Focus on positive wool yarns

Professional photographer and wool classer Chantel McAlister – she recently qualified as a master classer – admitted her The Truth About Wool campaign could easily be misconstrued as a promotional counter punch to controversial People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaigns.

The most controversial of PETA’s anti-wool industry advertisements and video clips last year featured American TV actor Joanna Krupa naked, smeared with fake blood holding a fake, bloodied, supposedly newly-shorn lamb with the headline “Wool: The Naked Truth”.

It followed a 2015 PETA campaign featuring Australian musician Jona Weinhofen holding the same fake bloodied lamb.

Mr Weinhofen ducked a WAFarmers’ invitation to go to a WA shearing school to learn the facts about shearing after it raised more than $4000 in donations in about 10 days to bring him here from South Australia to attend a course.

Last month a PETA billboard in Victoria’s Western District branded shearers as users of the drug ‘íce’ with the wording “Dave has been up on ice for three days. Shearing and drugs don’t mix”.

Ms McAlister, 34, who grew up in Brisbane but fell in love with a shearer and the wool industry when she was 19 and moved to his family’s property at Meandarra in Queensland’s Western Downs region, said she could understand people assuming her campaign was a counter attack.

“I don’t see it so much as retaliation but as inspiration,” Ms McAlister said after finishing stage two – the first WA leg through the Great Southern and part of the central Wheatbelt – of her The Truth About Wool campaign.

“I’m inspired by wool, it’s a totally natural fibre, and there are some wonderful characters who work with sheep and wool.

“I wanted to show people why wool inspired me and maybe it will inspire them too.

“Also, there’s museums and a shearers’ hall of fame dedicated to the history of the wool industry in Australia, but I wanted to record the people who are working in the industry right now.

“I wanted to provide some recognition for the people doing it in the current era.”

Ms McAlister’s aim is to visit each of Australia’s wool growing areas and document them in a portfolio of atmospheric still photographs and videos on how the national Merino flock is shorn and the wool clip processed and presented for sale.

Much of her work comprises beautiful character studies of the men and women who make that happen.

Pictures from her WA leg will soon go up on her www.thetruthaboutwool.com website with details of the people and the sheds, joining those from stage one in late January through February.

Her campaign started at Trangie in Central West New South Wales and stage one concluded after 20 farms and 5400 kilometres in the Western District, Victoria.

After a trip home to Meandarra via Wagga Wagga in southern New South Wales, Ms McAlister and shearer partner Jason Murray hope to take their tour to Tasmania in July.

But they now also plan to return to WA for at least a month during the spring shearing season after being captivated by the State’s beauty and the friendliness of its wool industry people.

“No one told me WA was so beautiful, it was so much more than I expected that we just have to come back,” Ms McAlister said.

“It has been a joy to go to work in such a magnificent environment, absolutely breathtaking.

“And the people have been really wonderful, really friendly – we’ve hardly had to pay for accommodation while we’ve been over here.

“I’ve only been taking photographs and filming, but I’ve had plenty of (wool handling and classing) job offers.

“With the wool prices the way they are at the moment everybody in the industry is happy and there’s a confidence about its future.

“It was a good time to be here.”

She said Australian Wool Innovation, which provided a small amount of sponsorship along with shearing equipment maker Heiniger and Bisley Workwear, had provided her with contacts for WA woolgrowers.

Primaries of WA wool brokers Vicky Hempsell and Steve Squire introduced her to woolgrowers and shearing contractors.

“I spent a couple of days with Steve, he’s a funny man, he made me laugh all the time,” she said.

Shearing contractors, including Chant Shearing Contractors, Cranbrook, and Crackers Shearing Contracting, Williams, took her out to sheds with their shearing teams.

Ms McAlister knows her way around the sheds.

She started as a roustabout 10 years ago and studied to get her wool classer’s stencil.

Her interest in photography began as a hobby then became a business, Chantel Renae Photography – her first and middle names – in 2013.

Naturally, her focus has been on the rural world around her in daily life.

Her specialty subjects are shearing sheds, working dogs and country portraits.

Now she combines both interests as a wool master classer and a professional photographer.

“I am on a mission to promote the wool industry, educate the rest of the world about our beautiful, sustainable fibre and give a bit of recognition to all of the hard working men and women contributing to the wool industry,” she said.

Last year the couple produced a well-received video titled The Truth About Crutching and followed it up with videos about shearing and wool handling, explaining the processes in simple terms for people who know nothing about the industry.

Ms McAlister is seeking crowd funding support to enable The Truth About Wool campaign to continue.

Anyone who wishes to donate should go to www.gofundme.com/thetruthaboutwool.

Her photographs from the campaign are also for sale on her website.

Woolgrowers who shear in spring and would like her to visit can contact her via the website.

At this stage, she intends to be back in WA mid October through to mid November.