Speaking of kangaroo hides

Robert Duke · Post by **Robert Duke** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 8:37 am

The largest tannery in Australia is Packers. I just got an email from one of Australia's highest regarded whipmakers. The following is his message:

I was at Packers yesterday to pick up some cow hides. I thought I'd get some roo while I was there. I thought WRONG.

Packers has no roo for whips at present and the girls in the shop said that there is not much coming in either due to the ongoing drought.

They also said that the skins that are coming into the tannery are small most under 0.5m We may all have to go back to using newspaper for bellies HA HA.

No word on another price rise yet but there was talk of roo going to $100/m after christmas s'pose that will depend if they have got the
hides or not.

For you whipmakers out there, this really is a scary thought. The drought has been going on for nearly two years and the price of kangaroo hides has doubled already.... that is if you can get them. It is harder and harder to hold my price down because the big price increases. Like he said, we'll be lucky if we can even get a kangaroo hide.

All of you future bullwhip buyers look for prices to go thru the roof soon also.

Robert Duke · Post by **Robert Duke** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 8:52 am

Another update with more specifics from Down Under:

in Packers Yesterday being the 4/8/04,@ 2 PM and there was not ONE single 1st or 2nd grade skin there ....AT ALL....oh ya'll could try making one out of FURS, cause that's all the girls have.

Over here in Oz, we have been battling drought for some 5 years, some parts of this vast country of ours hasn't seen rain for 8 years,

When in drought, there isn't any food for those fury little creatures to eat, now the doe's take this into consideration and the breeding is reduced by sometimes 100% for as long as they think necessary.

So now you have animals dying from starvation and thirst. You have numbers reducing at a fast rate....which some places desperately need.

Drought will also increase the number of Ticks etc ~ which not only mark the hide, thus degrading it..... but can also kill the animal.

Then you have "POCK" a disease which runs riot ~ in the drought.

In the last batch of roo skins that went into Drums, some 3000 skins. they had under 300 of them that made 1st & 2nd grade.......

MaxPlague · Post by **MaxPlague** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 10:14 am

Whoa, this is not good news at all. It figures this would happen just as I've begun to embark on whipmaking as a new hobby.

But, whipmaking losses aside, I do feel for the little hippity-hops. Those poor animals having to go through that sort of suffering and starvation is just terrible. Even though they are often considered a menace to Ozzie civilization, it's sad. I hope they get some much needed rain very soon.

Paul_Stenhouse · Post by **Paul_Stenhouse** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 2:43 pm

Well, that makes me glad I just ordered a bunch of black and whisky skins from Hardtke. Maybe we'll all go back to making them with english kip, similar to what DM did during the trade embargo.

Best Regards,

Paul Stenhouse