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Golden Shears 2020
Obituary Koro Mullins By Doug Laing Across the shearing fraternity something has been missing since the sudden September 16 death of ‘the voice’ of the Golden Shears Koro Mullins. It was just a fortnight before the start of the new season at which he would have again been the voice of shearing at six competitions up and down the east coast – ringmaster and arena commentator at Poverty Bay, Hawke’s Bay, Central Hawke’s Bay, Wairoa and Dannevirke A and P Show, and taking our sport to the World via the livestreaming at Golden Shears. Over the years he had also takenup the microphone at other shows, including the New Zealand Shears in Te Kuiti. His passing was unexpected, while in Wellington for a relatively minor surgical procedure. “It leaves a big gap, it’ll take a lot to fill it,” said former fellow-competitor and eventual Golden Shears president now justretired Golden Shears World Council chairman Greg Herrick. “Perhaps it will never be filled.” As it happens, the family will do its best to fill the gap, with son Tuma continuing the commentating and announcing role he’s performed for some years, and the face of
the TV role being filled by widow Mavis Mullins.
his one and only Golden Shears Open shearing final.
It’s not particularly surprising that while acutely missing the man they will barely miss a beat, parts of a Dannevirke family with multigenerational shearing history, and their own individual parts spanning as more than half the 60 years of the Golden Shears.
Both Koro and Mavis, by that time also established as shearing contractors in Dannevirke after taking over the Paewai family run of the past, recalled the moment Koro heard he’d made it, in their van parked by the Waipoua River as the list of finalists crackled over the radio.
It was in 1987 that Mavis Mullins (nee Paewai) won her first Golden Shears Open woolhandling titles, and 1993 when she won her second, the same Shears at which Koro Tumatahi Mullins, of Te Arawa stock and born in Rotorua on August 13, 1954, shore in
The ultimate significance of that announcement would have been lost in the euphoria of having reached shearings’ equivalent of centre court finals day at Wimbledon. Of the six for shearings’ greatest 20 minutes later in the evening, Koro
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