Australian Cashmere goat facts for kids
The Australian Cashmere goat is a special kind of domestic goat that first came from Australia. These goats are known for their super soft and warm wool called cashmere. Even though they are tough and can live in many places, like the wild "bush goats" they came from, Australian Cashmere goats look and act quite differently. In the middle of winter, they grow a thick, long coat of beautiful cashmere.
A Long History in Australia
Goats arrived in Australia a very long time ago! Dutch and Portuguese sailors brought them to islands off the coast even before the British settled there. These goats came from many different places, but they quickly got used to the Australian environment. Old pictures from before 1830 often show goats grazing on the hills.
Some people tried to start a goat wool business early on. In 1832, a man named William Riley brought "Angora-Cashmere" goats to his farm in Raby, New South Wales. He even gave a talk to a society to encourage growing cashmere and angora wool in Australia. It took another 150 years for farmers to really pick up on his ideas! Around the same time, an advertisement appeared in a newspaper in Western Australia for young half-bred Cashmere bucks (male goats) for sale.
The gold rush period probably caused the early goat industry to disappear. Before the gold rush, shepherds looked after flocks of goats and sheep. But when gold was discovered, many shepherds left their animals to try and find gold instead! Landowners then had to try and build fences. Simple fences could control sheep, but goats were harder to keep in. Goats preferred wilder areas, and this led to large herds of wild, or "bush," goats forming across inland Australia. As more people settled, these wild herds moved further into the drier, less populated parts of the country.
More goats were brought to Australia in the 1800s. In 1863, Dr. Chalmers imported 49 Cashmere goats from Chinese Tartary through Melbourne. At this time, another person named Wilson was raising his own Cashmere goats in Western Victoria. These goats were descendants of one male and two females imported from India.
Over the years, there are many stories about goats in Australia. In 1879, so many goats were roaming the streets of Sydney that the police had to get involved! Goat racing became very popular at the end of the century, especially in Queensland. Young people would drive goats in light carts. The famous opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba, loved the races in Rockhampton, Queensland, so much that she arranged for her own race called the Melba Derby!
Cashmere Found Again!
Cashmere was "found again" on Australian goats in 1972. Two scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Dr. Ian Smith and Mr. Wal Clarke, noticed cashmere on some wild goats. These goats were being checked at a farm in Brewarrina. For several years, CSIRO kept a small group of these goats for research. They learned a lot about the goats' hair during this time.
By the late 1970s, some breeders started thinking about raising Australian Cashmere goats. It was tough at first because they didn't know much about the challenges, and there wasn't a big market for the fiber yet.
Things got a big boost in August 1980. Dawson International Limited PLC, a company from Scotland that was the world's largest cashmere processor, bought a farm in Adelong, New South Wales. They wanted to set up a demonstration farm to encourage Australian cashmere production. The chairman of Dawson International, Sir Alan Smith, saw that the world's supply of cashmere was getting smaller. Even though cashmere was only a small part of the fiber his company handled, it made up half of their sales and was very important for their profits.
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