Lachlan Robertson, 29, is a shearer based in Wagga Wagga, NSW. Last year, he led a team of five to shear 2301 lambs in eight hours, a world record. Brittnee Bazeley, 33, is his wool classer and best mate.
Lochie: Five years ago, I was looking for a wool classer and I found Britt on Facebook. I was impressed by her ability not just as a wool classer – she has good attention to detail and she’s fast – but also by the way she can run a crew. We clicked straight away and now work together six days a week.
About four years ago, I went off the rails after a break-up – drinking too much, carrying on. Britt told me to pull my head in. There was a bit of tension there for a couple of weeks, and we kept our distance at work. Later, I apologised.
I’ve got a three-year-old son and a baby due soon with my new partner. Britt’s got a six-year-old son, so we talk about parenting. I’ve always relied on her for advice: she taught me that kids like Nutella on toast and how to keep them occupied.
She’s always feeding me up. I’ll go to her joint and, all of a sudden, there’s a couple of bacon-and-egg sandwiches in front of me and a big glass of blackcurrant cordial. I’m getting a bit heavy and that doesn’t help.
She scares the drama away from us. I’ve got competitors out there who like to talk shit about me and a few haven’t realised how close we are. Someone started up once when she was giving them a lift in my car. Brittnee unloaded on him: “You better watch your mouth or you can start walking.”
‘If I got married, I’d ask her to be my best man, even though she’s a girl.’
Lachlan Robertson
She was trying to learn to shear properly for a while, but she’s given up on that idea. She can roughly work her way around a sheep, but would I let her do it for a job? Nup. Too slow.
On the other hand, I’ve tried wool classing when Britt needs a toilet break and she comes back and says, “Well, that’s in the wrong f—ing spot.” I can throw a fleece [onto a sorting table] not too bad but, when it comes to picking the quality of the wool, I’m pretty shithouse at it. You have to be able to see the crimp in the fleece: the finer the crimp, the finer the wool.
We travel all over NSW together in a team and spend a lot of time in the ute together. She listens to that rappy gangster shit on the radio and I hate it. I like white-girl pop music. Or I’ll put on a bit of country music and she’s like, “What the hell is this?”
Britt’s happiest when she’s with family. She had her young fella’s birthday the other day and she was smiling and having the best time. Family’s big; it’s cultural, I suppose. She doesn’t have any Maori tatts, but she wears a greenstone necklace. I bought it for her in New Zealand.
The day we took the world record [near Holbrook, in southern NSW], she was next to me all the time, working as my roustabout. At the end, she said, “Let’s never do that again.” We were buggered.
Britt’s my best mate. If I got married, I’d ask her to be my best man, even though she’s a girl.
Britt: My initial impression of Lochie was, “This can’t be the boss: he’s so young.” And he was very shy. I started off freelancing, doing a couple of days for him. He asked if I’d go full-time and I was a cheeky bugger and said, “Yeah, if I get X amount per day,” thinking that it would never happen, but the next day he came back and said, “Yep.” I thought, “Holy f—!” and I’ve been with him ever since.
Straight off the bat, he seemed genuine and kind, which is rare in our industry: you meet a lot of hard people who can be rude and abrupt. He was very understanding when I told him that I had a newborn son and was doing it all by myself.
When I first started, he was friends with everyone and always saw the good in them, even though they might shit on him. A big thing was people asking for subs [an advance on their wages]. They saw him as an ATM. I said, “What the hell are you doing?” I soon put a stop to that.
He once got with a girl who was a downright [nightmare]; everyone could see it. We had a few blues about that. He said, “Can you please accept her and like her?” and I’d tell him, “I’m not changing what I believe to accommodate her.” She didn’t last long. He finally woke up, but only after she’d put him through the wringer. He started doing dumb shit, like drinking – heavy, heavy drinking. I’d go to his house with an iced coffee and tell him he was being a bloody idiot: “What are you doing? This is stupid. It hurts now, but it’s not something to screw up your life over.”
He’s like a brother to me and I can talk to him about anything. He doubts himself, though. Even on the day of the world record, he doubted his skill level, doubted his mental ability, said he didn’t know if he could go through with it. I told him, “Just hurry up: you’ve got this.”
When he and his team broke the record, it was emotional. His whole family was there. I let them congratulate him and then I gave him a hug and told him I was really proud of him. Was it the happiest I’ve seen him? I don’t know. He looked like shit afterwards, to be fair.
When he’s got a lot going on, I tell him to turn his phone off and I’ll put a message up that he’s out of range, and everyone rings me instead. I’m like his bodyguard, I suppose. I’ve been told I look intimidating; must be that resting bitch face.
We spend a lot of time together at work and when we’re not at work, we’re on the phone to each other 15 times a day. We talk about everything: relationships, work, fuel prices, random shit on Facebook.
I live on his farm and help out doing general sheep work. He’s turned from a boss to a genuine friend. It’s a relationship both of us weren’t expecting, but I’m really glad it happened.
Stephen Lacey – Zealous cyclist, keen student of design and style, and purveyor of fine drinking experiences. Once stepped into the ring with a man of the cloth and copped a cracked rib for his trouble – all in the name of getting the story, of course.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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