Wonderful wool

COMEDIAN DAVID SMIEDT TAKES AN IRREVERENT, BUT APPRECIATIVE, LOOK AT THE CLASSIC THINGS THAT DEFINE YOU-BEAUT AUSSIE LIFE

YOUR GRANDPARENTS WERE right about a lot of things. It is probably a good idea to wait an hour after eating before you swim, no-one sang about heartbreak like Sinatra, and “snot block” is certainly not the polite way to refer to a vanilla slice.

They were also spot-on in the assertion that Australia “rode on the sheep’s back”. Get this for a stat. At the height of its boom in

1951, wool accounted for 56 per cent of the value of production of all our agricultural industries. Along with nuggety little tennis players, Germaine Greer and AC/DC, it continued to be one of our prime exports for decades. We had more of the stuff than we knew what to do with, but as the saying goes, where there’s a wool, there’s a way.

The stuff below the merino wrapping was delicious barbecued, roasted or – later – stir-fried. A supremely moisturising substance could be gleaned from the animal’s sebaceous glands, all it took was a change of name from “wool grease” to “lanolin”. But it was the wool itself that we took to our hearts, hearths and homes. There was scarcely a milestone in our lives where wool was not present.

Before everyone had a camera in their pocket, several generations of Australians traipsed down to their local photographer’s, where their infant was captured for all eternity stark naked and smiling on a pristine, white, lamb’s wool rug. It was as much a rite of passage as hauling out the pictures on the same baby’s 21st.

Fewer materials were more ubiquitous in homes. This may be a stretch for a generation raised on distressed floorboards, but back in the day, a sure sign that you were doing alright in life was the ability to use the phrase “wall to wall”. Being able to go from the hallway to the dining room to the living area with wool underfoot the whole way was a design aspiration up there with today’s meditation room. Not only did we want it underfoot wherever poss, we also liked it intricately knotted and hanging on our walls. We were even prepared to molest the English language in our quest for its warm embrace as ‘throw’ went from an outside verb to an indoor noun.

So wool obsessed were we as a nation that we sought to find a way to enjoy its plush comforts going about our daily business. Enter the Ugg boot, an item as iconically Australian as Don Bradman shooing away flies from his Vegemite sandwich. In the quest for toasty tootsies, we embraced the daggy utilitarianism of Uggs and wore them with such idiosyncratic attitude they became a global force adored by high-fashion celebrities. Next time you want to raise a parent’s heart rate, tell them how much a pair goes for in Tokyo or New York and brace yourself for stories that begin with, “Back in my day, you’d buy a house for that and have money left over for a night at the pictures.”

Without perhaps even knowing it, the wool trail on which we lived our lives led to decorating a space that parents had no say over – our first car. Even when buying used vehicles, few of us could afford the sheer luxury of leather finishes, but the meld-to-your-thighs linoleum could be improved upon. Enter the fluffy car seat cover.

Warm in winter and cool in summer, it was initially available in white or black, but manufacturers soon heard the public’s demands – and those demands were apparently pastel. Nothing said style like a chocolate-brown Torana festooned with an interior of pale pistachio, dusty pink or misty peach. It immediately looked different from your mum and dad’s monochrome ride, and that was the point.

If you were especially creative, you could accessorise the top of the dashboard and the panel below the rear windscreen with more wool, topped off by fluffy dice (in you know what). With enough dedication, you could give any motor – wait for it – a new fleece of life. And if you think that’s a long way to go for one pun, you’d be right.

WE HAD MORE OF THE stuff THAN WE KNEW WHAT TO DO WITH, BUT AS THE saying GOES, WHERE THERE’S A wool , THERE’S A way