When Merbein wool classer Phil Noonan completed his classing certificate in 1959, only three out of every 100 classers would pass the three-year course at the School of Mines in SA.
Back then, centimetres were in inches, dollars were in pounds and competition among wool classers was fierce to say the least.
Mr Noonan, now 82, described how his generation of new wool classers changed the way the industry operated in the early 1960s.
"It was a very prim and proper industry back then," he said.
"Top classers would wear white dust coats and if you were up and coming, you would wear grey.
"There were a lot of rebellious people around that time, myself included, and we started wearing aprons and in some cases, whites as well, and that didn't go down well with the top classers of the day."
Initially starting his career in a 1955 Series 1 Land Rover, Mr Noonan would start his classing season in western Queensland.
He would then work his way down south through western NSW before heading across to the Flinders Ranges and the Murray Mouth before finishing around Warrnambool.
He later bought a Volkswagen Beetle - the best car he has ever owned - which he used to tour shearing sheds throughout Australia, sometimes visiting up to 30 sheds annually where he would spend up to a fortnight at a time.
"The industry has seen a lot of changes in my time and while most of them have been good, some of them have been detrimental to the industry," he said.
"Back then there was more of an incentive to have the wool you classed at the top of the market because that's how you built your profile.
"These days wool is sold in bulk rather than sold on its merits to highlight its quality so it's hard for classers to get the recognition we did 50 years ago."
This year marks 61 years since Mr Noonan started working as a wool classer, three years longer than he has been married to wife, Dianna.
"My best year as a classer was after the 1976 floods," he said.
"That year I classed at 26 sheds all over South Australia, NSW and Victoria and out of all of those sheds, I topped the market - whether it be fine or pastoral wool - in 23 of them."
Hard yakka
In his first year of working as a qualified classer, Mr Noonan joined Broken Hill, NSW, contractor Snowy Holloway's shearing team.
"That year we started on January 2 and the only time we had off was holidays and weekends and we worked the whole way through and finished on December 23 that year," he said.
"I'm only a little fella and people thought I couldn't complete a Snowy run but I proved them wrong, however, it nearly killed me."
A few years later Mr Noonan and his wife spent two years abroad in New Zealand as he attempted to up-skill his understanding of the wool industry.
It was there they had two of their three children.
"There wasn't enough crossbred wool for me here in Australia and I wanted to say that I could class all types of wool," Mr Noonan said.
North-west Victorian wool grower Marc Bowen, Diamond G, Carwarp, remembers Mr Noonan about the shearing shed in the 1970s when he used to class for his late grandfather, Lindsay Gowers.
"Phil's a very knowledgeable bloke ... he knows something about everything," Mr Bowen said.
"He can recall all the names of the shearing sheds he's worked in, the shearers themselves and how many sheep they shore."
The first shed Mr Noonan classed at was Crower, near Lucindale, SA.
"I never returned to that shed sadly," Mr Noonan said.
"For many years I was working between 18 and 25 shearing sheds a year, that's four stands and bigger, and the biggest I've done is 12 stands."
Future plans
Up until 12 months ago, Mr Noonan would also often help shear a sheep or two while shearers took a break or when they changed combs.
Nowadays, he is semi-retired and classes at about half-a-dozen sheds a year, mainly for the grandchildren of the pastoralists he started working for back in the 1960s and '70s.
"I reckon I might do one shed next year for some friends and that'll be it," Mr Noonan said.
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