So much so that her mother, a dressmaker, took a millinery course to be able to keep up with her daughter's love of fancy headwear. From hats to fascinators, Shona was hooked.

It turned out a love of hats ran in the family. Shona realised this after purchasing an old faithful - Akubra - and having her two sons desperate for their share in the glory of an Australian country icon.

The deep dive hat making began a couple of years after Shona moved to Kameruka with her husband and sons in 2018. She had become tired of the growing hustle and bustle of Nowra where she worked as an interior designer and so hung up her "metropolitan life" to live on the land in Kameruka.

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"It's been an adventure for everyone," she said. "The pace is quite different down here and we're very fortunate that we live in a place like this where I look out my window and the creek is right there."

The family started out with an empty eight hectare block and lived in a caravan with a tarp-covered deck and a generator to keep warm, but have come a long way since then and have converted a shed into a stylish home.

Growing up around fabrics and "sewing feasts" exposed her to the art of making things by hand, and gave Shona an eye for detail, but YouTube videos also helped strengthen her millinery skills.

When friends started noticing the unique hats she and her family were wearing, they started asking her if she would make them a hat of their very own.

"It was interesting because I thought there would be a hat maker in this area but I can't find anyone!"

She was encouraged to get online and launch her own hat-making business on social media by some "very well-meaning friends" and suddenly she was thrust into the world of online business and marketing.

It started with posting ads online to pages in the Northern Territory and Central Queensland - "places that really need to wear hats" - to now getting a few bespoke orders each week.

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She purchases ethically produced handmade rabbit and beaver fur capelines, which are the bare bones for producing a hat, from the Ukraine or Portugal.

Shona uses the measurement of her customer's heads and her wooden blocks to craft all kind of shapes, largely through the use of hot steam. The brim of the hat is cut down to size and the reeded leather sweatbands are hand-sewn into the felt.

After that she crafts the hat into the shape she wants to achieve and often gets to put her own creative flair on the hat band.

Sometimes she gets a photo of an old hat that's been discontinued, a picture from Pinterest, or even an old film. She does her best to replicate the style, even when it resulted in red raw knuckles in the past.

"Guys up in the north all wear a specific style and they all handroll their own brims to look like they've been wearing them for a very long time," she said.

When she has more creative freedom to work intuitively without a plan, there's a bit more wiggle room to come up with something really original.

"You're not reinventing the wheel to be honest, if you think of a shape it's probably been done before."

One thing Shona has found difficult to combat has been the age-old imposter syndrome, which was especially the case when her first order came in from someone she didn't know.

"I thought - I'm not a hat maker, I'm just a mum who is nearly 40 and working off her dining room table and I've only just learnt," she said.

It was the wise words of encouragement from members of a tight-knit group of fellow hat-makers across the country that helped Shona become more confident in what she does.

"I have had feedback from people who have worn hats for a very long time - had a lot of brands of hats - and the feedback is that the quality and workmanship is there so that's what I want - I want quality and that's why I have chosen a high quality felt," she said.

The hats she produces are high-quality products built to last.

So while Shona recognises her prices starting at $475 are not possible for everyone, the price reflected the workmanship and the quality of a product that has not been made in a factory.

"So much is mass-produced now with fast-fashion, that I didn't want to be included in that.

"I understand that my product is quite expensive and not within everybody's budget, so I get that not everyone is going to be able to afford for me to make them a hat.

"But when I put it out there on social media, even if people haven't put in orders, the appreciation of something handcrafted is still there."

She said people can engage with her work just by following her on social media and watching videos and reels on how she makes her hats.

You can see more of her work via Instagram or Facebook.

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