180 WOOL 



Australia. In 1788 Captain Phillips, the first governor, 

 brought with him from England 7 horses, 7 cattle, and 

 29 sheep, 1 besides pigs and poultry. These were the first 

 sheep hi Australia. Later on, in 1797, some merinos were 

 introduced into New South Wales, and from that year onwards 

 wool began to be an important product. 



New South Wales is the principal wool-producing state in 

 Australia. From the base of the tableland westwards for 

 over 600 miles stretch the Great Plains. In the eastern part 

 of these plains, on the slopes of the tableland, the rainfall 

 varies from 20 to 30 inches, and the temperature from 60 to 

 69 F. ; but farther west the rainfall decreases, and over a great 

 part is not more than 10 inches annually. 



Except in the valleys of the rivers, these great plains are 

 treeless, but over all this vast expanse there grow in abun- 

 dance many kinds of succulent grasses, which nourish millions 

 and millions of merino sheep. In dry seasons, when all these 

 grasses are burnt up and the land looks a parched and barren 

 wilderness, the salt-bush still survives, and affords sustenance 

 to the animals. 



In times of drought the difficulty is not so much to obtain 

 food as to find water for the flocks. Across the plains the 

 Murray-Darling and its many tributaries flow, and in wet 

 seasons these overflow their banks and flood the country for 

 miles around, so that the lakes within their basins become 

 vast inland seas. But in dry seasons the rivers and lakes 

 dwindle, and become merely a series of long-distance ponds, 

 while mud, baked hard by a burning sun, occupies the space 

 of what, in more favourable times, was a sheet of life-giving 

 water. 



Then the sufferings of the poor animals are terrible. In 

 1884 ten million sheep died of thirst, and this is no isolated 

 instance ; always in the past in dry seasons millions of animals 

 have perished. The following poem vividly describes these 

 conditions : 



1 In 1914 there were in Australia 82,014,296 sheep. 



