BUNNIES’ FUR

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3133, 19 June 1942, Page 3

BUNNIES’ FUR

AUSSIES’ SLOUCH HATS NOW A VALUABLE INDUSTRY Every slouch hat worn by an Australian soldier is made from the fur of about nine rabbit skins. Experiments have proved that for durability there is nothing to equal this fur. Thus, the rabbit is playing its part in Australia’s war effort.

Rabbit skins, and the fur from them, because of their light weight, will also make warm linings for greatcoats, and be used for caps, mittens, etc., for Australian and Allied troops who may be fighting in cold climates.

Millions of rabbit skins are being used for military purposes, and millions more rabibts are consumed as food. In normal times, the value of rabbit skins exported from Australia is about £2,000,000 a year. Rabbit skins, treated by modern dye chemists, are also used extensively in the fur trade. Under the names of lapin and coney, the skin fur has been proved to stand hard wear. It seems that the Australian climate has toughened the fibre. Truly “bunny” is not such a pest after all. How Australia Got Its Rabbits Without any desire to reopen the controversy on the subject of his importation to Australia, it is. a historical fact that, the first of his tribe, probably silver greys, arrived in the First Fleet. A census of livestock in the colony' on May 1, 1788, .a little more than three months after the establishment of the first settlement at Sydney Cove, disclosed five rabbits in New South Wales. Three of these belonged to Governor Phillip and the other two “to the officers and men of the detachment.”

In 1791 more rabbits were brouglk to Sydney from South Africa, and there were many other importations before they achieved notoriety as a pest.