Merinos, Myths and Macarthurs: Australian Graziers and their Sheep, 1788-1900 by J C Garran and L White

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. Partial date due slip, barcode and stamps on inside pages. Wear to book corners and edges. Dust jacket has some creasing at top and tail, particularly at corners. Book is clean and binding is still very good.

Sheep and their wool, the strong backbone that helped colonial Australia walk upright, have a proud place in Australian hearts and the national record. But the romance of wool has often shrouded the hard facts, and the myths developed by and around the pioneers have distorted an important story.

John Garran, sheep breeder and historian, was convinced that the history written from the study chair be corrected from the farm. He brought a critical eye, practical experience and a great interest in genetics to tracing the origins and development of sheep in Australia.

This approach is complemented by the political economist Leslie White.

The particular focus of the myth has been John Macarthur and the purity of the Merino breed. Australians have been taught that their nation has ridden to prosperity on the sheep’s back and that early sheep breeders made a unique contribution in developing a pure breed, beliefs aired in controversies about the export of Merinos.

But the earliest sheep in Australia were hairy sheep from the Cape of Good Hope and Bengal, which had an undercoat of fine wool, and these provided the base from which, by cross-breeding with Saxon Merinos and other breeds, the Australian Merino became so successful.

It is generally, but wrongly, assumed that all Macarthur’s stud sheep were purebred, unmixed descendants of Spanish Merinos he obtained from King George III. Macarthur has been credited with having a vision of a great Australian industry and working untiringly to establish it permanently and has gained a carefully fostered but unmerited reputation as a scientific breeder, a knowledgeable grazier and a producer of superior sheep.

None of these assumptions is tenable, and Merinos, Myths and Macarthurs demolishes once and for all the claims by Macarthur and later advocates to his being the father of the wool industry in Australia. What is more, it was his wife, Elizabeth, who carried the burden of his sheep enterprise. Macarthur, at last, is shorn. (book flap)