stand woolshed. We camped out at the station for a two-day course, and there was a lot of focus on mental wellbeing and balance and technique. I've never been to something where you aren't just focussing on the physical side, but also the importance of mental strength when it comes to staying in the zone. There is a lot more to shearing than just physical strength and fitness - it takes a lot of mental strength, too.
I felt so balanced and grounded after that trip - even though I didn't know anyone and I was shitting myself going over there, because I'm pretty shy outside of my group of friends, it was a really cool experience. When I got back to New Zealand, I spoke to Tom and suggested we do something similar.
Tom said, "Give it a go, but you have to organise it".
Keen to introduce more mental wellbeing awareness into shearing training in Aotearoa, Catherine recently held a women-only shearing workshop in Tairāwhiti. Photo: Supplied / Ella Grogan (Ngāti Kahungunu)
So we put out a register of interest for an advanced training course to be held in Gisborne, and we had over fifty women register!
In October 2024, we hosted fifteen women on Hamish and Amanda Caves' Ngātapa farm, Sunworth Station. I honestly don't have words to describe how good it was. Myself and Eve Pedie, a fellow shearing instructor, facilitated the three-day workshop - we met about a year ago and I could tell she was my kind of person, so it was really cool to deliver the course with her.
We shared a lot of our own personal experiences on that first morning, things that we had struggled with, things that had helped us - mostly mental wellness stuff. There were some tears shed, and the floor was open for the girls to share anything they wanted to as well. Some girls turned up by themselves and didn't know anyone, and some felt like they may have been out of their depth coming along, so we really tried hard to make them feel comfortable and to make them feel like this course was for them.
Tom was there, too, as our supervisor and gear expert. The farmers, Hamish and Amanda, were awesome, we couldn't have asked for better, and Tom was really pumped with how good the vibes were - afterwards he told me he had thought it was going to be a one-hit wonder! Back in his day, if you were training for something like a record you just worked harder. It is a bit different now.
Since getting her shearing record, Catherine has been focussing on being a mum. Photo: Supplied / Ella Grogan (Ngāti Kahungunu)
Mental wellness is a big part of it and trying to get that balance right. Adding in all the mental health stuff that helped me in my record - training journey was big. It's stuff you' re never taught, you have to go out and source it on your own. When we are training as shearers to do a record, we are training just as hard as any athlete but we don't have physios, sports psychologists or anything like that at our fingertips.
I have had quite a few attendees reach out since the workshop and share really big stuff with me. It is really cool to know that we made them feel comfortable and that they want to share those things with us and stay in touch. We would love to have hosted more girls, but the shed we were in was pretty tight, so we intend to hold one in the North Island and one in the South Island this year.
Since I had the kids I have been less hands-on on the farm, but it is a smaller farm so there's only really space for one full-time worker, which is Ardy. He's the boss. I just help out with the yard work.
He does a lot of tractor work in the area, and we both shear on and off our place, too. In the busy season I might help with mustering and things, but otherwise, he has it under control! It works really well here, because there is usually time for one of us to do off-farm work and we are really lucky to have our off-farm income. It means I get to do things like these shearing schools. But since doing my record, I'm just really focussing on being a mum, which I am really lucky to be able to do.
- This story appeared originally in the Ngahuru Autumn Edition 2025 of Shepherdess magazine.
