Farmers are cashing in their wool cheques and decking out their farms with new sheds, yards, and luxuries like a new ute and kitchen for the home.

Australian wool industry at a glance 90 per cent of the world's fine apparel wool is from Australia

90 per cent of the world's fine apparel wool is from Australia Australia has 60,000 wool growers

Australia has 60,000 wool growers 98 per cent of our wool is exported, 74 per cent of it to China

98 per cent of our wool is exported, 74 per cent of it to China 200,000 people are employed in the wool industry

200,000 people are employed in the wool industry Australia has 73 million sheep

Australia has 73 million sheep 1.7m bales of wool sold in 2016/17 Source: Department of Agriculture and Water Resources

The shopping list might sound extensive, but for many growers, this years' pay day has been a long time coming.

In 2016/2017 wool grown and sold in Australia returned $2.7 billion, and just one year later that figure has risen to $3.4 billion.

This has played into the hands of the country's 60,000 wool growers.

New machinery

One of those is Western Australian wool grower Jodi Duncan who decided that 2018 would be the year she built her new shearing shed.

Good wool prices, combined with the need for more machinery storage and safety issues in the old building have led to a $500,000 investment.

Ms Duncan's brother Rian and his wife Karryn have just taken over the family business, so it's a pretty big investment for the trio.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 1 minute 10 seconds 1 m 10 s Growers happy with high wool prices ( Rosie King )

But when it is not being used to shear up to 12,000 sheep, the massive 56 metre by 21 metre structure will be used to service and house machinery, hence it will also stand eight metres tall.

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The fact it would be a multi-purpose building was important to ensure sheep remained part of the business long-term.

Ms Duncan said re-investment in the industry was long overdue and she was pleased there was money being spent on sheep infrastructure once again.

West River wool producer Jodi Duncan leans against a sheep yard fence on the spot where her new shearing shed will soon be built. ( ABC Regional: Tara De Landgrafft )

"We spend the same kind of money on our cropping program or machinery every couple of years, so if we do this for the sheep industry now it will be here for 50 years hopefully," she said.

"I'm not going to build another one in my lifetime."

Improvements welcome

Australian Wool Innovation chairman Wal Merriman, who also runs a superfine merino stud at Boorowa in southern NSW, said all growers were relishing the high wool prices, which had exceeded his expectations.

"Superfine, fine, medium and strong, it's a good time for all wool types," he said.

Mr Merriman said he was pleased to see growers making improvements on-farm.

"They are doing up fences, they have done up the kitchen, they bought a new ute, they are making improvements they haven't made for 10 years," he said.

Inside Aussie Stockyards workshop where employee Fred Benck is busy welding and making new sheep yards ( ABC Rural: Richard Hudson )

Business booming for sheep yard manufacturer

Ali Watt and her husband Troy have owned and run a company called Aussie Stockyards for the past three years.

They make sheep yards at their workshop in Wagin, south-west of Perth.

Mrs Watt said demand was so high at the moment that new customers would have to wait a year to get new yards.

"They are getting back into sheep, but they're also upgrading what they've got because they've got a bit of confidence in the sheep industry," she said.

Mrs Watt said in the past 18 months more people were investing money in their shearing sheds and upgrading them, as well as doing their sheep yards.

"Some of them are purchasing farms in other areas, other regions and so they're expanding that way," she said.

Ali Watt from Aussie Stockyards says the demand for new sheep yards is directly related to the increasing price of wool and the confidence in the industry ( Supplied: Aussie Stockyards, Wagin, WA )

Tasmanian farmers upgrade historic property

In Tasmania, woolgrowers are also giving their shearing sheds and yards a much-needed facelift.

Historic property Connorville, in Tasmania's northern midlands, runs 22,000 Merino and cross-bred sheep at Cressy.

Owner Roderic O'Connor has spent more than half a million dollars improving his 1950s shearing shed, which included new overhead shearing gear and expanded wool, sorting and smoko rooms.

"It's still a reasonably buoyant market I can see for the next maybe two or three years," Mr O'Connor said.

"I think it's still justifiable to renew it, because if we don't do something now, I don't know where the opportunity will be in five years time if the markets go down."

Roderick O'Connor from Connorville in Tasmania's north-east and property manager Adrian Carpenter. ( ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith )

Australian Wool Innovation shearer trainer Jack Monks admitted there were sheds in Tasmania that were no longer functional, as farmers shifted to larger-framed meat sheep.

He said improvements to the design of a shed could go a long way in attracting and retaining the local shearing workforce.

"In the perfect world we'd like to get every shearing shed up to modern day standards," Mr Monks said.

"We're working on it, in the economic market, if money goes back into the infrastructure, that would be really appreciated."