Lillyfield Alpacas is owned and operated by Carolyn Austin and Geoff McGowan-Lay — with the enthusiastic and knowledgeable assistance of Geoff’s son Izaak — an up and coming Alpaca breeder of future.

Lillyfield was established in 1997, when we Geoff and Carolyn made the big move from the suburbs of Canberra to a “Hobby” Farm and a brand new house with nine acres on the outskirts of Yass.

First it was a garden, then birds, dogs, cows and finally Alpacas (5 females to start with) — we are asked repeatedly by newand possible entrants to the industry, why Alpacas? The answer is simple really — because! - Because they are beautiful, intelligent, fascinating animals and ultimately because we both believed there was a future in the industry and that an acceptable return could be made on our investment (the cows ate too much and had to go anyway).

What happened next was obvious to others, if not ourselves, we were overcome with the joy of the animals themselves and couldn’t help it when a bargain came our way or there was a bloodline that we had to have — so the numbers grew and grew. We prevailed upon the neighbours to keep us going though the summer months for a number of years, but ultimately the decision had to be made and the new house went on the market as we searched for a suitable property on which to expand our enterprise.

After six months of Internet searching, window gazing, newspaper rifling and generally annoying every Real Estate agent within 200 kilometres, we landed upon “Glendale” — described as 62 acres of picturesque farming land, with trees, fences, shedding, permanent creek (still running after the worst drought in 100 years) all close to the Hume Highway, but not too close. Glendale actually has a house too but in the end that was a bonus and not the deciding issue.

So here we are Geoff, Carolyn, Izaak and Alpacas, now around 70 mostly breeding age females, Dogs, Cats, Birds and the odd Grandchild all enjoying what has turned out to be a most remarkable location in a truly beautiful piece of Australia.