Wool Week began yesterday, when several sheep were shorn publicly on The Block, in Collins Street.

They filched my coat in Collins Street
   To make a holiday,
The while I raised a piteous bleat
   For green fields far away.
They filched my fleece from head to tail
   Before a motley throng;
And now I ask of what avail
To gushing girl and gaping male
   Garbed so absurdly wrong?

Cotton shirt and silken gown
   Fabrics weird and wonderful.
All the fashions of the town
   Hat of fur: a whole street full
Of furbelows and fripperies,
Stockings spun from forest trees --
   But what of all our previous wool?

They filched my coat in Collins Street
   To teach them of our toil
Since John Macarthur set our feet
   Upon Australian soil;
To teach them of the millions won
   That millions might be fed,
Of what we mean and what we've done
Beneath the kind Australian sun
   To gain them daily bread.

Silken gown and cotton short --
   Leather-coated gentleman,
Lady fair in fur begirt,
   What do you to aid our plan?
We yield our coats that you be clad
To your own profit.  What strange fad
   Places us beneath a ban?

"Den"
Herald, 22 April 1933, p6