| Being a founding member of the nationally recognised Traprock Wool Association, Denzil Mills was a natural choice to chair the Leading Sheep project.
Leading Sheep is an initiative of Australian Wool Innovation Limited (AWI) in partnership with the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries and supported by AgForce that is establishing regional networks of Queensland wool growers to work together on current local issues and opportunities.
Denzil has been associated with the wool industry all her life and was a regional economist with the Department of Primary Industries before moving with husband John to Ennisclare in the Traprock country south-west of Warwick two decades ago.
Traprock Wool was set up in response to desperate times faced by the wool industry in 1991 and helped members of the group develop a marketing focus to understand more about their product and adopt a quality approach to their production systems.
Working through issues with this group enabled participants to recognise and implement strategies to adjust production to better meet the customers needs.
"The real benefit of group work is getting people to work together and decide what sort of information and training they want and need, and then going out and getting it," Denzil said.
"The aim of Leading Sheep is to empower individuals in four regional Queensland groups to run their group, decide what they can change and influence and then go out, try and make it happen and develop themselves in the process."
"Queensland wool growers have an opportunity to pull together and participate in Leading Sheep and utilise it as an opportunity to seek out improved technical information to drive primary production businesses to the next level and in so doing achieve personal and professional development and growth."
The four Queensland Leading Sheep regions are: Traprock and south-east, Mulga and south-west, Box sandalwood and south, Mitchell grass plains and north-west. | 
