Losing an arm didn't stop Dave from shearing

At 64 he's declared it's time to pull up a bit and he's found the perfect place to do it - in Longreach, where the Brisbane-born teenager soaked up two years of training in how to run a property.

A Scot's College student - his father's side of the family emigrated from Scotland and his schoolmates were from western Queensland sheep and cattle properties, where he spent his holidays - he said studying at the Longreach Pastoral College as a teenager was a natural progression.

"Thinking back on why city boys would want to come out west - it's about how big the rural industry was in those days," he said. "We had a ram on the two shilling coin, a common saying was 'we're not playing for sheep stations', and everyone had an uncle who either worked in the wool stores at Teneriffe or as a shearer."

These days Mr Wyllie is back at the college, working for the grandson of its visionary co-founder Sir James Walker and regaling tourists with stories of the west and his career.

It's quite a story, beginning with his first job as an old-school jackaroo at Baratria, near Winton, which employed a cowboy-gardener, a bore runner, and a head stockman.

"It was 100,000 acres and ran 30,000 sheep, cattle, about 80 horses - we had 15 round the dinner table most nights," Mr Wyllie said. "Looking back, it was one of the happiest times of my life."

Like a modern-day NRL talent spotter, the station's shearing contractor, who had been admiring his athleticism in the sheepyards, asked if he'd like to have a run for the Diamantina Devils, Winton's rugby league team.

His head stockman was from Yorkshire, the heart of English rugby league, and he naturally gave him permission.

"They were the roughest men - I was only 19 and they were big and tough," he laughed. "Ray Higgs, who played for Parramatta and Australia, was captain-coach at Longreach in 1979 and 1980, and told the Winton blokes, if they were in Sydney they'd all be playing A grade."

That naturally led to him working in the sheds.

Between that and joining the rugby league crowd, Mr Wyllie said his mother was beside herself.

"I was supposed to go off and manage Terrick or similar, not become a shearer," he said.

He ended up doing a lot of work for Grazcos contractor Noel Dawson, got his woolclassing stencil, and became a contractor himself, working all over the country.

Taking a break on the Gold Coast to sell real estate, the novelty wore off and he jumped at a newspaper advertisement to be a TAFE wool and shearing instructor at Ithaca, in Brisbane, then moving to Warwick.

"That suited me down to the ground," he said. "In those days it was a 12-month full-time course - we looked at sheep breeds, parasites, the biology of wool, all the shed management such as double-entry ledgers, and how to fix up machinery and handpieces."

After a time there he went back to the sheds, not as a boss this time.

"Then in 2003 I lost the use of my right arm," he said.

Matter-of-factly he relates the circumstances - intoxicated, losing control of his car, hitting the side of a semi-trailer on the Cunningham Highway at Aratula, and lying on the highway losing blood.

"I should have been dead," he said. "I was a lot more concerned about my four children and what would happen to them, and after a week in hospital I said, I can't sit round feeling sorry for myself."

In order to support his family he completed a Bachelor of Education and did supply teaching, admitted that thanks to his experience of crowd control in sheds and stock camps, potentially disruptive schoolchildren were "putty in my hands".

During this time Noel Dawson rang to ask if he'd take on a role as a shearer trainer, saying when Mr Wyllie mentioned his single arm that 90 per cent of shearing was how to position one's legs.

He took the bit between his teeth, tackling how to hold a handpiece in his left hand first.

"I got as far as the neck, then a bloke held the neck and I got through," he said. "Over then next five years we developed a prosthetic limb - it didn't move, it was just there to hold the sheep."

That saw him sent to the UK to speak at the world shearing championships at the Welsh Royal Show, helping to put Australia on the world stage.

Although on a good day he could shear between 80 and 100 head, Mr Wyllie said there was no expectation that he'd go back shearing on a full-time basis.

With COVID hitting, he returned to Longreach to work with the Bowdens' shearing team.

When Dan Walker mentioned at a barbecue that he was in need of an older bloke who could tell stories, they said "we've got just the bloke for you".

"Now I find myself in the tourist industry," Mr Wyllie said. "A lot of it's just off the cuff - I've been in so many situations, I can have a great long conversation with anyone."

Both the tourism and wool industries are lucky to have someone with so much history, humour and knowledge at their disposal.