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 Making durable clothing and equipment for the Australian outdoors, without using petrochemicals.


I’m creating outdoor clothing and equipment in a home studio in Eldorado, Australia. My products use natural materials like hemp, cotton, silk, wool, leather, fur, beeswax, gum turpentine and linseed oil and avoid plastics, toxic chemicals, harmful dyes, and industrial processes. I’m revisiting old materials and methods and using them in new ways to create long lasting high quality products.


The logo represents a Northern perspective on Australia's highest mountains - Kosciuszko & Townsend. This is a place of unique and ancient alpine terrain, frequented for thousands of years by Walgalu people. These mountains are the source of the Murray and Snowy Rivers, and are part of the Great Dividing Range, where rivers drop East or West along almost the entire length of Eastern Australia.

The logo also represents the shocks of Peak Oil. In this regard, the mountains are now the graphs of the Hubbert Peak Theory - where demand for oil resources exceeds supply capabilities, increasing our economic, social and geo political pressures. So I’m interested in making rugged and durable products, suitable for harsh Australian conditions, reducing petrochemical products and services.

To start with, I’m looking back in time and across cultures for materials and designs that could have new meaning and value today. What did clothing and baggage look like before sewing machines? Might such designs offer efficiencies and conservation today? What are the inherent properties of natural fibres and materials? When used in modern designs could we discover new value in those old materials? What if our designs and business practices were open source - would we help to create a more convivial and responsive society ?  


“… I’ve enjoyed wilderness all my life, but struggled to reconcile the experiences in such places with the technology, equipment and mindset many carry into it. When I was caught in a blizzard in the Western Arthur Ranges of Tasmania, I was forced to fully consider this paradox. Bad weather compelled me to cook in my tent, a fuel spill caught fire and within seconds I was engulfed in flames of melting plastic. I spent that night cold, wet and in pain. I lay next to a creek with my burned hands in the icy water, rain and sleet falling over me. I contemplated my ruined equipment and precarious situation without it, resolving to approach things differently from then on. ”

Leigh Blackall, designer and maker of Peak Oil Company products.