to be a hatmaker

AKUBRA HAS A FASCINATING HISTORY, BUT YOU CAN TAKE IT FOR GRANTED. You don’t think about what it means to an outsider looking in because you are doing it every day.

YOU DO GET MOMENTS WHEN YOU REALISE. On the occasion where you get interviewed, like now, and people are asking questions – talking about the history and they’ve done their research – you do. You feel a bit humbled by it all, really. It’s a good feeling. It’s hard work but it’s what we do and it’s all I know.

Benjamin Dunkerley was a fur-cutter in Tasmania, and my great-grandfather, Stephen Keir I, was a hatter from England. Benjamin wanted to get into hat-making and my great-grandfather started working for him in 1904. The factory