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Sheep And Wool In Australia
THE annual sheep show is going on in Sydney. The city is full of squatters,
as sheep farmers are called, and we can see sheep from all parts of the
continent and from Tasmania and New Zealand as well. Sheep so thrive in
this latitude that Australasia, made up of Australia and its neighboring
islands, is one of the best sheep-rearing places upon earth. The two great
sheep-rearing centers of the world are situated at about the same
distance south of the Equator. Look on your map and you will see where
they are. On one side of the globe is Australasia and on the other
Argentina in South America. Argentina has a climate much like that of
Australia, and it vies with it in fine sheep and wool.
Sheep farming is carried on in almost every settled part of the continent.
Some of the stations, as such farms are called, are so large that it would
take us several days to ride around one on horseback, and a single field
often contains eight hundred acres, or more than five ordinary American
farms.
One hundred sheep is quite a large flock in parts of our country. In New
South Wales there are several men who each own one hundred thousand
sheep, and one who has more than one million, or enough, supposing
each sheep to weigh one hundred pounds, to give a slice of mutton to
every man, woman, and child in our country and leave plenty over for a
stew for our whole nation next day.
Australasia has had at times one hundred million sheep, man of
distinguished ancestry, noted for his fine breeding, and has been so kindly
handled that he is perfectly safe. Were it not for his horns, his nose, and
his feet, we might think him merely a bundle of wool. His fleece lies upon
him in rolls and folds, the skin apparently wrinkling to make it hold more.
It is so long and thick on his head that we see only the tips of his ears ; his
eyes are far back of those holes in the wool. The fleece hangs down from
the under parts of the body, covering the legs clear to the hoofs. We poke
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our fingers into the wool. We can not reach the skin without pressing the
knuckles far in. How greasy it feels ! It is dirty and gray outside, but when
we pull it apart it is the color of cream. This sheep has more than forty
pounds of wool on him, and his owner would not sell him for threethousand dollars.
The common sheep of Australia, however, have only a very few pounds of
wool, often not more than five or six. They can be bought for about the
same prices that such sheep bring in our country. We can easily see what
a difference it makes if each sheep yields much wool or little. Take, for
instance, that squatter over there who has fifty thousand sheep. If each of
his flock can be made to yield one pound more at a shearing, he will have
fifty thousand pounds more wool to sell every year; so you see how
important it is to have good sheep, and why the people pay so much for
them.
Leaving the sheep show, we visit one of the warehouses of Sydney, where
the wool is brought in from the country to be shipped off to Europe. It is
on the edge of the harbor and of easy access to the ships. We go fromfloor to floor of the vast building, making our way in and out through the
wool, which is stored here by the thousands of bales. Each bale is about
as high as our heads. It is wrapped in yellow bagging and weighs about
three hundred and ninety pounds.
Some of the bales have been opened, and the white wool seems to be
pouring out upon the floor. Each bale is marked with the name of the
station from which it comes. In some places men are tearing the bales
apart and sorting the wool, and in others buyers are examining the piles
in order to make bids upon them. Each buyer takes up the wool in his
hands and pulls it apart. We do likewise and then throw the stuff back on
the pile. How dirty it is! Our hands shine as though coated with vaseline,
and our cuffs are soiled with the grease. The sheep are not always
washed before shearing, but the wool is frequently scoured before
shipping.
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We ask one of the buyers, a man dressed in overalls and a long linen coat
buttoned tight up the front, what the wool brings. He replies that the price
varies according to the grade, quality, and state of the market. He shows
us that it makes a difference also from what part of the sheep the woolcomes, some bales being composed only of the shearings of the legs and
tails, while others come from the sides and under parts of the body. Fine
wool brings twice as much as coarse wool, and it takes an expert to know
just what is best.
After the wool is sold, it is exported to Europe in steamships and sailing
vessels. The sailing vessels go around the Cape of Good Hope, while the
steamers usually pass through the Suez Canal. The shortest distance from
Australia to the European markets is about eleven thousand miles, and
the freight rate for carrying wool there is sometimes as low as one fourth
of a cent per pound. It takes less than four pounds of wool to make a suit
of clothes for a man, so that for one cent the ships carry enough ,wool for
a suit from Australia to London. This is one of the wonders of commerce.
Let us go out in the country for a look at the sheep in the fields. One of the principal squatters has asked us to visit his station, and we gladly
accept the invitation. We leave in the evening and ride all night on the
cars. When we awake we are passing through great pasture fields, some
containing large droves of cattle and others thousands of sheep. Now and
then we go by fields of wheat, rye, barley, or oats, or through forests of
eucalyptus and other Australian trees; but nearly everywhere there are
sheep, sheep, sheep! We see single flocks which contain as many as twothousand animals, and at one place ride several miles by a drove of sheep
on its way from one station to another.
There are but few farm buildings, and no great barns such as we have in
our north central states. The weather is so mild that the grass is good all
the year round and the sheep need no other food. They require no shelter,
living out in the fields from one year's end to the other. The houses we
see are chiefly one-story structures, painted yellow and roofed with
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galvanized iron. Some of them have iron chimneys, and nearly all have
iron tanks on their porches to catch the rain water as it comes from the
roofs. Australia is a dry country, and in many places every drop of water
that can be so caught is saved.
At last we reach the end of our railroad journey, where we find riding
horses which take us across the country to our squatter friend's home. It
is a big building with many smaller ones about it. Some of them are
offices, stores, blacksmith and carpenter shops, and the others are the
homes of the men.
It takes a large number of employees to run such a station, and the homesettlement is almost a village. The house of the squatter is a one-story
building, roofed with iron, with many rooms opening out upon porches,
with a large parlor and all the surroundings and furniture of a comfortable
home. There is a cricket ground at one side of it and grounds for croquet
and golf.
There are also great stables with horses for pleasure and work. The
station is miles in extent, and almost every man on it has a horse. The
sheep are kept in fenced fields and hence do not need shepherds, as our
great flocks on the Rocky Mountain plateaus do ; but it is necessary to
have boundary riders, men who go about the fields every few days to see
that the fences are up and that the sheep are all right and that they have
plenty of water.
We spend some time at the station, going about with the squatter and the
men, learning much about sheep and wool raising. We see them shear
sheep at a neighboring farm forty miles off. A large gang of men does the
work, cutting off the wool so fast that one man shears one hundred or
more sheep in a day. The men are paid about five cents for each sheep,
and their earnings depend on the number they shear.
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When the sheep come into the hands of the shearers they look fat and
gray, but when shorn they seem to have shrunk and their coats are snow-
white.
At another place we see men shearing sheep by machinery worked by
steam or electricity. The cutting is done by little knives moving back and
forth like the knives of a mowing machine. The knives are in a frame
which is pressed against the wool, cutting it more easily and smoothly
than by hand. The power is communicated by a tube like that which the
dentist uses for drilling out teeth.
While the shearing is going on, men take the wool ands sort it. They pack it in bales and load it on wagons, which are hauled by long teams of
horses or oxen to the cars. In Western and South Australia camels are
often used to carry the wool, two bales of wool forming a load for one
camel.
We are delighted with our life at the station. We thought it would be tame
so far off in the country, but with riding and driving and games, every
moment is filled. The squatter's boys think nothing of going off ten miles
to play cricket, and his girls often ride twice as far to a party or to spend
the night with a neighbor. They have their teachers at home, and their life
seems very easy.
We must remember, however, that this is one of the richest of the sheep
farmers and that his lands are among the best in Australia. The smaller
farmers often have as hard times as our small farmers at home. All suffer
when the weather is dry, some parts of the continent being subject to
frequent droughts, during which the sheep die by thousands for lack of
water and food. The droughts clear the land of everything green. The
pastures become as bare as a road, and the sheep stagger about, nosing
in the dust for the seeds of grasses and trees.
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Their owners often have to sit and watch them die, knowing they can get
nothing to feed them. The poor squatters sometimes go crazy because
the rain fails to come.
In some districts the evils of the droughts are avoided by artesian wells
which are being made by the government in many parts of the continent,
where, although the surface of the land is almost a desert, vast reservoirs
of water are found far below. Some wells are several thou-sand feet deep,
a single one often flowing a million and some more than a million gallons
of water a day. The water is often hot when it comes forth, but it soon
cools. It is a little salty, but the sheep drink it and thrive on it.
Another great enemy of the sheep is the rabbit, which is found in vast
numbers in many parts of Australia. These little animals eat the grass
required for the sheep. Men are kept to do nothing else but hunt and trap
rabbits, a single man sometimes killing four hundred in a day. Many sheep
farms have fences of wire netting about them to keep out these pests,
and some of the states have built hundreds of miles of rabbit-proof fences
along their borders.