Chapter 1

SHEEP SHEARING IN AUSTRALIA DURING THE SEVENTIES

THE Wolseley car owes its existence to a combination of circumstances which are more in keeping with the higher flights of imagination of a novelist than with hard reality. To establish any liaison between the Squatter of the Australian Bush in the seventies of last century, and the Nuffield production which is seen to-day in its thousands on every road in the country, appears, at first sight, to be an impossible task but, strange though it may seem, it is in this direction that we most turn if the history of the Wolseley car is to be traced to its source.

We must, however, visualize a very different Australia from what it is to-day, and a type of sheep-farming which has long since ceased to exist if we are to gain a true perspective of that combination of circumstances which resulted in the birth of the Wolseley car.

It has been said, and with at least some justification, that a great part of Australia's wealth grows on the backs of her sheep, for the production of wool is one of her chief industries.

With the introduction of the Merino sheep to Australia by Captain MacArthur in 1797 and the opening up of the rich pasture land by the early explorers, sheep-farming in Australia expanded so rapidly that it was in danger of being strangled by the difficulties in shearing the sheep.

Hitherto, the shearing of sheep had always been by means of hand-shears, and while the average shearer was famed for the great speed at which he worked – it was even said that he always conveyed the impression that he was working for a wager of some kind- the system imposed a limit on the number of sheep that could be shorn each season.

This handicap became more apparent as the wool trade of Australia developed, and the need was felt for some mechanical device if the trade were to expand in accordance with the requirements of the times, and full use made of all the wool available. The urgency of the need for such a mechanical device can be judged from the fact that in 1792 the total number of sheep in Australia was 105. and in 1860, the number in New South Wales alone had risen to well over 6 millions, increasing to 35 millions in 1880.

But the introduction of anything which constituted such a radical breakaway from the orthodox as a method of shearing sheep by mechanical means was, at the time of which we write, fraught with difficulties of a formidable kind. Only too often an inventor's whole attention remains focused on the bright vista his idea seems to open up before him, and it is inconceivable to him that others will be unable to share his enthusiasm or to appreciate the revolutionary benefits that he is convinced must result from the introduction of his invention.

He is blind to the many obstacles that lie before him: the overcoming of prejudice against any attempt to replace a tradition and to conquer conservatism, but perhaps the greatest obstacle of all is of his own making. Many an invention, which might well have proved a boon to humanity, has suffered a premature death by being introduced to the public while it was still in an incomplete and experimental state, and has, therefore, had its advantages passed over and its short-comings magnified by a sceptical public. It is a pitfall that has proved the undoing of more than one Inventor, and when mechanically operated sheep-shearing was first introduced, this was its greatest obstacle: it was far from perfect and still unfit to be entrusted to the remote settler whose knowledge of machinery, even in its most simple form, was strictly limited.

Let us, however, see how this revolutionary idea of a mechanical method of shearing sheep came into being, its struggle for survival and its ultimate triumphant success.

In the next chapter will be recorded the strange part mechanical sheep-shearing was destined to play in the birth and early development of the Wolseley motor car.