Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/299

 for that is the season of the wool sales. But if we could not see the sales, we thought it would at least be interesting to see the wool, and as in Australia you need only express a wish to have it gratified, an acquaintance of our river picnic of the day before volunteered to show us the principal Brisbane wool store.

It was a morning of dazzling Queensland sunshine, with a light breeze off the sea, when we motored down to the wharf where the big store-houses are built. Here the wool comes in on trucks in bales of jute, and at first the visitor sees only endless rows of shelves stacked with brown bales. These bales, or jute sacks, which are made in India, are all marked with the name of the grower and the district and quality of the wool, in a kind of shorthand unintelligible to the layman. The "clips," as they are called, are separated into the fleeces proper and the other parts, packed in the jute sacks, labelled, and sent straight to the storehouse. Our expert friend could tell, by taking a handful of the wool out of any sack at random, the district from which it came, explaining to us that this handful was stained with the red earth peculiar to certain plains, while another contained the characteristic "trefoil burr," a little seed-vessel, which curls itself tightly among the wool. In the sales