Enter a shearing shed anywhere on the Eyre Peninsula and it’s likely you’ll spot the Courela Clothing logo slapped on a shearer’s trousers.
The Streaky Bay business has been a shearer’s brand of choice for 30 years, with customers in the US, UK, Europe, New Zealand and Israel donning the South Australian-made gear.
Courela Clothing has come a long way from its beginnings in the 1980s in Kerry and Noel Johnson’s lounge room.
Kerry began making shearing clothes from home for her husband Noel – a former shearer also known as ‘Grub’ – while their young children were at school.
Word soon spread throughout shearing sheds about the comfortable and hard-wearing pants, made from breathable, stretchier ‘shearer’s denim’.
Kerry Johnson of Courela Clothing. Photo courtesy of the West Coast Sentinel.
“We would drive miles and miles to sell gear at regional shops and rural areas,” Kerry says.
“There wasn’t a lot around because there was no internet then. Thirty years ago you couldn’t just Google things, you had to use the Yellow Pages.”
The Courela Clothing line consists of three key pieces – shearing trousers, singlets and jumpers.
Made from a stretch denim cloth, the trousers are high-waisted and can withstand greater wear and tear compared to typical denim jeans.
“They are long-lasting and the fabric doesn’t catch prickles which can be in the sheep’s wool and perforate through normal fabric,” Kerry says.
“Shearers often pick up a sheep with their hands and the sheep rests on their legs as it is shorn, so there is abrasion on the inner legs all day.”
Kerry says the designs have evolved over the years, with Noel and her son often giving feedback on the clothing after being out on the job.
“They’d come back and say the fabric wears out here, and this needs to be fixed,” she says.
With the word about Courela – which is also the name of their family farm – having spread throughout the Eyre Peninsula, it soon became a well-known shearing clothing brand across Australia and overseas.
“Shearers travel overseas a lot, and that’s how the word spreads,” Kerry says.
“We have a local man here who has travelled every year to Italy for the last 25 years to shear.”
Kerry estimates that Courela Clothing has sold “thousands” of items over the past three decades.
A team of five staff work from the Courela workshop at the Johnson’s Streaky Bay property.
Noel also sells and repairs shearing tools and equipment.
While the rural town isn’t as renowned for shearing as SA’s Limestone Coast, Kerry says it’s still home to many mixed farms.
She is one of four daughters who all were taught how to sew by their mother from a young age.
Aside from handling a sewing machine, they also know how to work the shears.
“I wasn’t a prissy little girl, my dad taught me how to shear when I was about 12,” Kerry says.
“Shearers are a very diverse bunch, but they’re generous and really down-to-earth, hard-working blokes.
“It’s predominantly a man’s world, although not as much these days as there are many women shearers.”
The improving gender balance in the shearing industry was made evident this week when TAFE SA announced that a 25-year-old woman had become the state’s first female to complete a Certificate III in Shearing.
Kerry says one of Courela Clothing’s biggest achievements was its ability to survive in the manufacturing world.
“Our biggest achievement has simply been surviving as a small business, that to me has been the biggest challenge,” she says.
“It’s hard work, and we strive to keep our quality.
“Supporting small local businesses is so important because it means jobs for our towns.
“Plus, people know they’re getting something that is Australian-made.”
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