From a cottage industry to leaders in the global export market, Australian cotton farmers have pioneered their product from the First Fleet to today — and they're not done yet.
In 1859, seeds that would evolve into America's Civil War were being sown. In the Deep South, slaves still laboured on cotton plantations, bent over in the hot sun.
"The early crops were grown largely around the south-east of Queensland, up into central Queensland and they bumped along, but it wasn't an easy crop to grow."As fighting began in America, Britain suddenly needed to look elsewhere for its textile imports — and it turned to Australia. "The top cotton picker of the time was around the Emerald area and she could pick 85 pounds of cotton a day.""Now you think about that; 85 pounds is 40 kilograms of cotton — today we've got a John Deere machine here that will pick 130 tonnes of cotton a day.""At this stage, any of the cotton we were sending to the textile manufacturers in Manchester in the UK was bulky seed cotton; it was really ineffective to transport," Mr Kay said.
"Despite this, they called their wives back home and said, 'You better start packing, we just bought a farm in Australia'," Daniel Kahl said.The Americans brought more than just their families to Wee Waa; they brought irrigation.
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