Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Friday 10 September 1909, page 6


THE WOOL LAND

THE SEASON STARTED

A COUNTRY EXTRAORDINARY.

THE MANUFACTURE OF THE AUSTRALIAN.

(by our special commissioner.)

I

Towards the end of August work started at one of the largest sheds on the Darling -

Sir Samuel McCaughey's station at Toorale.

Shearing began on the flrst of the month at Dunlop, the great shed just below. For some

time the teams have been bringing in the wool from the Paroo; and camels are now stringing in towards Bourke with two bales on each hump, from stations further out than that. The shearers have begun to eat their way, like an army of grasshoppers, from the north-im,*' west in towards the Pacific and the south. They have even reached as far in as Gunnedah,"ncï on the North-western railway. Within a month the wool sales for this year will have started in Sydney. In fact, the wool season has begun.

AUSTRALIA'S MAKING It a man from Mars were to dump himself

in Sydney in these days, when there is so much talk of closer settlement and of farming

-of the growing of apples and potatoes and cauliflowers and the making of butter - he would probably recognise that there were people up the country who did do something else as well, because he would see great square brown packages of some other stuff of

which people did not talk so much but which still was carried In a continuous procession down Castlereagh-street and Macquarie-street

to the wool stores and hoisted into ships. What probably ho would not realise is that he was watching the last process In an Indus-

try that has been for a hundred years and still is beyond all comparison the most im-portant in the land. And perhaps there is some little danger that oven the people is the land Itself may be inclined, in their eager-ness to do the best tor Australia by settllng it as closely as may be with farmers and fruitgrowers, to overlook the fact that, after all there is no Industry in Australia yet which brings to it the wealth which come! to it, in return, for its wool, and that such as Australia is, it is the wool industry that has made it, is making It still, and

must always make a great part of it.

IT MAKES THE MEN.

Wool is making not only the country--carv-ing it block by block out of the virgin bush and making It habitable for men; it is mak-ing also the men themselves, it carves out whole classes of Australians. It is no exag-geration to say that each branch - almost each process - of the wool Industry has made

and moulded some entirely separate and dis-tinct type of Australian. In the days before fences the lonely men whoso work it was to shepherd the sheep became a class apart, a class entirely and obviously different from

other Australians. In those days the bound-ary rider, on "outside" runs at any rate, who does in some sort the work of the old shep-herd, is a type by himself. The work is the paddocks makes one man, the work at the homestead makes another, the work on the

roads and stock routes makes another. The wool of Australia, from the moment it begins to lengthen on the lamb's back to the time when it is on the floor of the sheds or packed on the river barges with a steamer parting down the gleaming streak ahead of it and the old river skipper fondling his big black Iron

steering wheel on the broad bridge in the deep shade of the deckhouse, is not merely making the wealth of Australia. It is making

the Australian - the one sort of Australian which is really unmistakably Australian. FROM BACK TO BACK.

In this series of articles it is proposed to

follow the wool--right through from the sheep's back to the back of the man In the street

The "Sydney Morning Herald" has accordingly

despatched a representative to follow the pro-cesses of the industry in the north and the far west, on the rivers, and in the towns wherever, indeed, there is any interest In the processes or those connected with them. Ex-cept for occasional alterations In the setting

the facts and yarns related in the course of these articles are the actual facts and yarns as they were seen by, or told to, the "Herald"

representative during the past few months.

It is not enough to have followed the wool out in the back blocks; for it is not only the country that is kept going by the wool in-dustry. Probably there are every bit as more people In the towns who earn their living al-together out of wool as in the country. On the railways, on the carts, in the stores, is the offices, on the quays, in the big scouring and fellmongering and soapmaking works at Botany, at the combing machines and is the wool factories, there are thousands upon thousands of men, and women, too, making their living out of wool. It is hard to say what part of the people of the State is not mainly supported by wool. Even pastrycooks

from the towns who often go out and offer themselves as cooks for the shearers, and farmers and their sons who go shearing to sup-

plement their earnings, cut out some of their biggest cheques in the wool industry.

A COUNTRY EXTRAORDINARY

Australia might have been a country where

they grew something else. It might have been ' a country where they grew potatoes; and the Australian might have been a potato grower. But he is not. Such as it is, Australia has been made by wool. And so has the Aus-tralian. It may be that the country will still come to grow something else. Australians may find something else better suited to the peculiar, nature of the country. For about half of Aus-

tralia has a certain quite astonishing quality, which only those who have seen it can realise. It is a quality gradually developed in the plant life of the country through con-tinual trial by drought; and by fire. Drought and fire have come upon Australia so regularly for so many aeons of time that no plant where seed could not resist them had any chance of surviving. Consequently it the country be-

comes a desert above them the seeds that are > below the surface of the desert will live for 15 or 20 years at least, walting for a favour-able rain or goodness knows what other con-ditions to turn that desert into country all well grassed, for the time, as England itself. After the last flood grass grew on Boolaboolka Lake, east of Menindie, which had been dor-mant first under drought and then under flood

for 15 years; and at Bourke at this moment there are some who hope to see on the com-mon after these spring rains, at least some sign of Mitchell or other grasses which have not been seen there since 1894--or, some say

since the flood in 1890.

HOW AUSTRALIA LOOKS FROM MARS

If the people in Mars are watching the earth through telescopes just now, when they are close to it, the place that must puzzle them will be Australia. Because when last they were close to the earth--two years ago --Australia was pink. Now it is green, and If they could watch it they would see it change almost every year. In some years the centre of it does actually become a

desert--a red sandy desert, with the surface

blown off it and piled in sandhills by any

wind that comes along. And then down

comes the rain in the proper part of the

month, and the particular green or herb, or even tree, which this extraordinary Aus-tralian nature has marked up on her calen-dar against that partIcular day or two, comes

up and turns the land into a wheatfield. It is as though England and the Sahara Desert got mlxed--and one was always flushing up for the time and effacing the other.

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE.

Well, so far they have found that this par-ticular country--the interior-- is exceedingly well suited to the growing of the wool. It

may be that they will some day discover

something else to suit it, and make it a country where people grow some kind of wheat or fruit, which is very unlikely, but would

probably be for the better. or even a country where men have to work In factories, which

would probably be for the worse. But, be it for better or for worse. If ever the old industries are changed so will the old popu-lation be changed. The new types may be good ones--sturdy heavy-limbed farmers, healthy fruit pickers and packers; or

they may be nervous, narrow, city-bred fac-tory folk. But, good or bad, they will not be the old types. It ever the wool industry of Australia were to be not supple-mented, but supplanted, by other industries, the old types of the Australian, such as they

are, would go with it.

And there are some that would be very sorry to say good-bye to them.