Here is an excerpt from the current work in progress, working title Australia, a social history. Once upon a time, leather was far more important than it is now.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, European (and white Australian) industry depended on leather. Slow steam engines used oiled leather to seal valves; books were bound with leather; Cobb and Co’s ‘Concord’ coaches had leather straps instead of iron springs; bushwalkers in the 1850s were advised to wear leather leggings to protect against snake bite; golf balls were leather spheres stuffed with feathers; tobacco was carried in a leather pouch.
In time, that would change. But even in 1920, belts, boots
and shoes were all leather; chamois leather bags carried hard-won gold; the
surviving swags were held together with leather
straps; the harnesses for horses and camels were leather; ladies’ purses and
handbags; people’s writing cases; Gladstone bags and music cases were all leather
— and as Ernest Giles, an experienced desert traveller, wrote in late 1873in Australia Twice Traversed:
Any one in future traversing these regions must be equipped
entirely in leather; there must be leather shirts and leather trousers, leather
hats, leather heads, and leather hearts, for nothing else can stand in a region
such as this.
Many goods that are now plastic were then made of leather, products
such as tanbark and hides were transported long distances and leather was
normal. In 1821, the survey vessel Bathurst
was mapping Australia’s north coast. The northern Aborigines were used to
aggressive visitors from Asia, so they were wary and quick to react to any sign
of threat.
Some ‘friendly-looking’ Aborigines appeared on a beach
and beckoned Bathurst’s crew to come
ashore. Gifts were exchanged: a clasp knife and some fish from the sailors, a
possum skin and a club from the locals, so we know that possum skins were
valued, across Australia.
The invaders quickly learned some Australian tricks,
like the possum skin cloak, and writing
later (in Recollections of Squatting in Victoria) an early Victorian squatter, Edward Curr, described knee-length
possum cloaks, worn fur-side in and painted in “carpet-like patterns”. He had
seen these in the 1830s in Victoria.
At much the
same time in Sydney, Alexander Harris (in Settlers and Convicts) called an opossum skin cloak “… a rare
possession in the bush. An opossum’s skin is about as large as that of a cat,
and when stretched out and dried, cuts to about 15 in. by 8 or 10. Thus dried,
and with all the hair on, the blacks sew them together to the number of from 30
to 60…
In about 1856, James Montague Smith, tried pawning his
possum-skin blanket when he reached town.
My first act was to
shove the possum up the spout, but I only got fifteen shilling on it
this time.
— James Montague Smith, Send the Boy to Sea, 214.
In about 1860, Emma
Macpherson noted how Aborigines still managed local leather.
In the case of the
kangaroo or opossum, the skin is generally carefully taken off and pegged out
on a little board to dry. When a sufficient number of skins have been collected
they are sewn together by the women, whose needles are wooden skewers, and
their thread the sinews of some animal, or the fibres of some plant, and thus
are formed the skin cloaks, the only native garment of the Australian black.
—‘A Lady’ (Emma Macpherson), My
Experiences in Australia, 213 – 4.
We know there were tanneries in very early days, because an
order was issued (Sydney Gazette and New
South Wales Advertiser, 15 September 1810, 1), commanding that all “…Necessaries,
Slaughter-houses, Tanneries, Dying-houses, Breweries, or Distilleries…” feeding
into the Tank Stream be immediately pulled down, and that no more of these were
to be erected in the Tank Stream catchment.
There were already skins being sent to Europe. According
to a legend too luscious to deny, a cask reached Newcastle-upon-Tyne, late in
1799. It was sent to the town’s Literary and Philosophical Society by a new
corresponding member, John Hunter, then the
governor of New South Wales. It was filled with spirits, a platypus skin (at that
stage, the animal was unnamed) and what Hunter referred to as either a womback
or a wombach.
Hunter explained why it was only a skin in a covering
letter dated at Sydney 10th August 1798: ‘The Weather having been exceeding
Warm when this Animal was killed, it could not be kept until we could have had
an opportunity of preserving it in Spirits, I have therefore sent its skin.” In
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, not long after, a woman was carrying the cask on her head,
and legend says the bottom of the cask caved in, drenching her in smelly
spirits, a chunky wombat and a platypus skin that, to an untrained eye, must
have looked like a creation of the devil.
 |
| George French Angas would have called this 'sport'. |
In January 1814, an unnamed advertiser was offering “kangaroo leather” for sale, though in the same book, Peter Cunningham writes of a friend of his who, in the 1820s:
…had to trudge on foot to Paramatta, to pay his devoirs to
the governor, in a pair of the first top-boots manufactured of kangaroo leather
in the colony; but chancing to pull them off half way, to ease his feet, and
being unable to pull them on again, he was obliged to perform the remainder of
the journey and attend His Excellency’s levee in his stockings alone…
— Peter Cunningham, Two Years In New
South Wales, vol 2, 62 – 3.
He said the boots cost 30 to 35 shillings, while kangaroo-leather
shoes ranged from 9 shillings to 12 shillings and sixpence. He added later that
kangaroo skins served the instead of English calf, “…few calves being killed
here.” Greenhide also got is first mention at about this point.
TWO PENCE Sterling per Pound, will be paid for all GREEN
HIDES, delivered at this Warehouse, if perfect. Waterloo warehouse, July 7,
1827.
— The Monitor, 17 September 1827, 3
There were many types of greenhide, some only fit for rope
and hopple (hobble) making, but others were for whip making and fancywork that
included watch-guards and belts. For good work, skins had to be free of cuts
and nicks, so the skin was removed with care, pegged out, treated with wood ash
and then dried.
After that, it
was cut into strips, scraped and prepared with a hand as steady as any surgeon’s.
Looked after, a greenhide rope improves with age, but hopples (we know them
better as hobbles) don’t last, because they are exposed to rain and dewy grass,
though “…unlike the rest of Australia, they thrive the longest in a drought.” Greenhide
was often used to tie a bark roof down, along with a layer of heavy logs.
All the skin trades flourished, and in 1833, Uthers were
buying possum skins at three shillings a dozen. Most of the leather trade was
fed by graziers, and in his Journal of a Political Exile in Australia, Leon Ducharme writes of “great loads of
wool… the principle article of export, together with salt beef, skins, tallow…”
In 1847, a merchant called Hayes offered “…an extensive
assortment of Leather; consisting of Morocco and Spanish coloured skins,
English tanned seal leather and wax calf skins, seal skins, cordovan, brown and
white sheep skins, Hessian boot legs boots and shoes, boot top leather, ladies and
children’s shoes of all colours, russet calf skins for ladies’ shoes…”
In 1857, a search party looking for the missing Ludwig
Leichhardt took with them “…two leather water-bags … each holding five gallons,
besides which each of the party was furnished with a water-bag of India-rubber holding
three pints…” The times, and materials, were changing.
All the same, in 1851, a display was held in Hobart,
where the furs on offer were “…opossum, kangaroo, wallaby, platypus, cat”, that
last one probably being quoll. A platypus rug was shown at the 1871
International Exhibition in London, and in 1883, Sir William Clarke of
Melbourne presented a platypus rug, which cost 100 guineas (£105) to the Prince
of Wales. A typical large rug would contain 80 skins, though in 1949, a 20-skin
rug was offered for sale.
A lot of skins were being exported, and to a few
surprising places, like the United States of America:
Among our passengers was an American with a unique vocation…He
was buying the kangaroo-skin crop; buying all of it, both the Australian crop
and the Tasmanian; and buying it for an American house in New York. The prices
were not high, as there was no competition, but the year’s aggregate of skins
would cost him £30,000. I had had the idea that the kangaroo was about extinct
in Tasmania and well thinned out on the continent. In America the skins are
tanned and made into shoes.
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator,
1898, ch 18.
In 1900, the Lismore Northern
Star offered a market report: in this account, prices are in pence (d) or
shillings (s), and ‘do.’ means ditto.
Kangaroo skins continue in good demand, whilst bear [koala] and
swamp wallaby show an advance, and all other descriptions brought last
Wednesday’s prices as follows: — Grey kangaroo to 43d, red do. to 54d, wallaroo
to 27d, scrub wallaby to 20d, swamp do to 24d, bear to 13d each. Opossum skins
had strong enquiry, and extreme prices were again paid.
—Northern Star (Lismore), 18 July
1900, 4.
As we will see later (not here, though: buy the book), a number of writers in the early 20th
century set out to make the shooting of animals for their skins seem wrong to
young readers, and Australia’s attitudes changed, in part because plastics were
easier and cheaper.
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