Tumut Brooms

The Tumut Broom Factory is the last original Millet Broom Factory in Australia. Originally called the ‘Tumut Rural Co-operative Millet Society’, the Factory has been located in Tumut, NSW, a small town in the Snowy Mountains since 1946. Cliff Wortes started working at the Co-operative just after it opened and took over the business in 1978 when the cooperative folded, staying until his retirement. Cliff’s son Geoff, and Robert Richards worked on and off at the factory when they were young and returned in the late Eighties. Geoff and Rob own and operate the business today and have been hand-making millet brooms the same way since.

Millet is 90 day crop, harvested by hand and dried for over three weeks. The millet is delivered to the factory then hand graded for length and quality. The millet is bound onto the broom handle using wire. The broom is then sewn using a stitching machine, with between two and seven lines of heavy thread stitched across the millet depending on the size of the broom, followed by trimming and labeling, it is then ready for collection.