Let me take you on our journey of self discovery to find out how we can help you do just that!

Why should you ditch commercial products?

That’s a great question and one that I have also asked myself. I’m not a purist in the sense that EVERYTHING I use doesn’t come from a supermarket. I mean, I still use commercial toothpaste as an example and many other things. But where I can, I choose to make my own.

But for me, my journey to converting to handcrafted soap came from the love of shopping markets for handmade soap and fruit & vegetables. I’ve never been interested in markets for gimmicky items, but for those that were better choices for me and my budget were my items to shop.

I also disliked the burn of commercial soap bars, especially in sensitive areas. I remember as a kid being prone to yeast infections which now as I am older realise they probably came from the disruption to my body’s natural pH in certain areas of my body. 

Why did I stop buying handmade soap and begin crafting my own?

Well, we lived in the Pilbara in Western Australia for approximately eight years. The Pilbara is mostly dry, very hot and can be humid during cyclone season - really bloody uncomfortable! The climate can be limiting with regard to things to do when temperatures outside can be in the mid 40’s to late 40’s (degrees centigrade) day in and day out, with night time temperatures not falling much lower - so air conditioning is a must to stay cool and sane!

For this reason, I needed an inside hobby… on days of excellent weather we would be boating, swimming, snorkelling and fishing before doing anything restricted to being inside. Air conditioning can be too much sometimes, even though it was a necessity to function properly.

In winter I’d garden and grow my own vegetables in raised beds on our rental’s patio.

On days when I wasn’t working my shift work roster and when the weather wasn’t great (to windy… it NEVER RAINED!) I needed an inside hobby. 

My husband actually suggested I should make my own soap since we’d reminisced about being able to enjoy simple things like going to markets before living remote and he knew I loved handmade soap. Turns out he’d watched a YouTube video and said it “looked easy enough…” So in 2017, that’s when my cold process soap and lip balm making adventures began.

Also to note is the Pilbara is very remote. Western Australia is large and there aren’t as many towns or Capital Cities as the East Coast of Australia, where most of Australia’s population resides. There are really no monthly markets to go too, maybe on occasion there is one. But once you’d been once, you’d seen it.

And the nearest small town was 2.5 hours drive away and Perth the Capital City of Western Australia was a 16+ hour drive away or 1,500 kilometres in distance - so yeah… local markets weren’t really accessible or ‘things to do’ on a weekend. 

It’s actually one of the sacrifices you make when you move somewhere for its perks, but also for its inaccessibility of ‘things to do’. You really need to understand your reason for being there, otherwise it can be a missed opportunity for many things to start and flow on from.

That’s how we ended up here on the Atherton Tablelands in FNQ - plus many years of up-skilling my own education and skills to get us to the Pilbara in the first place. That wasn’t on purpose, a happy accident really of being in the right place at the right time and the ability to jump at opportunities when my gut instinct was strong.

Why do you like making EVERYTHING ‘from scratch’?

I grew up in a single parent home, where money was tight - where cheap supermarket processed sausages were always on the menu more than once a week - BLAH! Along with Maggie packet mix stir-fry’s and overcooked lamb forquarter or loin chops (when they were affordable) that Mum liked to cooked till they had no chance of running away - dry and tough is how Mum liked them and therefore so did we… I guess.

I knew that I wanted to make things from scratch ‘when I grew up!’ and when I had my own money to make choices about what I ate. So much so that I’d shop discounted produce when I worked at IGA and would bring my scores home and make sauces from overripe tomatoes or when I got my licence I’d drive to local farms and shop their seconds direct.

I couldn’t stomach eating any sausages for like 15 years, I was scarred for life - that is until my husband started learning how to make sausages from scratch, from meat sourced from butchers or now from our own home raised and butchered meat. In the beginning I still struggled to eat them, but they are bloody good now!

I even converted my husband from Kan Tong sauces when we first started dating that would ruin his freshly caught reef fish (in my opinion - he didn’t know any different) when the fish was dowsed in sweet & sour sauce from a jar. And don’t get me started on Dolmio… in my opinion again it’s disgusting pasta sauce compared to to making your own from scratch using tinned plain tomatoes, tomato paste, mixed dried herbs, minced beef etc, which is not that much harder and it tastes so much better!

You might think I’m a bit upperty (stuck up and unappreciative) but when you’re raised on Maggie spice mixes, processed sausages, tinned pre-made sauces etc. I grew myself an appreciation for food that tasted as food should - REAL - yes, it took more effort to prepare but it wasn’t full of ingredients that I didn’t understand or like the taste of. This also gave me a love of going that extra mile to prove to myself that I could do anything I put my mind too. Even cooking from scratch on a budget!

Really, this is my beginning of how I stepped from my childhood to now, by growing out of the things I didn’t like and maturing into a more resourceful adult to move myself from A to Z along my life’s journey.

Fun facts that you wouldn’t know, unless I told you. So what are these fun facts?

I briefly touched on us living in the Pilbara. Well, this is my journey to get there in the first place.

I’m trade qualified Aircraft Maintenance Engineer I worked in the civil aviation industry for 8 years - I got dirty daily being a mechanic and appreciated a good bar of soap. I spent a further four years obtaining my degree in Mechanical Engineering. With this background and determination to ‘level up’ and take risks to better my future, this is how we ended up in the Pilbara for work. It was a sacrifice, but also worth the sacrifice. After doing our time this sacrifice eventually allowed us to step back from the hustle of big business. 

And why I now milk cows casually for Mungalli Creek Dairy and have my own small business on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland.

I didn’t see that coming in my life’s journey! Turns out if you DREAM BIG and ‘go get it’ - you never know what opportunities arise if you’re brave enough to take the risk and back yourself.

So how did Misty Creek Soap begin?

When we moved to the Atherton Tablelands in April 2022 I needed a job. A job that was preferably where I didn’t have to drive too far and one where managing people wasn’t in my role description - been there done that in heavy maintenance workshops. 

Since we moved to acreage and wanted to be self-sufficient, involve permaculture in our practices and learn animal husbandry. Applying to be a farmhand for Mungalli Creek Dairy seemed like a good option. I did give Farmer Dan a call to follow-up to make sure he didn’t see me s overqualified! 

Although I knew nothing about milking, cows, farming, mustering, etc. but with the right attitude I knew I was capable of learning something else new - it has been so rewarding building community, learning how to raise animals, and enjoying award winning dairy. It also became the opportunity to start my own business when I was approached by Mungalli Creek Dairy to be a soap supplier for their farmhouse cafe in late 2023.

BUT I KNEW I HAD TO UP MY GAME! 

I was not the intricate, swirly, neat soap maker. I just threw it in the pot with a basic base oil combination of palm oil, coconut oil and olive oil and blobs of dispersant dye. I didn’t care if it looked like crap, it was handmade and that’s what mattered to me.

But to switch from hobby to business I knew I had some work ahead of me to raise the bar in my technique, knowledge, aesthetic appeal, and care in what I made and shared with others.

Misty Creek Soap came into existence when I was ready to launch in April 2024. 

‘Misty Creek’ is also the name we called our section of the creek that runs through our property. We are fortunate to have a permanent water source that has its own waterfalls that we get to listen too and watch from our patio - we even have a wooden bridge to drive across!

What makes my products worth their price tag?

Before launching in April 2024 I took several months researching, learning, practicing, trialing recipes, costing out my products down to the gram, valuing my time and labour, working out the fine details such as overheads, registering my business, looking at insurance and finding my niche. 

All the things that the average consumer is not aware of, unless they have their own business and see goods and services through a different perspective and WHY it is that supermarkets can do it so much cheaper and out price small businesses in cost - BUT NOT QUALITY.

Not to mention, I also didn’t use a basic formula to work out my prices that you can find on the internet or YouTube. With educational material sourced from other experienced soap makers, I created a complex spreadsheet that works out pricing down to the gram per raw material I use for EVERYTHING. I had and still have no intention of running my business into the red or the ground before its really even started. 

I guess that’s the past reliability engineer in me that made that happen! 

Just so you know I dislike monotonous data… at least for something that isn’t tracking something of my own, that I own. When data projections can be turned into a sustainable and thriving business, that’s when the number crunching is worth the months of effort before turning a result.

My milking colleagues would often ask me after giving them trial soap bars to test, the simple question of “How much are you selling the soap for?”, my response was “I don’t know yet, I’m still working that out…But I’m almost there!”. I wasn’t giving an answer, until I knew the answer!

This also begs the question - Who is my target customer? Is it YOU?

I hope it’s you!

I’ll tell you who it is NOT, then you can ask yourself again if it is you.

YOU’LL FIND YOU ARE NOT MY TARGET CUSTOMER IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE VALUE YOU PUT ON YOUR TIME, IN THE FORM OF WHAT YOU TRADE FOR MONEY.

ALSO, I DON’T CLAIM TO BE WHAT OTHER SOAP BUSINESS DO… I am different without being disrespectful of what they value.

I AM NOT PALM OIL FREE - I use Sustainably Sourced Palm Oil, the texture it gives my products is why I choose to continue to use palm oil from hobby to now in my business. Simply my standardised base oils passed the trial phase with success.

I AM NOT VEGAN OR VEGETARIAN - I use locally sourced beef tallow that is biodynamic/organic that I render down myself from livestock from my Misty Creek Farm and from Mungalli Creek Dairy’s biodynamic Home Farm for end of life animals - I’m even part of the dispatching and butchering process to harvest the meat and fat from said animals - and that is days of labour in itself!

SO IF THIS DOES NOT ALIGN WITH YOUR OWN VALUES, THEN YOU ARE NOT MY IDEAL CUSTOMER - AND THAT IS OKAY!

You wouldn’t be the first to run away from my market stall in search for someone else to buy from instead if our values don’t align.

This is what I do and why I am doing it, is it any value to you? 

Keep on reading if you are still unsure of why to shop with Misty Creek Soap. There is more to my journey.

So why buy from Misty Creek Soap?

Aside from all of the above - I make all my products as naturally as possible with minimal ingredients and ingredients you can easily read off the label. The colourants in my products are botanicals such as clays and botanical powders. The scents are preferred from essential oils over fragrance oils. However, two of my best selling bar soaps happen to be made with fragrance oils!

My niche is featuring Mungalli Creek Dairy’s Raw Biodynamic Cow’s Milk in some of my products and collections - which I help to produce on Mungalli Creek Dairy’s Home Farm. In fact two of my best selling product were derived from two flavours of their Biodynamic Greek Yogurt, those products of mine being the ‘Milk, Mango & Saffron’ and the ‘Milk, Mixed Berry & Clay’ bar soaps. These were really my initial concepts when the idea drop of a ‘Mungalli Range’ came into conversation. Since then my initial concepts have become best sellers and the rest is history on how everything else evolved from there in the lineup of products I make.

Not only this, I have taught myself new soap making techniques for traditional wet shave soaps working with dual lye. And learned how to master liquid soaps which are a hot process soap making method that use potassium hydroxide as the lye. 

I make a whole range of bath and body products from scratch, not just bar soaps. And this has come about in search of ditching store bought products to hand making my own. I also wanted to develop or learn to make from scratch dual purpose soap bases to, for multiple product uses.

So, my question to you is why not buy from Misty Creek Soap? 

I’ve told you my beginning, my middle but not my end. Who knows the entire journey of Misty Creek Soap - because I don’t!

But I can share with you some of my life’s adventures and also the benefits that my customers are valuing from the products I make.

If you’re after products that are handcrafted in small batches, biodynamic, good for your skin and body, help relax muscles, restore the mind, bring back volume and shine to you hair and moisturise your skin then you’ve come to the right place.

My products are made to cleanse and clean the skin, they are not in any way shape or form a therapeutic good that cures ailments.

HOWEVER, some of my customers have provided feedback of added individual benefits that have soothed irritation from psoriasis, rashes, and insect bites. Helped clear nasal passages and have not triggering migraines from overpowering or heavy product scents. Have hydrated chapped and dry lips in -4 degrees centigrade temperatures. And provided the BEST CLEAN THEY HAVE EVER HAD!

Not only this I have two product ranges. I have my STANDARD RANGE which is my initial product range that is EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD, which I sell direct on this website and at local market events at my market stall. And also through select Stockists.

I also have an ORGANIC RANGE too which is PREMIUM AND TOP NOTCH which is only sold through select exclusive stockists.
I’ve taken my best selling products from my Standard Range and converted them to include as many organic and certified organic ingredients as possible - Seriously the feel, smell and texture are noticeably different to the Standard Range.

The Organic Range was developed from a wholesale stockist wanting products I make, made organically for a new business venture of their own with their labels on my products. They loved the Standard Range that I made, but believed it could be EVEN BETTER with organically sourced ingredients. They were right! Although I was EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS about adding more work and recalculating EVERYTHING all over again to turn products into a new range. I made sure that I had a business model to work with that was sound even if they were to bail out. Lucky I did, because that happened… my gut feel was right on that one!

But nevertheless I am grateful for being given another opportunity to grow my business and develop a new and improved premium version of my already established Standard Range of handcrafted products.

So which Product Range are you going to shop now that you know all about Misty Creek Soap?

You never know, you might find some added benefits from switching from commercial mass produced to natural, handcrafted artisan soaps and bath & body products that are made by us with:

LUXURY. NATURE. PURITY

At the heart of what makes Misty Creek Soap something to experience for yourself and to share with loved ones.

So where will Misty Creek Soap end up? Ahh ending on another great question- look at you go.

Hopefully in your bathroom or as a gift to a loved one, teacher or friend!

That said… 

MY JOURNEY IS AS BIG OR SMALL AS ALL OF YOU OUT THERE ON THE INTERNET AND ALSO TO THAT OF MY CUSTOMERS I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF MEETING IN PERSON - you are the missing natural ingredient that will see Misty Creek Soap thrive!

I hope to be sending something your way or meeting you in person real soon!

Note: This is written by me, and only me - Brooke. Not AI.

I am the Founder & Creator behind Misty Creek Soap.

P.S. I don’t actually own a bath… well I do… but farm life has it reserved for scolding… outside use and not plumbed in if you know what I mean…

Mmm… pork sausages…