Wool Growing

At 85, Australian Shearing Hall of Fame inductee John Harris can still hold his own in the woolshed.  A partnership forged between his family and a family of wool growers has seen the shearing contractor return to the same shed for the shearing every year for three-quarters of a century.   

Textile manufacturing took Albury's work to the Opera House, federal parliament, the Olympics and beyond.

Art Cooper was almost a year into a panel-beating apprenticeship in Brisbane when he realised it wasn't the career for him, so he packed his belongings and drove 1,300 kilometres to the outback to work as a rouseabout on sheep stations.

One of Australia's largest sheep stations is listed for sale as wool and lamb prices soar.

Amid a run of price rises at Australian wool auctions, the next generation of growers say global demand and fresh confidence could mark a turning point for the fibre.

Scientists, farmers and the fashion industry collaborate to create a natural fabric that is both woven and knitted, low on emissions and set to shake up how we think about clothing.

Australian wool prices lifted sharply this week for a few reasons, including a shrinking amount of wool being produced.

A deal has been done to sell Rawlinna Station to a UK-owned pastoral company, but six months on the WA government is yet to approve the sale.  

Telopea Downs in the state's north-west is offered for sale on a walk-in, walk-out basis, seven years after it was purchased for $70 million. 

Naturally coloured wool, the brainchild of a farmer in the 1970s, is used by craft enthusiasts around the world to be fashioned into all manner of things.

Victoria's last wool cleaning mill will close in Geelong next month, after a merger with the only other remaining wool scour in country.

A Victorian merino stud has bred its first line of footrot-resistant rams in a major step forward against a disease that costs the sheep industry more than $80 million a year.

Australia's sheep flock continues to decrease due to drought, with ewe numbers expected to drop 9 per cent over the next year.

Teams compete to be fastest to blade-shear a sheep, spin the wool and knit a jumper in one day as part of a global challenge to produce wool sustainably.

A ram sold for a world record price of $450,000 back in 1989, but a Country Hour reporter remembers it as the peak before the fall for Australia's wool industry.

It has been decades since garment manufacturing flourished in Australia, but with rising pressures on the domestic fibre and fashion industry, a strategy is being developed to bring it back.

Australian wool production is forecast to reach its lowest level since the early 1900s, forcing skilled shearers to seek work interstate, overseas or leave the industry entirely.

The ABC asked every Australian politician if they wore wool on the campaign trail.

Sheep producers have slammed a leaked "confidential" document containing draft plans of the Albanese government's multi-million-dollar support package for farmers affected by the live export ban.

In Bringo, 370 kilometres north of Perth, Bridgitte Brooks is adding "fashion designer" to her CV under occupational therapist, farmer, and mother of four.