NZ says baa-bye woolly Kiwi icon - a ticket to fleece the marketing world
To some, he may have been just another lamb to the slaughter, but to Bendigo Station owner John Perriam, he was a ticket to fleece the marketing world of publicity.
To some, he may have been just another lamb to the slaughter, but to Bendigo Station owner John Perriam, he was a ticket to fleece the marketing world of publicity.
When musterer Ann Scanlan found excessively woolly sheep Shrek on Bendigo Station in April 2004, Mr Perriam knew he was onto a good thing and wasn’t sheepish about raising Shrek’s profile.
He soon made his first television appearance later that month, shorn live on national television, with his fleece weighing a whopping 22kg.
Media around the world were captivated with the black sheep of New Zealand’s merino world.
It wasn’t long before Shrek met then-prime minister Helen Clark and Chilean president Ricardo Lagos at Parliament, and he went on to be flown to Auckland as a guest of Pet Expo before finally retiring from public service in 2008.
However, retirement for Shrek was a case of silence of the lambs and he was soon brought back into public life, even meeting MasterChef judge Simon Gault and being filmed for an associated television series.
But at 16 years old Shrek was the Methuselah of his Bendigo contemporaries, and his time sadly came to an end at the station yesterday.
Still, Mr Perriam believes that Shrek’s legend will live on.
“It’s been a fantastic journey,” he said.
It’s estimated Shrek’s public appearances have contributed $100 million to the New Zealand economy in terms of marketing exposure – not baaaaa-d, really.
Shrek is to be cremated, with his ashes scattered on Bendigo Station and on Aoraki Mount Cook.
NBR staff
Tue, 07 Jun 2011
Tue, 07 Jun 2011
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NZ says baa-bye woolly Kiwi icon - a ticket to fleece the marketing world
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