Nicki Guttler, pictured during her 2024 world-record shear, made history again last weekend by becoming the first woman to win an Australian Sports Shear Open Machine Shearing title at Forbes Show. Photo: Nicky Guttler.
The Riverina’s Nicki Guttler has spent the past decade building a name for herself in Australian shearing sheds.
Last weekend at Forbes Show, the 32-year-old became the first woman to win an Australian Sports Shear Open Machine Shearing title.
She didn’t stop there.
Nicki also won the Open Blade Shearing event, completing a double she and others in the sport believe may be a world first – open machine and blade titles won by the same shearer at the same show on the same day.
It capped a remarkable return from a serious back injury and came only a week after the death of her grandmother.
Nicki grew up in the Lockhart district and now lives at Howlong on the Murray River.
Shearing runs hand to hand through her mother Helen’s side of the family. Helen learnt to shear from her father and spent her teenage years wool handling and classing, while several of her uncles also took their place on the board.
Nicki extended the family tradition into a third generation, although her own path to shearing began almost by accident.
Around 2014, her former school, Yanco Agricultural High, held a shearing competition at a gala day to give young people a taste of the trade.
Nicki, who had already left school, went back to have a crack.
Her mother gave her a quick “101” lesson and Nicki discovered she loved it.
Her first competition followed soon afterwards.
While working in the shed at a family friend’s farm, a local shearer told her about a women’s event at Walbundrie, in the eastern Riverina, and encouraged her to enter.
She had barely learnt the basics.
“It wasn’t pretty,” Nicki admitted.
At one point, a large crossbred ewe sent her flying off the board, but Nicki said she scrambled back up the steps and finished the job – apparently neither sheep nor gravity could put her off.
She was hooked.
In 2015, Nicki completed a two-week shearing course at Wagga TAFE before joining a cousin’s contracting business based at Temora.
For the next three years, she divided her time between roustabouting and shearing, gradually “earning her stand”.
Shearing, Nicki says, is fundamentally a team effort.
Traditionally, newcomers began as roustabouts, handling wool, penning sheep and pressing bales before they were given a handpiece and eventually earned a stand on the board.
Nicki believes that grounding gives shearers greater respect for everyone in the shed.
Long days in the shed only fuelled her competitive drive as she won her way from novice through intermediate and senior to open.
Now in her third year at the sport’s highest level, she’s still honing her technique at advanced shearing schools and studying other open competitors.
“It doesn’t just happen overnight,” she said.
Competitors are judged on time and the quality of their work, including whether they cut the sheep or leave wool behind.
In the lower grades, Nicki became known more for precision than outright speed.
“I really prided myself on always having a clean, polished sheep go out the chutes,” she said.
That approach had to change when she began preparing for a world record where pace carries greater importance, although every sheep must still meet the standard enforced by official judges.
In December 2024, Nicki set the women’s solo eight-hour Merino lamb shearing world record, shearing 450 lambs under the scrutiny of four official referees.
She had been considering a two-stand record attempt with a friend but a spine injury brought those plans to an abrupt halt.
For 10 months across 2025 and 2026, constant pain made it difficult to walk, stand or sit.
Recovery came down to rest, patience and the support of a personal trainer who encouraged her to believe she could rebuild her strength.
This year, Nicki returned to full-time shearing.
But a week before Forbes Show, her grandmother died.
One of the strongest influences in Nicki’s life, Ruth Farrall continued living independently at Bidgeemia, near Lockhart, after her husband died about 30 years ago, remaining on the family farm into her late 80s before she passed away aged 93.
Nicki said her childhood was filled with sleepovers and weekends at the farm, piling into Ruth’s Suzuki ute to move sheep, check water and walk the dog, or helping pull lambs and feed poddy lambs, calves, chickens and goldfish.
“She just got on and did everything,” Nicki said. “There was only one way to do it, and you just did it. There were no excuses.”
Nicki sees the same fierce independence in her mother and herself, describing all three women affectionately as “stubborn old ducks”.
At Forbes, eight open shearers contested two heats and a semifinal, with Nicki the only woman in the field.
The sheep were large, powerful composite crossbreds whose varying wool made choosing the right comb as important as technique.
Nicki topped qualifying, but the scores were reset before the 12-sheep final.
She knew one rival would rely on speed, another on quality and a third on a combination of both, so her immediate goal was to prevent the pace-setter from getting a full sheep ahead of her.
Nicki managed to hold him off for a win.
She shared the credit with Culcairn siblings Charlie and Matilda Dunn, aged 15 and 18, who worked her pen and urged their novice-grade coach on.
By the finish, exhaustion and grief had caught up with her.
“I was just sort of, I guess, channelling my nana,” she says.
Nicki had previously been sceptical when athletes spoke about feeling the presence of someone they had lost.
“Weirdly enough, it was one of those moments where it was just like – yeah.”
Mum, Helen, was also at Forbes, competing in the senior wool-handling event.
“It was great to be able to get that win and do it for nana,” Nicki said. “And have Mum there with me as well.”
Later that day, Nicki completed the double, winning the Open Blade Shearing final with traditional hand shears. This time, the challenge was two sheep rather than 12.
She’s still trying to comprehend the scale of the achievement and hopes it will help younger women be recognised for their ability rather than their gender.
“There are so many girls who’ve got all the potential in the world,” she said.
“It would be nice for other people to see them as the shearer that they are – not necessarily the female shearer that they are.”
Nicki will next represent NSW in blade shearing at the Australian Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Warrnambool from 29 to 31 October.
It will be her fourth appearance for NSW and another chance to improve in a discipline she says she is still learning.
If you’d like to see Nicky in action – she’ll be competing in the 2026 Cowra Show Sports Shear on 17 October. Full details here.
