In general in this district, the choice was to wash the sheep, and a number of sheep washes were constucted. James Hamilton of Bringalbert, in this border country, wrote of the process. He was about 16 at the time, and… Continue Reading →
Wool grown in this region in pastoral times was shorn in Spring, and carried the Summer’s dust and the Winter’s mud in the fleece. Once shorn. it was transported to a port, then shipped by weight to the woollen mills… Continue Reading →
The imposing figure of the boss of the board, or overseer, was once a familiar sight in the large old sheds of the South Eastern region. The owner employed him to run the shed, to hire and fire the men,… Continue Reading →
The Hynam Woolshed was built in the early 1850s, and was one of the first big stone sheds in the Limestone Coast region. The shed is T-shaped, with the shearing board and the pens forming the cross of the T,… Continue Reading →
Rouseabouts work to remove the shorn wool from the shearer’s work space. The first wool to be removed from each sheep is the stained and matted wool of the belly. The shearer pushes it to one side and the rouseabout… Continue Reading →
Generations of wool classers have worked to ensure that the clips of the properties they service present their wool consistently in a way that meets market demand. In Australia’s early years, the most famous and influential of these were often… Continue Reading →
This section shows wool being sorted on the skirting table. Skirting is a long process, and is the removal of any undesirable parts of the clippings. This process increases the quality of the product. Then foreign materials (like manure, sweat locks, seeds, thistles, insects,… Continue Reading →
The Presser’s aim has always been to pack as much wool as possible into the space occupied by a bale, as space, rather than weight, is the limiting factor in transport. In the early days, the woolpack was hung in… Continue Reading →
After the wool was shorn and pressed into bales, it was loaded onto wagons for a journey which would take it half way round the world to the London wool sales. Most of the South East wool was first shipped… Continue Reading →
In the old box presses, cables were used to drag a heavy board, known as the ‘monkey’ down to compress the wool. The two boxes were filled with the same line of wool (fleeces with closely matching characteristics) then set… Continue Reading →
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