New Zealands Wool Heritage

Sheep are synonymous with our New Zealand rural heritage. New Zealand has always had the reputation of being populated by a great deal more sheep than people. The economic prosperity of New Zealand has developed off the sheep’s back.

Early European pioneers introduced pastoral farming to New Zealand.

Wairarapa has a special place in our farming history. The first New Zealand sheep station was established inland from Cape Palliser in 1844 by the enterprising partnership of Clifford, Bidwell, Weld and Vavasour.

Over the past 160 years New Zealand has reaped the multiple benefits from the sheer size of the wool industry. For example, wool barons of the late 1880s established the largest historic country homes of New Zealand. These impressive station homesteads, many still in existence today, stand on historic country properties. Buildings of their era, they often stand alongside woolsheds of their era: the huge wooden sheep yards, night pens and shearing boards of the ‘golden fleece’.

Wool provides New Zealand with many of her traditions and national icons. The influence of wool is also seen in our architecture, literature, poetry, song, arts and crafts, both past and present.