Background

Wool industry is an important industry in Australia since it provides a significant number of profit to Australia each year. The history of wool industry started at 1788, when sheep first arrive to Australia, they were brought by Governor Philip from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, at first, Australian wanted the sheep meat but not the wool. However in 1797, around two dozens of merino sheep were bought to Sydney and merinos have been bred in Spain for a long time and were well known from their fleece and wool. As time passed by, there are more people bought the merinos or crossed the merino with their other sheep, eventually, the numbers of sheep had grown from around two dozens to 33000 in 13 years. In 1815, Australian wool had established their market in England because of the wool in Spain and Germany were not able to export to anywhere at that time. In 1870, Australia became the world's number 1 supplier or producer of wool, at that time, the number of sheep had increased 41.6 million and the value of wool export increased from $2 million to $41 million. At around 1895- 1902, there was a drought of wool and sheep industry, it dropped the number of sheep to 53.7 million from 106 million. By 1910, the Australian wool had imported to Italy for the men's clothing, started from there, more and more countries used Australian wool for clothing. In 1930, wool represented over 62% of the totally export value of primary products, and around 1973, Australian Wool Corporation established a body to facilitate research, promotion and market operations. Til nowadays, Australia is still the biggest supplier of wool in the world, followed by China, New Zealand and some of the other countries.