Our story — Meet Lihua
I moved to Mount Gambier from Chengdu in 2011 with my daughter Mei, who was three at the time. My English was functional but not confident, my savings were about $4,000, and I was renting a two-bedroom place on Wehl Street that cost more than I expected regional South Australia to cost. I had a background in textile sourcing back in China, which sounds impressive but mostly meant I knew how to read a spec sheet and argue with a supplier over the phone. That turned out to be useful. What I did not have was a clear idea of what I was going to do next, or how long $4,000 was actually going to last.
Before Stirling Goods I did a few things that did not work out. I tried selling imported homewares at the Limestone Coast Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, which was fine but slow. I took a part-time admin job at a landscaping company in Mil Lel, which paid $24 an hour and covered rent but left almost nothing over. I also spent about eight months trying to build a dropshipping store that sold kitchen accessories, and I got maybe six orders total before I shut it down. None of it was a disaster exactly, but none of it added up to anything either. Mei started school and I realised I needed something that could actually scale, not just something that kept us going week to week.
The decision that started Stirling Goods happened at a Bunnings car park in 2019. I had driven forty minutes to buy a replacement patio umbrella because the one I owned had bent in a storm, and I stood there looking at the options and thought: these are either cheap and will break, or expensive for no clear reason. I went home, called a contact I still had at a manufacturer in Guangdong, and asked what it would cost to get a small run of UV-rated outdoor umbrellas shipped to Port Adelaide. The answer was $3,200 landed for thirty units. I put it on a credit card. Thirty units sold in eleven weeks, mostly through Facebook Marketplace and one local hardware store in Mount Gambier that agreed to stock three on consignment.
We are still in Mount Gambier. I have a small warehouse space on Wehl Street, about 180 square metres, and a team of three people who help with fulfilment, customer service, and buying. Mei is fourteen now and occasionally helps pack orders on school holidays, which she tolerates. The range has grown to cover most outdoor living categories and we ship Australia-wide through Sendle and Australia Post. It is not a huge operation but it pays the rent, pays three wages, and has not required me to put anything else on a credit card since 2021.
— Thanks for being here. — Lihua, Lihua Ma
Journal
How I finally found a hammock supplier worth trusting
After three failed sample orders and one supplier who ghosted me entirely, I found someone who actually answered their phone.
Last October I sat down with a spreadsheet and worked out what Stirling Goods needed to turn over each month just to keep the lights on and pay Mei's school fees. The number was $4,200. Not profit, just break-even. That was the moment I stopped treating this like a hobby and started treating it like a job. The Sunset Beach Hammock had been on my list for about six months by then, because I kept seeing people in Mount Gambier string them up between blue gums at Leg of Mutton Lake on long weekends, and not one local shop stocked them. There was clearly a gap. But finding a supplier who would do a run small enough for a one-woman operation in regional South Australia, that took a while.
I went through three sample rounds before I landed on the manufacturer I use now. The first two were fine on paper but the cotton weave came apart after about four washes, which I tested myself in the backyard. The third supplier sent me a hammock where the spreader bar had a hairline crack straight out of the box. I photographed everything, sent it back, and moved on. What eventually worked was a referral from a woman in the Shopify Sellers Australia Facebook group who runs a camping gear store out of Townsville. She had been using her current supplier for two years without a single warranty claim. That kind of word-of-mouth is worth more than any product directory.
The supplier I settled on is based in Ningbo. They do a minimum order of 24 units, which was manageable for me. I asked for a production video before I signed off on the first order, not because I was being difficult, but because I needed to see the stitching process on the end loops. Those loops take the full load of whoever is lying in the hammock, and if they fail, someone gets hurt. They sent the video within 48 hours and walked me through the reinforced double-stitching they use on the attachment points. That was enough for me to feel confident placing the order.
The first shipment arrived at the Port of Adelaide in late January, then came overland to Mount Gambier. Total landed cost per unit worked out to $38.40 once I factored in freight and the customs broker fee. I retail them at $89, which gives me enough margin to cover packaging, my time packing orders, and the occasional return without it wiping me out. I have had exactly two returns in the first batch of 24, both for sizing questions rather than defects, and both customers ended up keeping the hammock after I explained the weight rating.
I still check every single hammock before it goes out the door. I hang it from the bracket I bolted to the shed wall and sit in it for about ten minutes. It takes longer than I would like, but I am not prepared to have something fail on a kid. That check is non-negotiable, and it will stay that way no matter how many units I end up selling.
Setting up the Breeze umbrella when the wind is real
Mount Gambier gets proper wind off the Southern Ocean, and a patio umbrella that tips over once will never be trusted again.
We had a cold front come through last week that brought gusts to around 65 kilometres per hour. I know that because the Bureau of Meteorology station at Mount Gambier Airport recorded it and I check that page more than I probably should. My Breeze Patio Umbrella was up in the backyard at the time, and it stayed put. I want to be honest about why, because it was not luck. It came down to how I had set it up, and I have had a few customers email me after their umbrella blew over, always asking what they did wrong. Usually it is the same two things.
The first thing is the base weight. The Breeze comes with a 20-kilogram base, which sounds like a lot until you are standing in a July southerly in South Australia. For anything above about 40 kilometres per hour, I fill a second weighted bag and strap it to the pole at ground level. An old canvas bag filled with sand from the hardware store on Commercial Street East works fine. It adds another 8 kilograms and drops the centre of gravity. It looks a bit rough but it works. The second thing is the tilt angle. Most people tilt the canopy toward the afternoon sun and forget about it. But a flat or slightly forward-tilted canopy catches wind like a sail. I angle mine about 15 degrees into the prevailing wind direction, which lets the air move over and past it rather than underneath.
There is also the question of pole placement. I always position the pole so that the ribs of the canopy run parallel to the fence line on the windward side. This is a small thing but it means the canopy has a solid structure behind it if a gust comes through at an angle. If you are on an open deck with no fence, you need to be more conservative about when you put it up at all. I bring mine in any time the forecast shows sustained winds over 50 kilometres per hour. That is not a product failure, that is just common sense about what a patio umbrella is for.
In winter in Mount Gambier the umbrella earns its keep differently than in summer. We still eat outside when it is dry, and the canopy keeps the table dry during light drizzle off the Millicent road side, which is the direction most of our rain comes from. I have had customers in Bordertown and Keith tell me they use theirs year-round for the same reason. The Breeze canopy fabric is rated UPF 50 for sun protection, but the tight weave also sheds light rain reasonably well. It is not waterproof, just water-resistant, and I am upfront about that in the product description.
The one thing I would change if I could is the carry bag. It is functional but the drawstring frays after about a year of regular use. I have started recommending people replace it with a 90-centimetre gear bag from a camping store, which is more durable and has a proper zip. It is a small fix but it means the umbrella actually gets put away properly rather than left leaning against the wall all winter.
What packing 30 orders alone on a Saturday looks like
Mei goes to her dad's every second weekend, and those Saturdays are when I do the bulk of my packing, which is less glamorous than it sounds.
I do not have a warehouse. I have the spare room, which used to be a study but is now floor-to-ceiling shelving from Bunnings and a fold-out packing table I bought secondhand from a florist who closed on Commercial Street West. On a good Saturday I can get through about 30 orders in four hours if nothing goes wrong, which is roughly one order every eight minutes. That includes pulling the item, checking it, wrapping it, labelling it, and stacking it by courier pickup zone. I have done it enough times that I stop thinking about the individual steps, which is both efficient and slightly depressing.
The Eco-Friendly Picnic Set is my slowest item to pack because it has seven components. There is the blanket, the four bamboo plates, the two-person cutlery roll, and the carry strap. Every one of those has to be accounted for before I seal the box. I made a laminated checklist that sits on the table and I tick each item off physically, not mentally, because I packed three sets missing the cutlery roll in September and had to post them out separately at my own cost. That was a $34 mistake I will not make again.
I use a mix of recycled kraft boxes for the larger items like the Outback Barbecue Grill and padded mailers for the smaller accessories. The kraft boxes come from a supplier in Adelaide who does a minimum order of 50 units per size, which I have now scaled up to 100 because running out mid-week is genuinely stressful. I print labels through a Dymo 4XL on my desk. When I first started I was printing on A4 paper and taping them on, which took twice as long and looked terrible. The label printer cost me $180 refurbished and it paid for itself in about three weeks of saved time.
Australia Post picks up from my door on Monday and Wednesday mornings, which means anything packed on Saturday goes out Monday. For customers in Victoria or New South Wales that is usually a two-day delivery. For anyone in Western Australia it is closer to five days, and I always flag that at checkout because people do not expect it. I have had a handful of complaints about delivery times and every single one was from a WA customer who did not read the estimated timeframe. I added a pop-up at checkout and the complaints dropped to almost zero.
By the time I finish packing on a Saturday night it is usually around 9pm. I make a cup of tea, sit at the kitchen table, and look at the stack of parcels by the front door. There is something straightforward about that pile. It is a concrete thing I did. Stirling Goods is still a one-person operation and some weeks that feels like a limitation, but on Saturday nights it mostly feels fine.
Taking the barbecue grill to Coonawarra for the long weekend
We drove up to Coonawarra for the Australia Day long weekend and I brought the Outback Grill mostly to see how it held up away from my own backyard.
My sister lives in Penola, which is about 45 minutes north of Mount Gambier on the Riddoch Highway, and every January she has a long weekend thing where a group of us camp in her paddock for two nights. This year I threw the Outback Barbecue Grill in the back of the Corolla along with the Eco-Friendly Picnic Set and treated it as a proper field test. I sell these things and I think I should actually use them outside my own backyard. The Coonawarra region in January runs warm, usually 30 to 35 degrees, and there is enough red gum scrub around to get a good fire going if you want to cook over coals rather than gas.
The grill set up in about six minutes on uneven ground, which I was pleased about. The legs have a small adjustment on each foot that I usually do not bother with at home because my paving is flat, but on dry paddock ground it made a real difference. We cooked for nine people over two nights, mostly lamb chops from a butcher in Penola and some vegetables from my sister's garden. The grill grate sat cleanly at two heights depending on what we were cooking. For the lamb we wanted higher heat, so we used the lower position closer to the coals. For the corn and zucchini we moved it up.
The one thing that came up was cleaning it the morning after, when the grease had set overnight in the cold. I use a stiff brush and a half-lemon dipped in coarse salt, which is something I learned from a cooking forum and works better than any spray I have tried. It took about 12 minutes to get the grate back to a state I was happy with. I know some people soak the grate in the kitchen sink but I do not do that because the grill lives outdoors and I think it is better to clean it where it lives rather than dragging grease through the house.
The picnic set got used for both lunches. Nine people is more than the set is designed for, it is sized for four to six, so we supplemented with some extra plates from my sister's kitchen. But the bamboo plates held up fine in the heat and the cutlery roll kept everything organised in the cooler bag. The blanket got used as a ground cover for the kids, which is not its main purpose but it worked. I will note in the product description that the blanket handles light outdoor use well, because I had not actually tested that before and it is a reasonable thing for customers to want to know.
We drove back on the Monday afternoon with red dust on the car and the grill strapped in the boot. My daughter Mei slept most of the way home. The grill needed a wipe-down when we got back but nothing more. That is a reasonable result for two nights of serious cooking. I added a note to myself to source a carrying bag for the grill that fits the folded dimensions properly, because wrapping it in an old towel every time is not a long-term solution.
Customer reviews
Priya S. — Newtown, NSW — 2024-03-14 — 5/5
Hammock held up better than expected
I ordered the Sunset Beach Hammock and it arrived in five days, which was quicker than I thought given I'm in Sydney. Set it up between two gum trees in the backyard and it's been out there through a few storms without any issues. The rope feels solid and the spreader bars haven't warped at all. Really happy with it.
Tom B. — Brunswick, VIC — 2024-06-02 — 4/5
Good grill, delivery took a bit
The Outback Barbecue Grill is well built — the grates are heavy duty and the powder coat looks like it'll last. Delivery to Melbourne took seven business days on standard, which was on the longer end, though the packaging was solid and nothing was damaged. Would've given five stars if it arrived a day or two earlier, but no real complaints about the product itself.
Cassie W. — Glenelg, SA — 2024-08-19 — 5/5
Picnic set is genuinely useful
Bought the Eco-Friendly Picnic Set for a friend's birthday and used the gift wrap option at checkout. It arrived neatly packed and looked great. We've used it twice at the beach already and the carry bag holds everything without falling apart. Good value for fifty dollars.
Marcus T. — West End, QLD — 2024-09-30 — 4/5
Umbrella does the job
The Breeze Patio Umbrella is a decent size and the tilt mechanism works smoothly. I was a bit unsure about the colour from the photos online but it matched well in person. Assembly took about fifteen minutes with the instructions. Only minor gripe is the carry bag is a tight fit when you fold it back down.
Jess O. — Manly, NSW — 2024-11-08 — 5/5
Furniture set looks great on the deck
Ordered the Coastal Outdoor Furniture Set after seeing it on a friend's balcony in Balmain. It came in two boxes and the courier left them at the door with no issues. The aluminium frame is lighter than I expected but still feels sturdy. Been out in the sun for two months now and no fading or wobbling.
Dean F. — Hobart, TAS — 2025-01-22 — 4/5
Solid hammock, TAS delivery was fine
I half expected shipping to Tasmania to be a drama but the hammock arrived in eight business days which is reasonable. The product itself is straightforward to set up and comfortable for an afternoon read. Would order from Stirling Goods again.
Anita K. — Fitzroy, VIC — 2025-02-11 — 5/5
Fast and well packed
Used express shipping for the picnic set as a last-minute gift and it arrived the next business day. Everything inside was wrapped properly and nothing shifted in transit. The bamboo utensils in the set are a good weight and the cooler compartment in the bag actually works. Exactly what I needed.
Ryan C. — New Farm, QLD — 2025-03-05 — 5/5
BBQ grill worth every cent
The Outback Barbecue Grill is exactly as described — no assembly surprises and the legs lock in securely. I've used it four times now including a long cook session and the heat distribution is even across the grill surface. Customer service also replied quickly when I had a question about seasoning the grates before first use.
Shipping
We ship Australia-wide using Australia Post for standard delivery and StarTrack for express. Standard orders placed before 2pm AEST Monday to Friday are dispatched the same day and typically arrive within 3–8 business days for metro addresses in NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, and WA. Regional and remote locations, including parts of NT, TAS, and rural WA, should allow 8–12 business days. Orders over $150 qualify for free standard shipping. Express delivery via StarTrack is available at checkout for an additional fee, calculated by weight and destination at the time of ordering. All prices displayed on our site include GST.
Once your order leaves our workshop in Mount Gambier, SA, you'll receive an automated email with a tracking number. You can use this to follow your parcel through the Australia Post or StarTrack portals. If your tracking hasn't updated within 48 hours of dispatch, contact us at hello@stirlinggoods.com.au and we'll look into it. Larger items such as the Coastal Outdoor Furniture Set and Outback Barbecue Grill are shipped in reinforced double-wall cardboard boxes with internal foam padding. Smaller items like the picnic set and hammock are packed in recycled cardboard with minimal filler to keep packaging waste down without compromising protection.
If your order arrives visibly damaged, do not accept delivery if damage is apparent at the door, or photograph the packaging before opening if it arrives unattended. Contact us within 48 hours of delivery with photos of the damage and your order number. We'll arrange a replacement or refund depending on stock availability and your preference. Stirling Goods is not responsible for delays caused by carrier disruptions, extreme weather events, or incorrect delivery addresses provided at checkout. Please double-check your address before placing an order — changes after dispatch are not always possible once a parcel is in the network.
Returns
Stirling Goods offers a 30-day return window from the date of delivery. To be eligible for a change-of-mind return, the item must be unused, unassembled where applicable, in its original packaging, and in a condition suitable for resale. To start a return, email hello@stirlinggoods.com.au with your order number and reason for return. We'll confirm eligibility and provide a return address. Return shipping costs for change-of-mind returns are the customer's responsibility. We recommend using a tracked service, as we can't process refunds for parcels lost in return transit without proof of lodgement.
Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) apply in full. If a product is faulty, unsafe, significantly different from its description, or doesn't do what it's supposed to do, you're entitled to a remedy — which may be a repair, replacement, or refund depending on whether the issue is major or minor. In these cases, you won't be asked to cover return postage. Contact us with a description of the fault and photos where relevant, and we'll work through it with you promptly. ACL rights are not limited by our 30-day window and apply regardless of whether you have the original packaging.
Once we receive and inspect a returned item, we'll process your refund within 5 business days. Refunds are issued to the original payment method. If you paid by credit card, allow a further 3–5 business days for your bank to clear the funds. Items returned in a condition that differs from what was agreed — for example, showing signs of use, damage, or missing components — may not be accepted, and we'll contact you before sending them back. Final sale items, clearly marked as such at the time of purchase, are not eligible for change-of-mind returns but remain covered by your ACL rights.