I did query it early on in this discussion, specifically in terms of when shearing season was and whether any of the contract shearing crew would still have been on the station. Another poster reported that the season ended in September, though not when in September that was likely to be.
Since it was the end of the season by the end of September, I would imagine (but someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that the shearing crew would not be moving on to another job but returning to their usual homes after completing work on this property. How large would a crew be for shearing 3000 sheep, which is the reported stock level? In any event, the police will have spoken to them all by now. (The crew, not the sheep.)
I had assumed they would have been gone all day. Would it have made sense to go out at 4pm with barely a couple of hours of daylight left, to do jobs 10km or half an hour's drive away?