Down the block from the Horse and Hound Hotel and across from a farm supply shop doing a roaring trade in sheep drench, sits one of Australia’s last woollen sock factories.
Lindner Socks produces 40,000 pairs every year from a nondescript shopfront on Crookwell’s main drag, a quiet captain of industry in the heart of NSW Southern Tablelands sheep-grazing country.
The air in the wood-panelled factory is rich with the warm scent of oil, which keeps rows of knitting machines humming with a rhythmic clickety-clack.
The half-century-old knitters are equipped with a ring of needles that follow a pattern, hooking, spinning and whirring to form tightly crocheted and cosy tubes of Merino wool.
Socks come off the machines in lengths like strings of sausages, ready to be cut and finished by hand.
“The pattern is set up like an old printer,” sock maker Andrew Lindner tells AAP over the thrum of the machines on the factory floor.
“It’s like an old analogue computer or a pianola.”
A 10th-generation sock maker, Mr Lindner is carrying on the tradition of his father and German forebears.
Their surname comes from the German word linde, meaning lime, for a family who lived near a citrus grove.
While life has changed markedly since 1700s Germany, Mr Lindner says consumers are increasingly looking to the past for quality and connection in their clothing.
“What we’re doing here is not just socks,” he says.
“Humans are finding we’ve had everything at our fingertips at a cheap price but it’s not quite doing what we want.
“We want to go back to a farm, see stuff come out of the ground, taste things, get back to the natural good and reconnect.”
The quirks of the nation’s economy come to life inside the walls of the compact Crookwell factory.
Lindner is an outlier in textiles, with about 97 per cent of clothes sold in Australia made offshore.
Free trade policies introduced from the 1980s were the death knell for local textile manufacturing, while capabilities to scour and spin fibres on a large scale also disappeared.
Despite being a global leader in wool production, Australia exports about 280,000 tonnes per year for textiles, along with one million tonnes of cotton.
While small amounts of Merino wool can still be processed in micro mills in Victoria and South Australia, much of the nation’s favourite fibre has to be sent overseas for yarn processing.
This has forced Australia to confront the significance of sovereign capability, as oil prices rise and political instability fractures supply chains, Deakin University textiles researcher Chris Hurren says.
It’s an opportunity for small manufacturers like Lindner, which could well be trailblazers for the future by sticking with traditions, he says.
“If we had difficult global tensions, we wouldn’t be able to clothe ourselves,” Associate Professor Hurren tells AAP.
The fashion industry and major universities are banding together to create a circular economy and bring fibre processing back to Australia, a movement Assoc Prof Hurren says is gaining momentum.
“It’s close to that sort of thing coming back into Australia because of the level of automation … and the capabilities we have with low-cost power from renewable sources,” he says.
“There’s potential; it’s just getting that policy in place.”
One existing policy mandates that defence force combat uniforms be made in Australia, keeping local companies like Stewart and Heaton in business.
The industry push also aims to cut textile waste, with an average shopper buying 27kg of new apparel yearly while tossing out 23kg, according to 2023 research.
While Australian garment makers can voluntarily join a scheme to divert clothing from landfill, knowledge about consumer behaviour has long been limited.
Adelaide University researcher Kate Sansome interviewed almost 600 shoppers and people in the fashion industry about their wardrobe cycles.
She found durability was a key influence in keeping and caring for garments.
“There’s physical durability, which is the design and whether it’s been manufactured to last for a very long time,” Dr Sansome says.
“Then emotional durability is thinking about the aesthetic of the clothing; do you feel like it fits your style, is it something that … represents yourself.”
Mr Lindner says his small-batch creations give him a competitive edge.
“This is old school,” he says.
“Like your organic slow-cook wood fire, we’re bringing in all these beautiful ingredients.”
While lying awake at night, Mr Lindner imagines what his customers need in the paddock, on the snowfields or even how his products might assist with smelly feet.
Ultimately, it comes down to attention to detail and using natural materials that go the distance, he says.
“If we see you come back in three months’ time, we probably haven’t done our job,” he says.
“But three or four years later, a person might bring in a visitor, so over time it grows.
“In fact, not selling might be even more powerful.”
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