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In Australia, there are a handful of textile mills in the country’s north-west.
But one in the remote community of Dubow has been operating in the backwaters of the Kimberley for nearly 100 years.
Its origins date back to the 1800s, when people came to the area to make clothes for the British army.
Today, it produces clothing for some of the largest companies in the state, including the state’s biggest clothing brand, Lush.
Dubow was once known as the Kimberleys “little sister” and has been called the “Lush of Australia”.
In the 1800’s, the village of Dubows was the main trading centre for the local people.
It also supplied the Kimberies cotton industry, which supplied the local community with cotton clothing and other items.
But after the Second World War, the Kimberries cotton industry was devastated by the Japanese occupation, leaving thousands of local people unemployed.
A major industrial accident in 1942 left the village’s main industrial plants closed and the people living there homeless.
Dubows then became the main industrial hub for the surrounding area and was the scene of the infamous “Dubow Massacre”, in which up to 100 people were killed in the town in 1942.
Dubewans textile mill was one of the last mills to reopen, in the 1960s, and it remains one of Australia’s oldest and most successful mills.
Today it employs about 400 people.
“It’s one of those things where you look at it and you go, ‘Wow, this is amazing’,” Dubow resident and textile mill owner Linda Huy said.
“We’ve got a lot of people here.
I’m proud of that, because it’s what we have.”
Linda Huy, owner of Dubew’s textile mill, says the village has a lot going for it.
Linda and her husband, Paul, have owned the mill for more than 30 years.
“When we were first buying the land and we bought it, the land was a bit of a shock,” she said.
The family was told the site was too rough and dangerous for a mill, so the property was bought and put up for sale.
But a few years later, they got an offer to buy it back for $1 million.
“So we didn’t buy it for the money,” Linda said.
“The first couple of years we got it we just looked at it, and we thought, ‘I’ve got to give it back to them’.”
It wasn’t until years later that the Huys started looking into the land, and found it was worth much more than the price they paid for it back then.
“The land has been used by the village for so long, and so we wanted to do something with it and see if we could make a profit,” Linda Hüy said.
Since the mill was built in the 1950s, the Huzies have built a range of facilities including a hospital, a church, a school and a health centre.
Lloyd Huy says he would have liked to have bought the site back.
“But the owner’s still here,” he said.LLloyds involvement in Dubow’s textile industry has come in handy during the recent drought.
“I was able to get a piece of land in there,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide’s 7.30 program.
“There was one mill in the area that I could actually build a plant on.”
Lloys said his involvement in the mill has been beneficial.
“A lot of times you’ll get a bit more of a return on investment, but I think it’s made a real difference in terms of the environment in Dubows,” he explained.
“As a community, we’re just so happy to be here.”
Topics:industry,wool-making,textiles,welfare,wetlands,aboriginal-aboriginals,abbott-tony-6226,australia,melbourne-3000,vic