After painting the background of Bailed up in the open air, Tom Roberts added the detail of the coach and horse team indoors. He used a hall behind the Oxford Hotel in the town of Inverell as his studio.
     In 1911 the Oxford Hall was sold, pulled apart, and shifted to a sheep property in the district. A section of the hall was re-erected and converted into a shearing shed. It is still in use, and we visited it.
 

With its high barrel vaulted roof, the Oxford Hall must have been a wonderful space for social occasions. As a shearing shed, it is a remarkable piece of architecture.
     Fragments of stencilled paintwork can be seen on the inside of the roof, left over from the building's original gay life. The sheets of iron were shuffled in the move, so the decoration is randomly miss-matched — perhaps this was not a concern for sheep and shearers.
 

A shearer demonstrated hand shearing for us, and talked about the work. I was surprised to learn how little fleece there was on the older smaller types of sheep, compared to modern stock. That difference, plus a long working day, helps to explain the amazing daily tallies of Jackie Howe and the other crack blade shearers.
     I also heard something I was not expecting — the quietness of the snip-snip-snipping of the shears. The rollicking song click go the shears gives you the wrong idea.