Your journey starts on the ground floor in the Orientation Gallery where you can begin to appreciate the special construction features of this purpose built wool store. Up the ramps on your way to the galleries you can see a working example of a 1910 Axminster Carpet Loom which is operated by skilled carpet weavers. The loom uses the Jacquard punch card system to produce the National Wool Museums own "Manor House Rug".

Gallery One - The Wool Harvest

 

This gallery explores the pastoral aspect of wool in Australia and focuses on the human effort, both past and present, involved in husbanding sheep and producing fleece. Read and hear the story of the introduction of sheep to Australia and early attempts to make it a viable agricultural industry.

You can follow the path of the fleece through the stages of shearing, classing, wool pressing and dispatch to the world. Interactive displays offer the opportunity to taste what life in the shearing industry was like by walking through the recreated shearing quarters and watching sheep being shorn in the shearers shed.

Gallery Two - From Fleece to Fabric

 

A walk through Gallery Two offers an insight into the people and processes involved in the textile industry. The transformation of fleece to fabric is demonstrated with a sequential display of machinery actually used in the process. Included here is the fascinating and unique "Komet Knitter" which will make a pair of socks before your very eyes!

For many years, the rhythm of daily life for the thousands of mill workers in Geelong was determined by the sound of the mill whistles. You can sit in the kitchen of the mill workers house and see how they lived whilst hearing stories about life in and out of work hours.