selling wool by auction or privately, or arranging and often financing its shipping for sale overseas. A pioneer of the wool trade with the East, he visited China, sent a consignment of woollen yarns to Hong Kong and arranged for silk and cotton weavers at Ning-Po to produce samples of woollen cloth, which were exhibited throughout Australia and New Zealand and at the Paris Exhibition of 1878. His efforts failed at first, but later that year when the first Japanese Trade Commission visited Australia his ideas bore some fruit. Synnot died on 23 April 1879 at Elsternwick, aged 52, and was buried in St Kilda general cemetery. The eldest of his seven sons, Monckton Davey Synnot, and three of the younger ones carried on as wool-brokers. Both fathers and his son, Monckton, were tall, handsome, genial and convivial, with the Irish tendency to enjoy a brisk argument, but the senior Monckton was the only one to take any part in public affairs. References and further reading R. V. Billis and A. S. Kenyon, Pastoral Pioneers of Port Phillip (Melb, 1932) A. Henderson (ed), Australian Families, vol 1 (Melb, 1941) W. R. Brownhill, The History of Geelong and Corio Bay (Melb, 1955) A. Barnard, The Australian Wool Market, 1840-1900 (Melb, 1958) L. J. Blake and K. H. Lovett, Wimmera Shire Centenary (Horsham, 1962) Economist, 1862, 1863, 2 Feb 1866. Argus (Melbourne), 16 Sept 1877, 8 Jan 1878, 8 Sept 1883. 'Synnot, Monckton (1826 - 1879)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, Melbourne University Press, 1976, pp 238–239. 1827 births 1879 deaths Settlers of Australia 19th-century squatters Irish emigrants to colonial Australia