Great Ocean Road Woollen Mill

Isabel and Nick started out raising alpacas back in 2011. When they couldn't find anywhere local to process the fleece, they did the only sensible thing and built their own woollen mill – up and running by 2015, and neither of them had the first idea how to run it. Their own word for what came next: a 'self-taught odyssey'.

They go by GOR Woollen Mill now. The name comes from the Great Ocean Road, where the mill began, though these days they're inland at Burrumbeet on the edge of Ballarat, Victoria, on 22 acres.

They take raw fleece and spin it into finished yarn themselves, off-grid, with solar running the machines. It's Australian-grown and mulesing-free, sourced from nearby farms wherever they can – so they know whose paddock it came off. Some of it they dye, some they leave the colour the fleece already was. And if you'd like to walk through it, the mill's open on Fridays – not something we get to say about many yarn companies.