Five days a week for most of the year, sometimes toiling in primitive kitchens, often in remote districts of Australia's sheep belt, far from towns and supermarkets, Dick and Cheryl Duggan prepare up to 100 meals a day.

The Duggans are shearers' cooks. They live, nominally, in central Victoria, but spend much of their lives on the road and in shearers' quarters close to the station cookhouse.

Dick Duggan is acknowledged as one of the greats of Australian shearing. ( Landline: Tim Lee )

Few jobs are as physically demanding as shearing sheep. An average day's work can require as much energy as running an Olympic marathon. Few trades burn so many calories and few workers work up such stupendous appetites.

"It astounds me still even sometimes because you get people that you just can't fill up," says Cheryl, who has seen a great deal in 46 years of catering for shearing teams.

Husband Dick has spent 67 years in the shearing industry, starting as a shearer at just 14.

"I told them I was 18 of course. Anyway you didn't have to show birth certificates them days," laughs Dick, known for his affable manner and his ability as a shearer.

He was a gun, who won 108 shearing championships, earning him the name "King". Later he became a shearing contractor and these days plays sous-chef to Cheryl.

Dick "The King" Duggan has won 108 shearing championships. ( Supplied: Duggan Family )

Currently the couple are in the Riverina region of southern New South Wales. Appropriately for Dick his life has almost come full circle. His first shed was at Steam Plains, down the road. Last year he and Cheryl returned there to cook for the shearers.

Here at Pooginook Station, a famous Merino stud, there are eight shearers to feed and the same number of shed hands — the presser, woolclassers, roustabouts and a shearing contractor.

And don't forget the station staff, who keep the supply of sheep up to the shearers. They usually drop in for morning and afternoon smoko.

What's on the menu?

Dick and Cheryl cook a roast dinner for the hungry shearers. ( Landline: Tim Lee )

Dick's day begins around 5:00am, preparing the team a cooked breakfast. Then Cheryl takes the reins to make morning tea.

"Morning smoko is normally hot food, party food, sausage rolls, cocktail frankfurts maybe, or dim sims. Whatever. Toasted sandwiches," Cheryl says.

By 10:00am the shearers have begun their next two-hour shift. And so has Cheryl. By midday she will have a choice of meals ready to serve the ravenous workers as they file into the mess-house.

The shearing team tuck in to a hard-earned meal. ( Landline: Tim Lee )

The volume of food and the speed of its consumption is astonishing.

"This team is pretty good on the tooth," Cheryl observes.

Next on the menu is afternoon tea, which as a rule is more sweet than savoury. By mid-afternoon a bit of sugar brings some much needed energy.

Then Cheryl begins preparing dinner, often a three-course meal. Her working day finishes around 8:00pm.

Incredibly, Cheryl has never had a cooking lesson. Shearers' cook was an accidental profession.

"The cook snatched it or was sacked," Cheryl recalls.

"And I was a 20-year-old straight out of the city. 'You've gotta cook dinner', I was told. 'OK, I'll do that'.

"When the workers came down for dinner, no meat. Nobody told me you had to put wood in the wood fire! So that was my induction into cooking and it has just rolled on ever since."

'The kids looked after themselves'

When they first met Dick and Cheryl already had five children between them. Soon after they married they had four more.

For 46 years Cheryl Duggan has been making meals for shearing teams. ( Landline: Tim Lee )

Dick worked alongside Cheryl, both as a shearer and as a shearing contractor.

"The kids looked after themselves I guess," Cheryl says.

"I've got photos of the kids looking like they've just come out of a bog somewhere.

"Don't get a bath till 8:00pm or whatever. But the kids loved the outdoor life."

Four of the Duggans' sons became shearers and followed the gypsy-like lifestyle of their parents, moving with the seasons.

No signs of slowing down

Everyone who has ever worked in a shearing team seems to have experienced substandard cooking at some stage, so the Duggans' culinary skills are much appreciated.

Annette McCulloch says a good cook should be able to make anything out of nothing. ( Landline: Tim Lee )

"I think having a good cook, it's the core of a good team, keeping everybody happy," woolclasser Annette McCulloch says.

"If you've got a good cook, everybody's happy."

Dick is 81, stopped shearing at 75 and was last year inducted into the Australian Shearers' Hall of Fame. However, retirement is not on the cards.

"When you get to my age what do you do? You've got to be doing something," he says.

"When you've worked all your life you just don't stop."

And how long does Cheryl think she will keep slaving over a cookhouse stove?

Seemingly it is not a question she has stopped to contemplate.

"Till he dies," she chuckles.

"He won't let me retire! I don't know. I think we've got another year or two in us yet. Maybe."

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