For generations, New Zealand's identity was woven from wool — a fibre that once clothed the world and sustained a nation of farmers. Decades of synthetic competition and falling prices quietly unravelled that story, shrinking flocks and eroding livelihoods across the country's pastoral heartland. Now, as oil prices rise and global appetite for natural fibres returns, the economics have shifted again — and with them, a quiet question: can a nation rediscover not just a market, but a sense of itself?