A history of Lincoln Mills (Australia) Ltd, 1922-1962

Abstract

Lincoln Hills was born in humble surroundings in the backyard of a house in Lygon street, Carlton, in Melbourne. In 1913 Mrs Thomas Neville Rowlands, the wife of the founder, began working on two flat knitting machines in her home with two or three women to help her. Her husband was then a wood cartage contractor to the El Dorado gold mine in the Bendigo area. The Australian wool textile industry goes back to the 1860s and 1870s. As the gold rush boom faded, consumer industries grew, and in Victoria the government introduced tariffs which stimulated the foundation of textile mills. But the growth of the industry in terms both of its production and its variety of products was slow. Thus, before the first world war the domestic mills contributed only a negligible part to the total supply of wool textiles consumed in Australia, and Mrs Rowlands' workshop came at the beginning of a new wave of expansion.