In a class of their own

Meet the women behind the renaissance in Australian wool.

- SKYE MANSON

Australia once "rode on the sheep's back", and our wool-growing history is part of Aussie folklore. But the role of women in wool is less well known and even less celebrated. It started with Elizabeth Macarthur, who by many accounts was responsible for running the family sheep empire while her husband John was credited as the father of Australian wool. To this day, women contribute to the industry in crucial and innovative ways, as shearers, breeders, fashion designers and scientists. And as the popularity of our favourite national fibre surges once again, The Weekly honours the female face of modern Australian wool.

Dr Meredith Sheil Paediatrician and farmer

It's not by chance that Dr Meredith Sheil looks so at peace nursing a lamb. As a doctor of paediatrics, and a medical and veterinary research scientist, she's always been one to "help those who couldn't help themselves". She and her husband, Dr Matthew Bayfield, bought a farm at Ilford in NSW in 1999. "It was the complete antithesis of the sterile, clinical, intense environment that we spent most of our lives in," she laughs. And they soon fell in love with country life. "A love for wool and raising sheep is a big part of it - the natural, raw feeling you get, the softness and lanolin, the sheep rolling up the fence lines." But Meredith admits she was shocked when it came time for the sheep to undergo marking procedures, including mulesing (removing skin from the bottom or breech of lambs to prevent flystrike), which was done without pain relief. It was the catalyst for a revolutionary change in the wool industry.

Meredith had been writing a PHD on improving survival rates for children who had undergone difficult surgery. "I started to think about how we could adapt what we know [from paediatric medicine] to deliver some sort of pain relief and wound care for lambs," she explains.