 see a lot of great leather and canvas bags coming out of the US but I just wanted to take a quick video to show you a Made in Australia leather backpack. This is my favorite business backpack and I'll show you why. G'day! Welcome to bootlossophy. My name is Tech and I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I'm filming on the Wajik people of Perth in Western Australia. Now I like my backpacks like the one I recently got from Dale's Leatherworks and you can take a look at the video up there. But it is hard to find a business backpack which you can take to the office and business meetings. You don't want to take a sporty backpack so you want something that's quite elegant if you can find it. This is Hank Berg's Liam backpack. It's made in the Apple Isle of Tasmania south of Continental Australia and it's about a 10 hour 250k ferry ride from Melbourne. Boot guys and gals would have heard of Tasmania. Blunstones were made there used to be made there but they're still headquartered there. It's a whole different story. Other than that though it's Australia's least populous state and the main economic activity there is really primary production which is farming, sheep, cattle, mainly that. The state capital is Hobart and Hobart is a harbour city and in the harbour every Saturday they have an open-air market called Salamanca Markets. It's really worth a visit. The market stalls will sell just about everything fruit and produce but of course a lot of crafts. While they have a shop in the suburb of Cambridge, Hank Berg has a stall at the markets on Saturdays as well as selling through their website. I'll leave a non-affiliate link down below. Hank Vandenberg is Dutch born and started Hank Berg leather about 35 years ago. Like all small bootmakers he started leather goods with a clear vision to offer an option to our throwaway society by making long-lasting, repairable, durable, veg-tanned leather goods. His daughter has now taken over the business and still operates under the original values of creating high quality crafts people made functional leather goods. In making their products they are locally tanned, vegetable tanned leather selected for durability and grain character and capability to develop a unique patina. This is the Liam backpack. This is brown but you can get it in black and tan as well. I use this as a business backpack because it measures 32 by 45 by 12 centimetres. Taking a look at the outside, its leather is veg tanned leather, very soft, very buttery. I've had this for a few years now and you can see the patina that's developing on the surface of the leather. You can see the full grain sort of veg tanned, obviously veg tanned grain leather with a lot of grain in it showing all the wrinkles, the hair holes, the some cuts and grazes that you get as you're carrying this around. It's very buttery even now and the shape of it because it's reasonably square it almost looks like a big square briefcase but obviously it stands this way up. Now let's take a look at the pockets and things that come with it. There are two side pockets. They're big enough to put in things like spectacles cases which I do, water bottles sometimes and you can have put other things in it that you might not want to let fall out like keys and that sort of thing but you just have to be a little bit careful with that sort of thing because I think with these pockets they're very deep but at the same time they're open so you want to you want to push things in them that are not going to easily fall out. The front zip section opens fully with really good zips. I don't think they're YKK but they are plastic toast with metal fastenings covered by a leather pull tab. The front zip section opens all the way so that you can actually open it in full and this is where you can slip in files and folders and things and on the inside flap are card holders, pen holders for your phone or calculator. There's also a flap in here with an extra pop button so that you can keep that flap closed and things don't fall out and there's also a zip section in here where you can keep things like wallets and phones and that sort of thing. So a very functional front pocket which is gusseted but certainly very functional and roomy for keeping notebooks, files, stationery, all that sort of thing. Notice I don't say keeping your computer in there because inside the main section which doesn't open all the way through, it opens sort of halfway, inside the main section is actually a padded laptop bag pocket and it has a Velcro cover which I never use. I usually just plop that cover on the inside and that way I can reach in and grab my laptop. There's also a flap in the inside front of it for other material and it actually runs from here to here so it's quite a deep flap as you can see and the inside case itself runs almost the full, well it does run, the full width depth of the backpack and so you can pack it with lots of things like cables and other files and all sorts of things. So I do find it extremely useful to carry my stuff to and from the office or when I'm travelling and I want to be a bit hands-free I have this on my back. The handles and I do like this. They have handles on top so that you can you can carry the backpack without having to grab the back straps. The handles at the top come together with a reinforced leather carrying area with a loop here so that you can clip it all together so that when you're trying to grab it you're grabbing both instead of sort of flapping around grabbing one or the other. The back straps are very wide very securely sewn into the leather and you can see also the patina that developed here with you know a little bit of sweatiness and friction against clothing and that sort of thing and getting nicely polished with the depth of colour in the centre versus the sides. The stitching is very attractive and interesting I think but also I think quite functional because these straps go inside the two layers but is then stitched over with these sorts of decorative stitching. The bottoms of the straps have these little triangles that they're stitched into so it's totally secure in that in that little area. Very wide straps so very comfortable on the shoulder. It sits really well because it's attached really high so it's not when you're on your shoulder it's not sort of flopping behind it's actually right on the shoulder. Very wide comfortable straps with suede on the inside that's actually got itself polished through use but the suede is a good touch because it means it doesn't it doesn't slip on your shoulder. The hardware is nickel chrome plated I believe nickel hardware with a simple sort of buckle adjustment on two sides. The Henkberg Liam backpack currently sells at 348 Aussie dollars which to me to my mind is incredible value for a handmade product using beautiful veg tan leather. Yes I do realise that it does involve a stitching machine and it's not you know physically hand stitched along every a straight line but it is a craftsman that's telling that machine what to do. Now you can get a lot of cheaper handbags some of them made from so-called genuine leather but this is veg tan full grain leather tanned in Australia and it's made by craftspeople from Tasmania who create a work of art every time they stitch this thing together rather than an enormous factory somewhere in Asia that's you know paid a couple of cents to produce a backpack easily every time. I reckon these are really good value for that under 400 Australian dollar price even today although this is quite an old one for me I think I've had it for at least 10 years going strong developing great patina. So there you go I hope you like this non-boot review I've taken a bit of a side step to do bags but hey I've done bags before and you guys seem to like it so I don't I don't mind bringing you this bag from Australia from a brand that I really like and my wife likes the brand too by the way she's got like four handbags made from Hank Bergen I think she's wanting more. 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