Woolworths Fresh Food Dome, Sydney Olympic Park, NSW, Australia
On the way out of the dome containing the district exhibits, there were glass cases with sheep wool fleeces inside.
When I was discussing these shots with a friend in Italia, she asked whether the wool was of a low grade. "Ma che???", was my response as best I recall it. I may not know as much about agriculture as I would like, but I knew that Australian Merino wool is regarded as being some of the finest (and consequently most expensive) in the world.
The First Fleet (departed England 13 May 1787, arrived in Australia in January 1788) stopped at Cape Town South Africa along the way. There it picked up a collection of livestock. That included 44 sheep. They were fat-tailed sheep, though I've not been able to determine the specific breed. Those sheep were more for meat than for wool, but they were not well adapted to the Australian climate. In the first census done in 1788, only 29 sheep remained.
It wasn't until 1797 that the first merino sheep, a Spanish variety which was better suited to the Australian climate and which produced significant volumes of high quality soft, fine wool, arrived in Australia. They had been brought (again from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa), by Captain Henry Waterhouse and Lieutenant William Kent. They bought 26 sheep. The number that arrived in Australia is disputed with some sources saying that more than half died, others saying more than half survived, and none giving an exact number.
Waterhouse grazed the survivors at his property on the Parramatta River, keeping the flock separated to ensure that they could breed only with one another. The sheep multiplied and some were given away to Kent, Rev. Samuel Marsden, Captain Thomas Rowley, William Cox and most importantly of all, the father of the Australian wool industry and all around appalling human being Captain John Macarthur, who graced the Australian $2 note from its issue in 1966 until its replacement by a coin in 1988. (And justifiably so. The man may have been a complete dropkick on a personal level, but his legacy in bringing in additional Merino sheep and breeding them into the flocks that we have today left a huge legacy for the nation.)
The first Australian wool was shipped back to England in 1807, and by the end of the century wool had become Australia's major export. The industry was hit hard by a prolonged drought (the "Federation Drought") at the end of the 19th / start of the 20th century, but it received a massive boost from World War I's need for material of all kinds, including fabric for uniforms, blankets and so on. By the 1950s it was said that Australia was "riding on the sheep's back", so great was the contribution of wool to exports and thus Australia's national income.
The industry started to crash in the late 1960s and 1970s as manufacturing of synthetics became more widespread. Since then it has recovered for various reasons. One is an increasing realisation of the environmental impact of synthetics. Another is the difference in the quality of the product relative to synthetics. Nobody wants to wear a $199 polyester suit unless they're the overweight and balding president of a local leagues club fronting Parliament to explain why they need more, not fewer poker machines. Anyone with any class, on the other hand, would generally prefer a lighter, more breathable fabric. Speaking of which...
The Merinos of today are not the Merinos of yesteryear. Selective breeding has created a distinctively Australian Merino breed. Within that breed there are many "strains", some of which were bred to handle specific climates that will be found within Australia, and some of which were bred to generate the highest possible quality wool. The most important single measure in judging the quality of wool is its "fineness"; that is, how thin the strands of wool are. This is measured in microns; 1 millionth of a metre. A human hair is usually between about 50 and 120 microns, with 70 being common.
Wool can be:
[*] Ultrafine, 16-17.5 microns. It can go lower on occasion. Wool that is between 12.5 and 17.5 microns can be good for blending with cashmere (goat wool) and silk to produce very fine, light fabrics;
[*] Superfine, 17.6-18.5 microns;
[*] Fine, 18.6-19.5 microns. That's what we see in this image;
[*] Fine-Medium, 19.6-20.5 microns. This is where the majority of production is targeted given the trade-offs that I'll mention below. Image 4015 is an example, though I doubt that we city folk would know the difference were it not labelled.
[*] Medium, 20.6-22.5 microns. This is where the majority of production actually is.
[*] Strong, 22.6 microns and above.
There is a trade-off. Just because the fleece is lighter doesn't mean that the sheep grows more of it. The ballpark range for an annually shorn sheep is 5Kg of fleece per animal. However some strains are physically smaller, but are still bred because of the quality of the wool. For example the Saxon strain, which is adapted to the cooler, wetter parts of Australia, is the physically smallest of the Merinos, generating only 3-6kg of fleece per year... but it's an Ultrafine fleece. Fleeces of 14 microns are not uncommon.
Thus the finer the fleece, the more you can sell it for, but generally the less you'll get of it.
From the user's perspective the trade off is that the finer the fleece, the lighter and more breathable it will be and the more pleasant it is to wear... but the less robust it will be. Also, it won't be as warm. If you are looking for something to wear hiking through rugged, mountainous country with biting winds, you would want to go for either a strong wool type (which can be combined with polyester or acrylic fibres for extra strength), or a non-Merino type of wool like that from Shetland sheep, which can be used to create heavier, coarser fabrics like Tweed.
Australia produces the majority of the world's Merino wool.
And no, I didn't learn any of that from looking at this display, unfortunately.
