Wool Past The Winning Post: A History Of The Chirnside Family
Australian History Biography Colonial History Australiana Family History Genealogy Pastoral History Rural History
First-edition copies of Heather B. Ronald’s Wool Past the Winning Post: A History of the Chirnside Family rarely surface on the collector market, and this 1978 Wilkie & Company hardcover is the one Australian-family historians consistently hunt for. Ronald traces the Chirnsides—pioneering wool-growers whose flocks once stretched from Victoria’s Western District to the Murray—through station ledgers, personal diaries and rare photographs, turning what could have been a dry genealogy into a sweeping social history of Australia’s pastoral boom. The book’s generous illustration program (period station maps, portraits and shearing-shed shots) lets readers see exactly how the family’s merino fortunes underwrote colonial Melbourne’s rise and financed landmark properties such as Werribee Park.
What makes this copy especially appealing is its clean, unmarked text block—no ex-library stamps, no underlining, just the lightest shelf evidence of four decades’ careful storage. For family historians, the detailed footnotes and appendices listing station names, wool clips and trans-Tasman shipping manifests are primary-source gold; for collectors, the vintage dust-jacketed first edition is a keystone volume in any Australiana, merino-history or cultural-studies shelf. Young-adult readers tackling an Australian-history project will find Ronald’s narrative style accessible, while adults researching land-selection policy or squattocracy culture will appreciate the balanced treatment of both the Chirnsides’ successes and the dispossession of First Peoples that accompanied them.
Because the Chirnside story intersects with everything from the Port Phillip land rush to the establishment of the Melbourne Cup, this title is repeatedly cited in university reading lists for rural studies, heritage horticulture and Australian-biography units. Secure now a copy that is increasingly scarce in first-edition, hardcover, illustrated condition—perfect for gifting to the family-history buff, the merino-breeding enthusiast or anyone building a premium Australiana collection.
Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.
Buy Now