1.
New South Wales
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New South Wales is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south and it has a coast line with the Tasman Sea on its east side. The Australian Capital Territory is an enclave within the state, New South Wales state capital is Sydney, which is also Australias most populous city. In March 2014, the population of New South Wales was 7.5 million. Just under two-thirds of the population,4.67 million. Inhabitants of New South Wales are referred to as New South Welshmen, the Colony of New South Wales was founded as a penal colony in 1788. It originally comprised a more than half of the Australian mainland with its western boundary set at 129th meridian east in 1825, in addition, the colony also included the island territories of New Zealand, Van Diemens Land, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island. During the 19th century, most of the area was detached to form separate British colonies that eventually became New Zealand. However, the Swan River Colony has never administered as part of New South Wales. Lord Howe Island remains part of New South Wales, while Norfolk Island has become a federal Territory, as have the now known as the Australian Capital Territory. The prior inhabitants of New South Wales were the Aboriginal tribes who arrived in Australia about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago, before European settlement there were an estimated 250,000 Aboriginal people in the region. The Wodi Wodi people are the custodians of the Illawarra region of South Sydney. The Bundjalung people are the custodians of parts of the northern coastal areas. The European discovery of New South Wales was made by Captain James Cook during his 1770 survey along the eastern coast of the Dutch-named continent of New Holland. In his original journal covering the survey, in triplicate to satisfy Admiralty Orders, Cook first named the land New Wales, however, in the copy held by the Admiralty, he revised the wording to New South Wales. After years of chaos and anarchy after the overthrow of Governor William Bligh, macquaries legacy is still evident today. During the 19th century, large areas were separated to form the British colonies of Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria. Responsible government was granted to the New South Wales colony in 1855, following the Treaty of Waitangi, William Hobson declared British sovereignty over New Zealand in 1840
2.
Sydney
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Sydney /ˈsɪdni/ is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australias east coast, the metropolis surrounds the worlds largest natural harbour, residents of Sydney are known as Sydneysiders. The Sydney area has been inhabited by indigenous Australians for at least 30,000 years, the first British settlers, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, arrived in 1788 to found Sydney as a penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. Since convict transportation ended in the century, the city has transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural. As at June 2016 Sydneys estimated population was 5,005,358, in the 2011 census,34 percent of the population reported having been born overseas, representing many different nationalities and making Sydney one of the most multicultural cities in the world. There are more than 250 different languages spoken in Sydney and about one-third of residents speak a language other than English at home and it is classified as an Alpha+ World City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world. Ranked eleventh in the world for economic opportunity, Sydney has a market economy with strengths in finance, manufacturing. Its gross regional product was $337 billion in 2013, the largest in Australia, there is a significant concentration of foreign banks and multinational corporations in Sydney and the city is promoted as one of Asia Pacifics leading financial hubs. Its natural features include Sydney Harbour, the Royal National Park, man-made attractions such as the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Tower and the Sydney Harbour Bridge are also well known to international visitors. The first people to inhabit the now known as Sydney were indigenous Australians having migrated from northern Australia. Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity first started to occur in the Sydney area from around 30,735 years ago, the earliest British settlers called them Eora people. Eora is the term the indigenous used to explain their origins upon first contact with the British. Its literal meaning is from this place, prior to the arrival of the British there were 4,000 to 8,000 native people in Sydney from as many as 29 different clans. Sydney Cove from Port Jackson to Petersham was inhabited by the Cadigal clan, the principal language groups were Darug, Guringai, and Dharawal. The earliest Europeans to visit the area noted that the people were conducting activities such as camping and fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells. Development has destroyed much of the citys history including that of the first inhabitants, there continues to be examples of rock art and engravings located in the protected Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The first meeting between the people and the British occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the Kurnell Peninsula. He noted in his journal that they were confused and somewhat hostile towards the foreign visitors, Cook was on a mission of exploration and was not commissioned to start a settlement
3.
Canberra
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Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of 381,488, it is Australias largest inland city, the city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory,280 km south-west of Sydney, and 660 km north-east of Melbourne. A resident of Canberra is known as a Canberran, the site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nations capital in 1908 as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, Australias two largest cities. It is unusual among Australian cities, being a planned city outside of any state, similar to Washington, D. C. in the United States. Following an international contest for the design, a blueprint by American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected. The Griffins plan featured geometric motifs such as circles, hexagons and triangles, the citys design was influenced by the garden city movement and incorporates significant areas of natural vegetation that have earned Canberra the title of the bush capital. Although the Australian Capital Territory is now self-governing, the Commonwealth Government retains some influence through the National Capital Authority, the Australian Armys officer corps is trained at the Royal Military College, Duntroon and the Australian Defence Force Academy is also located in the capital. The ACT is independent of any state to prevent any one state from gaining an advantage by hosting the seat of Commonwealth power, the ACT has voting representation in the Commonwealth Parliament, and has its own independent Legislative Assembly and government, similar to the states. Compared to the averages, the unemployment rate is lower. Property prices are high, in part due to comparatively restrictive development regulations. An 1830s map of the region by Major Mitchell indeed does mark the Sullivans Creek floodplain between two mountains as Nganbra. Nganbra or Nganbira could readily have been anglicised to the name Canberry, survey plans of the district dated 1837 refer to the area as the Canberry Plain. Although popularly pronounced /ˈkænbərə/ or /ˈkænbɛrə/, the pronunciation at its official naming in 1913 was /ˈkæn. brə/. Before white settlement, the area in which Canberra would eventually be constructed was seasonally inhabited by Indigenous Australians, archaeological evidence of settlement in the region includes inhabited rock shelters, rock paintings and engravings, burial places, camps and quarry sites, and stone tools and arrangements. Artefacts suggests early human activity occurred at some point in the area 21,000 years previously, European exploration and settlement started in the Canberra area as early as the 1820s. There were four expeditions between 1820 and 1824, white settlement of the area probably dates from 1823, when a homestead or station was built on what is now the Acton peninsula by stockmen employed by Joshua John Moore. He formally applied to purchase the site on 16 December 1826, on 30 April 1827, Moore was told by letter that he could retain possession of 1,000 acres at Canberry. The European population in the Canberra area continued to grow throughout the 19th century
4.
Goulburn, New South Wales
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Goulburn /ˈɡoʊlbərn/ is a regional city in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia approximately 195 kilometres south-west of Sydney, Australia, and 90 kilometres north-east of Canberra. It was proclaimed to be Australias first inland city through letters patent by Queen Victoria in 1863, Goulburn had an estimated population of 23,005 as at June 2015. Goulburn is the seat of Goulburn Mulwaree Council, Goulburn is a railhead on the Main Southern line, a service centre for the surrounding pastoral industry, and also stopover for those travelling on the Hume Highway. It has a park and many historic buildings. It is also home to the monument the Big Merino, a sculpture that is the worlds largest concrete constructed sheep, Goulburn was named by surveyor James Meehan after Henry Goulburn, Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies, and the name was ratified by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. The Aboriginal peoples of this belonged to the Gundungurra Nation, and the name for Goulburn is Barbing. The colonial government made grants to free settlers such as Hamilton Hume in the Goulburn area from the opening of the area to settlement in about 1820. Land was later sold to settlers within the Nineteen Counties, including Argyle County, the process displaced the local indigenous Gandangara population and the introduction of exotic livestock drove out a large part of the Aborigines food supply. The reduction of the supply and the introduction of exotic diseases. Some local Aborigines survived at the Tawonga Billabong Aboriginal Settlement established under the supervision of the Tarago police, in the 1930s the local billabong dried up and the Aboriginal people moved away although some have, over time, made their way back to their traditional lands. George Johnson purchased the first land in the area between 1839 and 1842 and became a figure in the towns development. He established a store with a liquor licence in 1848. By 1841 Goulburn had a population of some 1,200 – a courthouse, police barracks, churches, hospital and post office and was the centre of a great sheep and farming area. A telegraph station opened in 1862, by which there were about 1,500 residents. The town was a station for Cobb & Co by 1855. A police station opened the year and a school in 1858. Goulburn was proclaimed a municipal government in 1859 and was made a city in 1863, Goulburn holds the unique distinction of being proclaimed a City on two occasions. The first, unofficial, proclamation was claimed by virtue of Royal Letters Patent issued by Queen Victoria on 14 March 1863 to establish the Diocese of Goulburn and it was a claim made for ecclesiastical purposes, as it was required by the traditions of the Church of England
5.
Lands administrative divisions of Australia
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Many property titles in Australia are listed as being in the parish and county. Parts of South Australia and Western Australia were similarly divided into counties, however South Australia has subdivisions of hundreds instead of parishes, along with the Northern Territory, which was part of South Australia when the hundreds were proclaimed. There were also formerly hundreds in Tasmania, Counties in Australia have no administrative or political function, unlike those in England, the United States or Canada. Australia instead uses local government areas, including shires, districts, councils and municipalities according to the state, below these are groups of land parcels known as deposited plans, registered plans or title plans. Queensland has registered plans, New South Wales and Western Australia have deposited plans, within these are individual land parcels such as lots, in total there are estimated to be about 10.2 million of these in Australia. Counties were used since the earliest British settlement in Australia, with the County of Cumberland proclaimed by Captain Phillip on 4 June 1788, in 1804 Governor King divided Van Diemens Land into two counties, Buckingham in the south and Cornwall in the north. The parishes date to the surveys conducted after 1825, with the given to Governor Brisbane on 23 Jun 1825 to divide the colony into counties, hundreds. At this time there were five counties already proclaimed in New South Wales, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Camden, Argyle, Counties were established soon after the foundation of other Australian colonies. Many of the counties have English names, often the names of counties in England, such as Devon, Dorset, Cornwall, less frequently, some have Aboriginal names such as the County of Yungnulgra in New South Wales, and County of Croajingolong in Victoria. Legal cases referenced counties, and many records for Australia in the 19th century list the county and parish for location of birth, deaths. Counties and parishes are still referenced in property law, and in industrial relations instruments, for example in a New South Wales award. Similar award examples exist in the states and territories that have been subdivided into counties. The County of Yancowinna is also the part of New South Wales which is in a different time zone to the rest of the state. Counties are also used on paperwork for mortgage securities in banks, Parishes and counties are also mentioned in definitions of electoral districts. Counties have since gone out of use in Australia, and are used or even known by most of the population today. The counties which contain the cities have millions of people, while those in remote areas have a very small population. The County of Adelaide, for instance, has a population than all the other counties in South Australia combined. Wangaratta, for instance, is located at the junction of the Ovens and King rivers, some of the county names live on by being the same name of present-day local government areas, general region names, towns or establishments in the area
6.
Aboriginal Australians
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Aboriginal Australians are legally defined as people who are members of the Aboriginal race of Australia. Until the 1980s, the legal and administrative criterion for inclusion in this category was race. In the era of colonial and post-colonial government, access to human rights depended upon your race. If you were a full blooded Aboriginal native, the Constitution of Australia, in its original form as of 1901, referred to Aboriginals twice, but without definition. Section 51 gave the Commonwealth parliament power to legislate with respect to the people of any throughout the Commonwealth. The purpose of this provision was to give the Commonwealth power to regulate non-white immigrant workers, the only other reference, Section 127, provided simply that aboriginal natives shall not be counted in reckoning the size of the population of the Commonwealth or any part of it. The purpose of section 127 was to prevent the inclusion of Aboriginal people in section 24 determinations of the distribution of House of Representatives seats amongst the states and territories, after both of these references were removed by the 1967 referendum, the Australian Constitution had no references to Aboriginals. Since that time, there have been a number of proposals to amend the constitution to specifically mention Indigenous Australians, the change to Section 51 gave the Commonwealth parliament the power to make laws specifically with respect to Aboriginal peoples as a race. The case concerned an application of legislation that would preserve cultural heritage of Aboriginal Tasmanians and it was held that Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, together or separately, and any part of either, could be regarded as a race for this purpose. As to the criteria for identifying a person as a member of such a race, Deane said, It is unnecessary, for the purposes of the present case, to consider the meaning to be given to the phrase people of any race in s.51. Plainly, the words have a wide and non-technical meaning, the phrase is, in my view, apposite to refer to all Australian Aboriginals collectively. Any doubt, which might otherwise exist in regard, is removed by reference to the wording of par. The phrase is also apposite to refer to any identifiable racial sub-group among Australian Aboriginals, while Deanes three-part definition reaches beyond the biological criterion to individuals self-identification, it has been criticised as continuing to accept the biological criterion as primary. It has been difficult to apply, both in each of its parts and as to the relations among the parts, biological descent has been a fall-back criterion. If it is to be used to refer to us as a group of people. This has just really crept up on us and we are very happy with our involvement with indigenous people around the world, on the international forum because theyre our brothers and sisters. But we do object to it being used here in Australia and her lecture offered a new perspective on the terms urban, traditional and of Indigenous descent as used to define and categorise Aboriginal Australians. She said, Not only are these categories inappropriate, they serve to divide us, governments insistence on categorising us with modern words like urban, traditional and of Aboriginal descent are really only replacing old terms half-caste and full-blood – based on our colouring
7.
Hume Highway
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Upgrading of the route from Sydneys outskirts to Melbournes outskirts to dual carriageway was completed on 7 August 2013. It is part of the Auslink National Network and is a link for road freight to transport goods to. The main alternative route between Sydney and Melbourne is the Princes Highway/Princes Freeway/Princes Motorway route which follows the coast for most of its length. In New South Wales during 2013, the National Highway shield, National Highway 31, was replaced with an alphanumeric route number. This re-numbering for the first time in over 20 years created one continuously signed route along the Hume Highway, during 2013, the route between Berrima and Prestons was also renamed the Hume Motorway. The coast of New South Wales from the Queensland border to the Victorian border is separated from the inland by an escarpment, there are few easy routes up this escarpment. To climb from the coast to the tablelands the Hume Highway uses the Bargo Ramp, in the first twenty years of European settlement at Sydney, exploration southwest of Sydney was slow. This area was wooded at the time, especially the Bargo brush. In 1798 explorers reached the Moss Vale and Marulan districts, in 1804, Charles Throsby penetrated through the Bargo brush to the country on the tablelands near Moss Vale and Sutton Forest. On another expedition in 1818, he reached Lake Bathurst and the Goulburn Plains, many of the early explorers would most likely have used aboriginal guides, but they do not appear to have given them credit. The present route of the Hume Highway is much the same as used by the pioneers. This country consists generally of a sloping plateau which is deeply dissected by the Nepean River. The route of the Highway, by using four high-level bridges to cross these gorges, avoids the Razorback Range, and has minimal earthworks. The climb from the side of the Nepean River at Menangle up to Mittagong is fairly sustained. The Great South Road was rebuilt and completely re-routed between Yanderra and Goulburn by Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell in 1833. The Main Roads Management Act of June 1858 declared the Great Southern Road, from near Sydney through Goulburn and Gundagai to Albury, however, its southern reaches were described as only a scarcely formed bullock track as late as 1858. The road was improved in the mid-1860s with some sections near Gundagai metalled, mitchells route, except for the bypasses at Mittagong, Berrima and Marulan is still largely followed by the current highway. Mitchell intended to straighten the route north of Yanderra, but was not granted funding, in 1914 the NSW section of the highway was declared a main road
8.
Murrumbidgee River
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Murrumbidgee River, a major tributary of the Murray River within the Murray–Darling basin and the second longest river in Australia. It flows through the Australian state of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, the word Murrumbidgee means big water in the Wiradjuri language, one of the local Aboriginal languages. The river itself flows through several traditional Indigenous Australian lands, home to various Aboriginal tribes, in the Australian Capital Territory, the river is bordered by a narrow strip of land on each side, which are both managed as the ‘Murrumbidgee River Corridor’. This land includes nature reserves, eight recreation reserves, a European heritage conservation zone, the mainstream of the river system flows for 900 kilometres. From its headwaters it flows to its confluence with the Murray River, the river flows for 66 kilometres through the Australian Capital Territory near Canberra, picking up the important tributaries of the Gudgenby, Queanbeyan, Molonglo and Cotter Rivers. The Murrumbidgee drains much of southern New South Wales and all of the Australian Capital Territory, tantangara Dam was completed in 1960 on the headwaters of Murrumbidgee River and diverts approximately 99% of the rivers flow at that point into Lake Eucumbene. This has extremely serious effects on fish populations and other native aquatic life and has led to serious siltation, stream contraction, fish habitat loss. The Murrumbidgee where it enters the ACT is effectively half the river it used to be, a study suggests a section of the upper rivers channels are relatively new in geological terms, dating from the early Miocene. It is suggested that the Upper Murrumbidgee is an anabranch of the Tumut River when geological uplift near Adaminaby diverted its flow, from Gundagai onwards the rivers flow within its ancestral channel. The Murrumbidgee River runs through the lands of the Ngunnawal, Wiradjuri, Nari Nari. The Murrumbidgee River was known to Europeans before it was discovered by them. In 1820 the explorer Charles Throsby informed the Governor of New South Wales that he anticipated finding a river of salt water. In the expedition journal, Throsby wrote as a marginal note, the river he had stumbled upon was in fact the Molonglo River, Throsby reached the actual river in April 1821. In 1823, Brigade-Major John Ovens and Captain Mark Currie reached the upper Murrumbidgee when exploring south of Lake George and they then rowed back upstream, against the current, to their starting point. Sturts description of their passage through the junction of the Murrumbidgee and we were carried at a fearful rate down its gloomy and contracted banks. At 3 p. m. Hopkinson called out that we were approaching a junction, the Murrumbidgee basin was opened to settlement in the 1830s and soon became an important farming area. When in 1823 Captain Currie and Major Ovens were led along its bank on to the beautiful Maneroo country by Joseph Wild, even in 1821, when Hume found the Yass Plains, almost on its bank, he makes no special mention of the river. This theory is the more feasible as the river has retained its native name, if a white man of any known position had made the discovery, it would at once have received the name of some person holding official sway
9.
Hamilton Hume
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Hamilton Hume was an early explorer of the present-day Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. In 1824, along with William Hovell, Hume participated in an expedition that first took a route from Sydney to Port Phillip. Along with Sturt in 1828, he was part of an expedition of the first Europeans to discover the Darling River, on 19 June 1797 Hume was born at Seven Hills near Parramatta, a settlement close to Sydney. Hume was the eldest son of Andrew Hamilton Hume and his wife Elizabeth, Andrew Hume got the appointment of Commissary-General for New South Wales, and came out to the colony in 1797. There were few opportunities for education in Australia during the first ten years of the nineteenth century and he was born on 19 June 1797. In 1817, Hume went on a journey with James Meehan, the deputy surveyor-general, and Charles Throsby during which Lake Bathurst, subsequently in 1818, he went with John Oxley and Meehan to Jervis Bay. In 1822, he journeyed with Alexander Berry down the south coast of New South Wales and he travelled as far south as the Clyde River, and inland nearly as far as Braidwood. This canal was Australias first navigable canal, and the work was completed in 12 days, the canal today forms the main water flow of the Shoalhaven River. In 1824, Hume was seen by Governor Brisbane with reference to an expedition to Spencer Gulf, Brisbane was also in touch about this time with William Hovell on the same subject, but it is not quite clear which of the men was the first to be approached. Hume, in a letter dated 24 January 1825, practically claimed to have been the leader of the party and he refers to the expedition your Excellency was pleased to entrust to my care. But Brisbane did not accept this view of it, as in a letter to the secretary, Wilmot Horton, dated 24 March 1825 he mentions the discovery of new and valuable country. By two young men Messrs Hovell and Hume. they were directed by me to try and reach Spencers Gulf and it may also be pointed out that in the letter to Brisbane of 28 July 1824, Hovell signed first. These facts are of interest in view of the controversy broke out many years later. Each of the explorers brought three assigned servants with him and between them they had five bullocks, three horses and two carts, nearly the whole of the journey was through heavy mountain country, and there were several rivers to be crossed. The courage, resource and bushmanship of Hume were important factors in surmounting their many difficulties, here, possibly through faulty instruments, Hovell made a mistake of one degree longitude in his observation, and they believed that they were on the shore of Western Port. The return journey for some time was made on a more to the west, the country was more level. Their provisions were finished just before the end of the journey, Hume and Hovell each received grants of 1,200 acres of land, an inadequate reward for discoveries of great importance made by an expedition which, practically speaking, paid its own expenses. This expedition discovered the route between Sydney and Port Phillip, on whose shores Melbourne now stands
10.
Banjo Paterson
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Andrew Barton Banjo Paterson, CBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. Patersons more notable poems include Waltzing Matilda, The Man from Snowy River, Patersons family lived on the isolated Buckinbah Station near Yeoval NSW until he was five when his father lost his wool clip in a flood and was forced to sell up. When Patersons uncle John Paterson died, his family took over John Patersons farm in Illalong, near Yass, bullock teams, Cobb and Co coaches and drovers were familiar sights to him. He also saw horsemen from the Murrumbidgee River area and Snowy Mountains country take part in races and polo matches. Patersons early education came from a governess, but when he was able to ride a pony, in 1874 Paterson was sent to Sydney Grammar School, performing well both as a student and a sportsman. During this time, he lived in a cottage called Rockend, the cottage is now listed on the Register of the National Estate. He left the school at 16 after failing an examination for a scholarship to University of Sydney. He went on to become a law clerk with a Sydney-based firm headed by Herbert Salwey and was admitted as a solicitor in 1886, in the years he practised as a solicitor, Paterson also started a writing career. From 1885, he began submitting and having published in the The Bulletin. His earliest work was a poem criticising the British war in the Sudan, over the next decade, the influential journal provided an important platform for Patersons work, which appeared under the pseudonym of The Banjo, the name of his favourite horse. As one of its most popular writers through the 1890s, he formed friendships with other significant writers in Australian Literature, brady, Harry Breaker Morant and Henry Lawson. In particular, Paterson became engaged in a rivalry of verse with Lawson about the allure of bush life. Paterson became a war correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age during the Second Boer War and his graphic accounts of the relief of Kimberley, surrender of Bloemfontein and the capture of Pretoria attracted the attention of the press in Britain. He also was a correspondent during the Boxer Rebellion, where he met George Chinese Morrison and he was editor of the Sydney Evening News and of the Town and Country Journal. In 1908 after a trip to the United Kingdom he decided to abandon journalism and writing and moved with his family to a 40, 000-acre property near Yass. In World War I, Paterson failed to become a correspondent covering the fighting in Flanders and he returned to Australia early in 1915 and, as an honorary vet, travelled on three voyages with horses to Africa, China and Egypt. He was repatriated to Australia and discharged from the army having risen to the rank of major in April 1919 and his wife had joined the Red Cross and worked in an ambulance unit near her husband. Paterson also wrote on rugby football in the 1920s for the Sydney Sportsman
11.
Sheep
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The sheep is a quadrupedal, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, although the name sheep applies to many species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to Ovis aries. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. An adult female sheep is referred to as a ewe, a male as a ram or occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether. Sheep are most likely descended from the wild mouflon of Europe, one of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes, sheep are raised for fleece, meat and milk. A sheeps wool is the most widely used animal fiber, and is harvested by shearing. Ovine meat is called lamb when from younger animals and mutton when from older ones, Sheep continue to be important for wool and meat today, and are also occasionally raised for pelts, as dairy animals, or as model organisms for science. Sheep husbandry is practised throughout the majority of the inhabited world, in the modern era, Australia, New Zealand, the southern and central South American nations, and the British Isles are most closely associated with sheep production. Sheepraising has a lexicon of unique terms which vary considerably by region. Use of the sheep began in Middle English as a derivation of the Old English word scēap. A group of sheep is called a flock, herd or mob, many other specific terms for the various life stages of sheep exist, generally related to lambing, shearing, and age. Being a key animal in the history of farming, sheep have a deeply entrenched place in human culture, as livestock, sheep are most often associated with pastoral, Arcadian imagery. Sheep figure in many mythologies—such as the Golden Fleece—and major religions, in both ancient and modern religious ritual, sheep are used as sacrificial animals. Domestic sheep are relatively small ruminants, usually with a crimped hair called wool, domestic sheep differ from their wild relatives and ancestors in several respects, having become uniquely neotenic as a result of selective breeding by humans. A few primitive breeds of sheep retain some of the characteristics of their wild cousins, depending on breed, domestic sheep may have no horns at all, or horns in both sexes, or in males only. Most horned breeds have a pair, but a few breeds may have several. Another trait unique to domestic sheep as compared to wild ovines is their variation in color. Wild sheep are largely variations of brown hues, and variation within species is extremely limited, colors of domestic sheep range from pure white to dark chocolate brown, and even spotted or piebald
12.
Wool
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Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and other animals, including cashmere and mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, angora from rabbits, and other types of wool from camelids. Wool has several qualities that distinguish it from hair or fur, it is crimped, Wool is produced by follicles which are small cells located in the skin. These follicles are located in the layer of the skin called the epidermis. Follicles can be classed as primary or secondary follicles. Primary follicles produce three types of fiber, Kemp, medullated fibers and true wool fibers, secondary follicles only produce true wool fibers. Medullated fibers share nearly identical characteristics to hair and are long but lack crimp, Kemp fibers are very coarse and shed out. Wools scaling and crimp make it easier to spin the fleece by helping the individual fibers attach to each other, because of the crimp, wool fabrics have greater bulk than other textiles, and they hold air, which causes the fabric to retain heat. Wool has a specific heat coefficient, so it impedes heat transfer in general. This effect has benefited desert peoples, as Bedouins and Tuaregs use wool clothes for insulation, felting of wool occurs upon hammering or other mechanical agitation as the microscopic barbs on the surface of wool fibers hook together. The amount of crimp corresponds to the fineness of the wool fibers, a fine wool like Merino may have up to 100 crimps per inch, while coarser wool like karakul may have as few as one or two. In contrast, hair has little if any scale and no crimp, on sheep, the hair part of the fleece is called kemp. Wool fibers readily absorb moisture, but are not hollow, Wool can absorb almost one-third of its own weight in water. Wool absorbs sound like many other fabrics and it is generally a creamy white color, although some breeds of sheep produce natural colors, such as black, brown, silver, and random mixes. Wool ignites at a higher temperature than cotton and some synthetic fibers, Wool carpets are specified for high safety environments, such as trains and aircraft. Wool is usually specified for garments for firefighters, soldiers, Wool is considered by the medical profession to be allergenic. Sheep shearing is the process by which the fleece of a sheep is cut off. After shearing, the wool is separated into four categories, fleece, broken, bellies. In Australia before being auctioned, all Merino fleece wool is objectively measured for micron, yield, staple length, staple strength, the sheep is given a dip in antiseptic solution after shearing, so as to cure the wounds caused during shearing
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