For reasons best known to the Happiness Engineers at WordPress, Paol Soren’s most recent post threw up a link to an older one of mine. Some of the links were broken and I updated them with alternatives, so if the wording does not make complete sense, that is the reason. Also a couple of the links appear beyond redemption, but I guess the gist of it still makes sense. Be warned – This post is heavy on detail, which may not suit all readers.
There was a time when Australia’s economy “rode the sheep’s back”.
The selective breeding of Merino ewes resulted in sheep that adapted well to the arid interior of Australia and produced wool that appealed to the mills of England.
(Source: National Film and Sound Archive of Australia)
This post, about wool, has been inspired by Paol Soren’s recent story titled “The Sale”. Without his encouragement I would never have thought to have written it. He feels my time in the wool industry is an experience worth sharing . . . I hope some of you agree . . . so here goes.
It has been many decades since England was the main customer for Australian merino wool. These days, the major markets are China – which bought $2.417 billionin 2015/16 – followed by India ($216 million) and Italy ($160 million). Other players include Thailand, Malaysia, and the…
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The Reluctant Retiree 
Hi Gwen, I have been reading all your posts but my comments would not upload on your blog. Hope this one does.
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Yes, it’s come through fine Shubha. I wonder what glitch WordPress has invented this time.
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With the post Brexit deals isn’t there going to be more lamb and possibly more wool exported to UK? International trading is all going to work so well with hikes in fuel costs, inflation, food security issues, Russia/Putin, China/Taiwan and that little problem of the Climate Crisis. Oh happy times.
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I expected an uptick in our export trade to UK, like in the 80s pre the European Union days, but I haven’t heard anything of it yet. But getting hold of container equipment and ship capacity is grim. For some of the reasons you rightly point out.
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Turbulent times. The dockers at Felixstowe (biggest UK container port, 20 minutes down the road from Ipswich) have recently voted to go on strike. Expect that will add more problems to the logistics mix. Perhaps that will mean less plastic tat from China in the shops, hope so, but no doubt it will also mean shortages of other stuff. Apparently, the last monthly import figures available for May were:
Other Furniture (£112M), Computers (£96.8M), Seats (£95.7M), Insulated Wire (£69.4M), and Motor vehicles; parts and accessories (£64.1M). When I was looking this up the Felixstowe info reported most trade was with China and as I read down the list I thought humanity really, really needs to re-learn the ‘make do and mend’ approach to living on this planet.
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I’m impressed with your research. Many decades ago, I was captured by a figure on how many tonnes of fish heads we were exporting to Thailand. As I followed the trail, I realised they were coming back to us as tinned cat food. The global trading wheel goes around and around…
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Doesn’t it just. Precisely what I thought when realised we exported scrap aluminium and scrap copper back to China! Although I’m guessing it’s a lot less stinky.
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