Chainwire fencing is everywhere in Australia. Playgrounds, schools, shopping centres, sports grounds, car yards, farms, it turns up in some form almost everywhere, quietly keeping something in or someone out. It is so common we barely notice it, right up until it stops us getting through. Which makes it easy to forget that it was a genuine piece of ingenuity, and that fencing in this country has its own long history behind it.
A Norwich invention
Chainwire fencing began in the United Kingdom. Production started with Charles Barnard of Norwich, a city long known for making cloth. That is not a coincidence. Barnard adapted the machinery used to weave cloth to instead weave wire, and the woven fence was born. As part owner of Barnard, Bishop and Barnard of Norwich, he set up a operation specifically to manufacture it, and the first fence rolled off the line in 1844.
The idea crossed the Atlantic soon after. The Anchor Fence Company introduced woven wire fencing to the United States, adopting Barnard's process, and was the first company there to patent fencing. Anchor bought a wire-bending machine from Barnard in 1845.
What's in a name?
Part of what makes chainwire confusing is how many names it goes by. What Australians call chainwire, Americans call chain link. It is also known as cyclone fence, hurricane fence, chain mesh, wire netting, diamond-mesh fence, or just mesh. They are all the same thing: a woven fence, usually galvanised or coated steel wire, where the wires run vertically and are bent into a zig-zag so each one hooks with its neighbour on either side. That is what creates the familiar diamond pattern.
How fencing evolved in Australia
Chainwire did not arrive into an empty field. Fencing in Australia had already been through a long evolution, driven by the practical problem of controlling livestock and protecting crops across huge distances.
Early barriers
Before manufactured fencing was widely available, early landholders used whatever they could find, cleared timber, brush, even piles of stone, to mark boundaries and slow livestock. These makeshift barriers were slow to build and only partly reliable, but they reduced stock losses and gave some sense of ownership on remote country where survey lines were still being drawn. Settlers built these fences by hand, with axes and split logs.
Timber post-and-rail
Hedge fencing, common in Britain, did not suit the dry Australian climate, so fencing evolved around local hardwoods instead. By the mid-1800s, timber post-and-rail fencing was common on cleared farmland near forested country, using ironbark, spotted gum and stringybark for their strength and resistance to decay. Farmers used it to keep stock from wandering, separate cropping from grazing, and mark boundaries. As sawmills and access improved, milled rails replaced hand-split timber.
The rise of barbed wire
Barbed wire changed everything. First imported in the 1870s, it gave graziers a faster, cheaper way to fence vast areas. Two wires twisted together with barbs at intervals meant far less material was needed to deter stock, so entire holdings could be enclosed with minimal timber. As steel posts became available, whole fence lines went up without any timber at all. It stayed a low-cost mainstay for managing sheep and cattle across the pastoral districts of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.
Chainwire mesh and industrial use
Chainwire mesh came into its own in the 20th century as a stronger, more adaptable option for urban and industrial sites. Unlike barbed wire, it forms a solid barrier without sharp edges and can be made in uniform rolls. Woven from galvanised wire into diamond patterns and fixed to posts with top and bottom rails, it became the standard for sports grounds and tennis courts, school perimeters, industrial estates and warehouses, and council and utility compounds. Its clear visibility, low maintenance and easy pairing with gates, sensors and privacy screening made it hard to beat.
A good bit of trivia: during the Second World War there was a shortage of steel, and many property owners actually replaced heavier steel fences with lighter mesh so the steel could be recycled for the war effort.
Materials and standards today
Fencing materials kept improving. Where early timber and steel posts rotted or rusted, today's options include galvanised pipe frameworks, black PVC-coated chainwire, powder-coated mesh panels and concrete footings for high-wind zones. These suit everything from coastal corrosion zones to hot inland properties.
Government facilities, schools and industrial sites commonly follow Australian Standard AS 1725 for chain-link fencing installations, which sets expectations for durability, access and safety. Modern fence lines now accommodate anti-climb gates, low-clearance mesh for small animals, and modular sections for easy repair.
Then versus now
The materials and methods have changed enormously, but the core job has not. Early post-and-rail fences slowed livestock and signalled boundaries. Barbed wire expanded coverage quickly and cheaply. Chainwire mesh brought structure to urban and high-use sites. Every one of them was solving the same problem: control access, define space, protect what matters.
That is still the job today, whether it is a small suburban boundary or a fence line across a large holding. And chainwire, born from a cloth loom in Norwich nearly two centuries ago, is still one of the most versatile, economical answers to it going. See the full range on our fencing services.