Australian Cashmere goat

Whilst retaining the fertility and hardiness of the bush goat, the Australian Cashmere is quite different in appearance and temperament.

In that year, he delivered a paper to the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of New South Wales in an effort to encourage the development of a Cashmere/Angora fleece industry in Australia.

An advertisement also appeared in 1832 in the Western Australia publication "Colonial Paper" for young half-bred Cashmere bucks offered for sale at three pounds each by W. Tanner of Caversham.

Eventually, the spread of settlement pushed these herds back into the semiarid, sparsely settled areas of the country.

Cashmere was effectively rediscovered on Australian goats in 1972 when two Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) researchers, Dr. Ian Smith and Mr. Wal Clarke, identified cashmere on some feral goats under inspection at the property of the Australian Mohair Company at Brewarrina.

For a number of years, the CSIRO maintained a small research herd of selected animals at their Prospect laboratory until budget restraints forced their dispersal.

Interest and morale were given a major boost when in August 1980 Dawson International Limited PLC, Scotland, then the world's largest cashmere processors, purchased a property at Adelong, N.S.W., with the view to setting up a demonstration farm to encourage Australian cashmere production.

The chairman of Dawson International Limited, Sir Alan Smith, saw the world cashmere supply situation tightening.

The Art of Weaving, by Hand and by Power: With an Introductory Account of Its Rise and Progress... New York: George D. Baldwin.