RAHS Special Lecture – Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War

Event Date & Time: Monday, 11 August 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000

Cost: Free

Event Description:

Not all about wool is warm and fuzzy … Fleeced exposes how heightened demand for wool in wartime existed historically in an international vortex of negotiation, intrigue and anxiety, and the unexpected effects of all this on how we dress today. The nineteenth-century rise of industrial manufacture of woollen fabrics and Southern Hemisphere sheep husbandry supported an enormous increase in the size of twentieth-century armies. Wool was also central to frontier war in Australia and elsewhere. By the dawn of the twentieth century, Sydney was the centre of the world’s wool market, and this trade shaped the fabric of the city. Pulling at threads of family history and finding objects that let us unpick the nuances of our story are key strategies of Fleeced.

About the speaker:

Trish FitzSimons is Adjunct Professor at the Griffith Film School, Griffith University. She is a documentary filmmaker and exhibition curator with a passion for social and cultural history. Her intellectual and creative interests had not included textile history prior to this shared research project with Madelyn Shaw. Letters written by her grandfather between 1904–07 to her great-grandparents in Australia as he learned the wool trade in the UK and the US were one impetus to this book. Interview has been a defining component of her practice for the last 40 years, in documentary films, books and exhibitions.