I’ve purchased more ‘new’ items in the past few months than I have in the previous few years. Most of the gear I needed or wanted for Wildendurance was impossible to find second hand. There were trail runners, compression tights, shorts, back pack, quick dry t–shirt, light weight rain jacket, and so on. Trying to make ethical and sustainable choices was doing my head in. I searched out Australian made products and invariably gave up. I ended up buying most of my equipment at a local outdoor adventure store because at least I was supporting a local business.

But not with socks!

I was thrilled to discover we still make socks in Australia!

Family-owned Humphey Law has been making high-quality socks wholly in Australia with natural yarns for over 50 years.

I contacted Humphrey Law with a few questions and they sent me a pair of sport socks, hiking socks, and super soft fine merino wool socks to try.

I was so thrilled with the comfort and durability of the socks that I've since bought a few more pairs including some children's socks for Little Eco (seen above).

I'm particularly in love with their super comfortable hiking socks.

I plan to gradually replace our existing socks as they wear out with Humphrey Law socks. They do cost a little more than imported socks - but I'm prepared to pay the extra for quality and to support manufacturing in Australia. 

"Our socks are wholly made in our Melbourne suburban factory which means that our overheads are greater than those of our overseas competitors whose cheap and often poorly made socks we compete against. Fortunately we do have a loyal customer base who understand that our socks will generally outlast several pairs of imported socks, but it is diminishing as smaller menswear retailers disappear. But we intend to keep going and maintain at least some manufacturing capacity in Australia." Dennis from Humphrey Law.

Are you prepared to pay extra to keep manufacturing in Australia?

Giveaway from Humphrey Law

Would you like a pair of Australian made Humphrey law socks? Dennis from Humphrey Law has kindly offered to gift a pair of socks to five lucky Little Eco Footprints readers.

Entries have now closed and the winners are: comment numbers 22, 47, 87, 91, and 16:

Josie - bed socks.

Karina - Feet First Men's socks

Nadine - Children's Health socks.

Kirsty - Hiking sock.

Vinay - Fine Merino Wool socks.

Congratulations all. I'll be emailing you shortly.

To enter head on over to Humphrey Law and check out their range of socks and pop back here and leave a comment sharing which of their socks you’d love to try.

Entries close midnight (Australian EST) Wednesday 23rd May 2012.

One entry per person, please. Sorry, entries only open to those with Australian addresses.

The winners will be chosen by Random Number Generator and will be announced here in this post on the Thursday morning. I'll contact the winners directly by email. Good luck.