collie

The border collie, the most popular breed of sheepdog in the UK, has been used as a working dog for more than two hundred years. The dog's mild nature, its intelligence and agility, as well as the innate instinct it has for gathering sheep into a flock, make it ideally suited to working with these animals.

Any of several breeds of sheepdog originally bred in Britain. They include the border collie, the bearded collie, and the rough collie and its smooth-haired counterpart.

Collie

Town in the southwest of Western Australia, 202 km/126 mi south of Perth; population (1996) 7,200. In the late 1930s Collie Power Station was established. This was replaced in 1961 by the Muja Power Station, which is now the largest electricity producer in Western Australia. Currently around 3.25 million tonnes of coal are produced in Collie annually. Other industries include an alumina smelter, dairy, sheep, beef and fruit production, light manufacturing, and forestry and sawmilling.

The town was named after Dr Alexander Collie, who in 1829 was the first European to reach the river on which it stands, the Collie River. Coal was discovered in the district in 1882, and in 1883 the town was named Coalville, before becoming Colliefields in 1898, and finally Collie in 1899. Mining leases were taken out throughout the 1880s, and a railway between Collie and the port town of Bunbury was opened in 1898. In 1896 the government opened 41,300 ha/102,000 acres for agriculture, although this was slow to develop. Wellington Dam, on the Collie River 28 km/17 mi southwest of the town, was constructed in 1933 for agricultural irrigation.