Wool Past The Winning Post: A History of the Chirnside Family
Australian History Colonial History Cultural Studies Biography & Memoir Genealogy & Family History Pastoral History Wool & Sheep Industry
First-edition copies of Wool Past the Winning Post: A History of the Chirnside Family rarely surface in the collector market, especially in the original 1978 Wilkie & Company hard-cover binding. This vintage Australian imprint is the only stand-alone biography that traces how Scottish immigrant graziers Thomas and Andrew Chirnside turned a 100-acre block at Werribee into one of the world’s great merino dynasties, shaping both Victoria’s wool economy and the social fabric of the Western District for more than a century. Heather B. Ronald’s narrative balances meticulous station diaries, newspaper files and family letters with lively anecdotes about pastoral life, making the book a key reference for anyone researching colonial wealth creation, merino genetics, or the grand homesteads that still dot the Victorian landscape.
Beyond the genealogical detail, Ronald devotes generous space to the Chirnside women, garden designers, Aboriginal station workers and Chinese shearers who are usually footnotes in settler histories, giving modern readers a nuanced cultural study rather than a simple family tree. The volume is generously illustrated with period photographs of shearing sheds, wool-classing tables, vintage stud ledgers and early images of Werribee Park Mansion, many of which do not appear in later pressings. Because the book was printed on good-quality coated stock for 1978, these plates remain crisp, making the copy a handy visual resource for heritage consultants and museum curators.
For collectors, this first edition is distinguished by the publisher’s navy cloth boards and gilt-stamped spine that have become scarce in nice condition. The copy offered here is clean and tightly bound; the only minor flaws are a removed front blank, one light page-corner crease and a small spot to one page edge—issues that are trivial compared with the heavy foxing usually found in this title. No prior owner marks, no ex-libris stamps, and the original dust-wrapper is present, making it an excellent shelf candidate for antiquarian Australiana, wool-industry historians, or descendants of the Chirnside, McDonald or Werribee Park families seeking a primary-source heirloom.
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