“Life is like a box of chocolates” was the famous line from Forrest Gump. “You’re never sure what you’re going to get!”
Last year, when Nikki set the 8-Hour Merino Lamb Record of 395, she battled away all day on lambs that just wouldn’t let her shear to her potential. It is a testament to Nikki — her strength, stamina and mental toughness — that she not only performed incredibly well on sub-par lambs, but held her head high afterwards and acted with great dignity amongst what we could all see was significant personal disappointment.
Talking to Nikki in the days after her record, I remember thinking, “This won’t be the last we hear of this woman,” and so it came as no surprise when she rang me to talk about plans to have another go — this time at the 9-hour record.
There are many things that have impressed me as we (Perkinz) have been lucky and privileged to be a small part of the incredibly exciting story that these amazing women shearers are writing into the history books.
Their dedication, technique, composure under pressure and strength are obvious — they’re there for all the world to see — but perhaps the thing I’ve found most impressive is their bloody-minded stubbornness that goes by just one name in the shearing industry, and that is “guts.”
These women have got guts — they’ve got it in spades — and you get the feeling that if someone locked their catching pen door by mistake, they’d rip the bloody thing off its hinges.
And that guts will be on display once again this coming Wednesday as Nikki laces up the moccasins for her second world record attempt. I’m sure that some of Nikki’s motivation will be to show the world what she can do on half-decent lambs.
I think we might be about to see something special from Nikki as she looks to etch her name in history for the second time, and join names like Sacha Bond and Megan Whitehead as a double world record holder.
Go Nikki. Give ’em hell!