When we drove past the shearing shed at Braemar Station on our way to our accommodation for the night I knew I just had to return and explore this beautiful and iconically kiwi structure, the wool shed.

By the time I returned the sun had already fallen behind the Southern Alps and the light outside was beautifully soft with the interior of the wool shed lit here and there by a few incandescent bulbs. Entering the shed the smell of lanolin, manure and urine was strong but rather than being unpleasant it bought with it another sense in which to enter the 'life' of this building. I felt like a kid in a lolly shop as I slowly explored the interior sensing countless past musters and the accompanying long days of sweat and toil. The light soon slipped away and I returned to my accommodation, the old shearers quarters, where I couldn't help but wonder of the stories the walls held secret.

In the morning I returned for more light where I met Aaron, one of the station's workers preparing a broth for the pigs next to the kill house. Filling the half cut 40 gallon drum was the remains of a steer that had broken it's hip two days earlier. He remarked that he thought I was ok for a city lad, until he asked what I was driving and to his disgust learnt that it wasn't a four wheel drive.