Wool - from boom to bust continued

Since the 1970s the increased popularity of synthetic fibres and decades of overproduction, subsidised by the Australian Wool Board, contributed to the continued decline of world prices for wool and an associated drop in sheep numbers.
While wool has been reduced in importance to the local economy, from the 1980s in particular Western Australian farmers have found a new market for sheep and lambs in the Middle East through a live sheep trade.