WOOL IN AUSTRALIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3764, 4 May 1926, Page 78

WOOL IN AUSTRALIA.

“On the Wool Track.” By C. E. W. Bean. (Cloth, 2s (M net.) Australia: Cornstalk Publishing Company, Platypus Series. (Per Angus and Robertson, Limited.) C. E. W. Bean was instructed by the proprietors of the Sydney Morning Herald to describe the Australian wool industry from any point of view lie chose. It is an industry, lie says, which turns out wool and meat and tallow and glue and cold cream; but the most important things it turns out are men, especially “the men from the bush.” So it is with men that the book deals, following the industry down the long wool track from the paddock to the loom, mostly through the country where the life is most typical—i,e., the red country. The red country is a region where bad men are very bad and good

men are magnificent, but where all men are interesting. It does not contain half the wool-growing of Australia, nor does it claim its place as being typical of all pastoral Australia. But it is typical of the great tracts in the Northern Territory and elsewhere to which the pastoral industry of the continent will in the end retreat. The red country would be described by some as an arid desert, and by others as a beautiful pastoral country with grass waist-high, and both descriptions are right. The region in drought-time is a perfect Sahara, except where there happens to be scrub upon it; but under the influence of a favourable rain the wilderness is turned into country as well grassed, for the time, as New Zealand itself. Up to the present this region has been found exceedingly well suited to the growing of fine wool. It may he that some day something else will be discovered for which it is suitable. But be it for better or for worse, if ever the old industries are changed, so will the old population be changed. Good or bad, it will not be made up of the old types. It is as a sort of lasting impression of the “old types” that this book has been written. The characters described include the maker of a continent and liis character, the boss, the homestead man, the cook, the footman, the bagman, the bulloeky, and the porter, and a vivid description of the various points of the industry is aptly and interestingly given.