“Bubbles gets her haircut” — a yarn five years in the making

A yarn five years in the making, “Bubbles” is finally free!

Half a decade in the forest back-blocks behind Mt Canobolas, this one lucky ewe had her first shear last weekend, and it all went as smooth as lanolin.

“Bubbles the Sheep” got her long-awaited haircut — two months after being rescued — from one of the best “barbers” in the business!

Four-decade veteran shearer, Simon Bestwick, stepped up to help Bubbles, and her saviour, old-style roustabout Ken Hayden, who liberated the full-grown (and very heavily-wooled) ewe from a tenuous life of solitary subsistence.

Simon’s 20-minute shearing — using the tether technique he applies to alpacas — was a relief not just for Bubbles, but for her rescuer as well.

“I’m so relieved, this has been a huge weight off my shoulders, and I’m just so happy that we were able to get her shorn,” Ken said.

After advertising her plight in the OCL of April 14 and 21, Simon stepped forward, after a very gentle push from his better half!

“I thought I’d offer to help, after hearing about her plight, thought it would be a good thing to do,” Simon explained.

“Actually, possibly it was my wife, Steph, who read about her first, and suggested that I help,” he added sheepishly.

“She certainly needed that ‘haircut’, but it all went as smooth as silk, no problems,” Simon added after his marathon effort.

After rescuing Bubbles — named after her rather-rounded, frothy appearance — while doing some fencing on a property adjacent to the wilds of Mt Canobolas, Ken fancied giving this lucky ewe a second chance at life.

“Soon as I rescued her, I just wanted to give her a new chance at life, and this shearing will give her that,” Ken said.

The legend of Bubbles began with Ken earlier this year rouseabouting and fencing on a property near Mt Canobolas.

“I’m a stockman, I was on a place where I was musterin’, looking for some cattle, and I come up on top of this rise,” Ken recalls.

“There she was on top of the hill, in about four-foot of Phalaris, all you could see was the top of her head.

“When she saw me, she took off down the hill and we noted she was a fully-woolled sheep,” he said.

As if by fate, however, this was not the last that they saw of Bubbles — their second encounter probably saving her from slow starvation.

“It wasn’t till about an hour and a half later, where we were following a fence-line, and we found her wedged between a strainer post and another existing fence, we drove up, and she couldn’t move backwards or forwards.

“With both of us heaving from one end, we managed to get her out and then we thought, ‘what are we going to do with her now?’.”

Ken and his colleague realised that this was a life-and-death decision for Bubbles.

“So, BJ and I thought, ‘she’ll only die if we leave her out here’, but both of us couldn’t lift her, it’s just dead-weight.

“Later on that day after fixing fences, we saw her in this paddock and managed to load her on the truck.”

Both Ken and Simon believed, correctly, that a traditional shear — where the sheep is essentially, sat on its tail as the shearer works around its body with the comb — would not work in Bubbles’ case, hence his use of the tethers.

“I normally now shear alpacas, and we use the same techniques which are quite different, than for sheep shearing,” Simon explained.

“Now it’s done and she’s okay, she can get on and enjoy the rest of her life,” Ken concluded.