Year 4 Excursion @ Australian Agricultural Centre 

On the 30th of August, my class went to the Australian Agriculture Centre for Sheep Week. It is an 8-minute drive from Crookwell and is near the wind farm. There were other schools there, including Crookwell Public School, Laggan Public School and Breadalbane Public School. 

Firstly, we went to a shearing demonstration. We saw them shear the sheep, and you could see how the shearers cut the sheep sometimes. Ouch. Then they took the wool and put it into bags and the worsted wool into a machine. I’ll talk about woollen and worsted wool later.

Next, we moved to keyring making. We were creating a wool keyring with Jo Marshall. We tied cotton around the wool strands. We bent the now tied cotton around the middle wool strands and went around the two lengths of wool strands. We went through the hole we created by tying it up five times

After that, we went to the ACI’s area and listened to Krisi Frost. She taught us about wool innovation and we watched a few videos about wool. We learnt about the process of wool. The wool goes off the sheep during shearing, and then you scour the wool. The sorting is when you separate the wool. The shorter parts are classed as woollen and the longer parts are classified as worsted. Afterwards, you send the wool through a machine to straighten it. Then you roll it. You can dye the wool at any stage.

After that, we went and got our lunch boxes. We ate our lunch with Year 3 and then played a couple of games, including Memory Tag and other versions of the game. Mrs. Skelly then got us to sing “Happy Birthday” for Mrs. Croker.

Then we went to learn about the properties of wool. We had to do a worksheet where we had to put down whether or not wool, wood, metal, and a few other things were soft, stretchy, fire-resistant, and waterproof, and then we had to say something that was made of that material. We did that in pairs. Then we went and looked at 3 microscopes that had wool underneath them. I could see the fibres. Then the teacher put a microscope on her phone and took pictures of things, including Quade’s scab. It looked weird.

The sheepdog trials were next; however, we didn’t get to see that because we weren’t let into the paddock to watch the sheepdogs. We went back to the bus to wait for Year 3, and on the way back the Year 3 people up the back sang “The Wheels On The Bus.”

Owen Moorby