Hosted at White Rock in North Canterbury, the shearathon pulled in more than $45,000 including close to $18,000 raised in a charity auction after the shearing.
Spokesman Mark Herlihy said the event exceeded any expectation.
Herlihy lost his young brother to suicide in 2016.
The tragedy left the family questioning why he hadn’t asked for help, prompting the drive for greater awareness of mental health and suicide prevention.
Being a family of shearers it was appropriate that awareness was driven from the shearing board, Herlihy said.
“We chose to embrace the word prevention as we want to help people before they lose any sense of hope for their future.”
The main objective was to let people know it was okay, no matter what their circumstance, to reach out for help.
The North Canterbury event was the second for Herlihy.
Two years ago in his home town in Taranaki a similar event raised $20,000.
He said while the key focus was about raising awareness, at the same time it made sense to raise some money to support mental health organisations.
“It isn’t about trying to beat anything done before, it’s about preventing suicide,” Herlihy said.
The group of North Canterbury farmers, shearers, agribusiness representatives and wider community were overwhelmed at the end result.
“It was way better than we could have ever thought. There was huge support and the way the North Canterbury community pitched in made it a real community event.
“We are looking to have raised more than $45,000 – that’s blown us away,” Herlihy said.
More than 50 machine shearers and eight blade shearers took their turns on the board over the 24-hours that started at 10am on March 23.
“There were plenty of shed hands, everybody knew what they were doing and just got into a routine and on with it pretty quickly.”
While the weather was not on their side, organisers were prepared.
“We heard the rain was forecast so we had all the sheep under cover and trucks organised. They just kept trucking sheep to the shed right through the night.”
A total of 3222 sheep were shorn, down on the 4500 planned but with the wet weather a pleasing result given the logistics of getting dry sheep to the shed.
Herlihy said organisers were hugely grateful to Tim Hawke for the use of his shed, Duncan and Tina Mackintosh who along with Hawke supplied all the sheep and to the truckies who made it possible to go ahead.
Sponsors had willingly come forward in numbers to support the event.
“We had a good number of very generous sponsors and support for the charity auction. Also the givealittle page – we can’t thank everyone who was in any way involved enough. It’s been such a huge success.”
Four main key recipients working in the field of suicide prevention – Lifeline, Through the other Side Trust, Taranaki Retreat and He Waka Tapu – will benefit from the money raised.
More information about these organisations can be found on the 24-hour-shearathon facebook page.
Will the event be held again?
“Yes, we will definitely do it again. We just don’t know when or where at this stage,” Herlihy said.
