About Us

Trisha Esson grew up on family-owned farms in rural Southeastern Australia, where she gained experience working with sheep and cattle. In 1987 Trisha and her husband moved their young family from metropolitan Melbourne to rural Western Victoria, where they began running Cashmere Goats. Until recently, most of the day-to-day animal husbandry work and cashmere classing, fell to Trisha and her daughter Anita.

In 2003, due to lack of processing options in Australia, Trisha and her husband Charles, became involved in early-stage textile processing with the formation of their family company Cashmere Connections. Textile machinery was purchased at the Elite Fibres auction in Geelong. Initially the focus was upon dehairing Australian cashmere, but with the move to a bigger premises in 2009 top making equipment was added to their collection of textile equipment. Cashmere Connections now processes Australian fibres such as cashmere, mohair, alpaca as well as many types of wool.

Over the years Trisha has been actively involved in breed associations both at the State & National level. Trisha also had the privilege of representing the Cashmere Industry on the RIRDC Advisory Committee for Rare Natural Fibres; a role which she found to be both interesting and enlightening.

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Fibre runs in Gayle Herring's blood as she comes from an early settler sheep growers family from the Mallee, Victoria. She has always been interested in the natural fibre industry and following her dreams bought her own property and a small herd of Corriedale sheep a long time ago at the age of 21.

In the early 90's Gayle started her love affair with alpacas, and started her own Glenavon Alpaca Stud, initially with two alpacas, and over the years growing her herd to over 100 alpacas.  By 2007 Gayle was having difficulty finding any mills that would process batches of alpaca fibre under 10 kilo’s. So, after researching mini mills, Gayle imported her own mill from Canada and established Fibre Naturally Woollen Mill.

​The focus of Fibre Naturally was to provide a service to other Australian alpaca breeders, large and small, to have their fleeces spun into yarn either for themselves or for sale. She receives and processes fibre from all the states and territories in Australia, except for Northern Territory.  Gayle also creates her own alpaca yarn blends under the Alpaca Allure label (including camel, cashmere, possum and merino) for sale at various yarn events and through her online shop. 

Throughout the last 30 years Gayle has been heavily involved in the Australian Alpaca Association initially through her breeding and showing of alpacas, and now through promoting alpaca fibre.

​Gayle is very passionate about fibre and promoting the Australian fibre industry.

Shirley is passionate about the fibre industry and has recently retired from running her own fibre business - Karoa Fibres.

A love of sheep and the land was ignited very early in Wendy’s childhood, which was cemented in the early 1990s when she moved permanently to the family farm during her time at Agricultural College. Working with several different sheep breeds helped to cement a love of all things wool – in all its diverse forms.

Once finishing Ag College her fibre experience expanded working for many years with alpaca studs in Australia and Germany.

The merino and comeback flocks had been the mainstay of the family farm in addition to the commercial carpet wool flock. In 2002 the commercial Drysdale flock transitioned to a registered stud flock and Beersheba Drysdales was born. By 2010 hers was the only registered Drysdale stud left in Australia – and is still the only registered flock in the world as the breed is extremely rare.

The first English Leicesters arrived on the property in 2015 from Ethel Stephenson’s “Ostlers Hill” stud and currently consist of the stud white flock and small coloured flock.

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Her fibrecraft journey began in 2014 with spinning lessons from a neighbour. That soon escalated to developing her own breed of sheep - Castledale, having the farm’s wool processed at Cashmere Connections to combed top, a dye/fibre workshop on farm and a desire to supply for the local craft market in response to frustration at craft wool being imported from overseas.

Jen Eddington runs Curly Wool in Tasmania.