Roberts began this work in his studio, working from pencil sketches first made at Brocklesby station, and then returned to the station, working in a corner of the woolshed, seated on wool bales, concerned to capture the particular effect of light on colour. He finally completed the painting in Melbourne.

Roberts commented that he wanted to express ‘the subdued hum of hard fast working’, and ‘the whole lit warm with the reflection of Australian sunlight’. He arranged the figures in a kind of tableau, giving them a sense of physicality so we can sense the tension in their bodies, their muscles at work, and linked one figure to another, with a repetition of the arched bending form, with slight variations going down into the shed.