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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 3 (July 1, 1930)

Our First Wool Clip

Our First Wool Clip.

Wool has its ups and downs, and our sheep-station owners would be mighty glad of the price our very first clip from New Zealand fetched in Sydney. That was more than a century ago. Few people, perhaps, would have imagined our greatest staple industry was so old. It is, in fact, a hundred and twelve years since the first little flock was landed at the Bay of Islands by that vigorous shepherd of souls and sheep, the Rev. Samuel Marsden. These sheep, from Parramatta in New South Wales, were put ashore at Te Puna, the early mission station in the Bay. The Rev. John King, one of Marsden's missionaries, who arrived in 1814, was the first shearer. That was in 1824, when the first few sheep landed in 1818 had increased considerably. The clip was eleven bags. The wool was shipped to Sydney, where it was sold for half-a-crown a pound.

“Where the mountains lift, through perpetual snows, Their lofty and luminous summits.”—Longfellow. (Photo, G. S. Desgrand, Brisbane.) The Dart River, Lake Wakatipu, South Island, New Zealand.

“Where the mountains lift, through perpetual snows,
Their lofty and luminous summits.”—Longfellow.

(Photo, G. S. Desgrand, Brisbane.)
The Dart River, Lake Wakatipu, South Island, New Zealand.

It may be that a little wool was sent to Sydney from the Bay of Islands before that date, but the 1824 shipment is the first of which there is definite record. There were, it is true, two or three sheep landed in New Zealand before the missionaries' day. These were the animals put on Motuanauru Island, in Queen Charlotte Sound, by Captain Cook; they soon died, from eating some poisonous plant. No doubt that was the first time imported animals were poisoned by the leaves of the tupakihi—the shrub more generally known as tutu, which is properly only the name of the black fruit. So the history of “tooted” stock goes back a hundred and sixty years.