Australian sources for spawn/beginners

I would like to grow some mushrooms outdoors on stumps or soil because straw is a bit pricey. I never grew mushrooms apart from these boxes and I think it is easier to start with some of these dowels with spawn.  There was little offered in Australia and the price was horrendos! Does someone know an Australian source of spawn? Or is there an easy method to grow from shop bought mushrooms?

It depends on what your idea of horrendous is?
There is a bloke called Punkin from nsw who was doing 2kg Myc bags of spawn, they were about $20 plus postage from memory.
He can usually be found lurking over at the shroomery or www.shaman-australis.com/forum

Or www.forestfungi.com.au were selling plates of Myc so you make your own spawn, but im not sure if he is still operating or not?

You can make your own spawn from shop bought mushrooms but  it does take some effort & dedication to learn the skills needed & the clones are often a bit tired so they often need to be fruited & started again.

You might want to get a copy of "lets grow mushrooms" its worth its weight in gold.

I second the endorsement of "Let's Grow Mushrooms".

My own attempts at growing mushrooms by cloning grocery store-bought specimens have been very successful. But it is a bit involved, growing your own spawn. The "Let's Grow Mushrooms" DVDs helped me immensely.

There are more how-to resources at this thread: https://permies.com/permaculture-forums/5543_0/fungi-/fungi-cultivation-resources

There are links to some free ebooks on mushroom cultivation on that thread, they can give you a better idea of the work involved in growing spawn, before you make any kind of serious investment in time or equipment.

Thanks! I'll search these sources. The forst funghi site doesn't work at the moment. I found some other source and the horrendous was something like 80 dollars or so.

Rowan Reid at the Ottway agroforestry network got me some shitake spores

I run http://forestfungi.com.au/ and teach courses here http://milkwood.net/category/mushroom-cultivation/

I'm in the process of re-stocking my cultures after a move interstate, but will soon have spawn, dowels, petri cultures etc.

I've had students fly in from Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and all parts of Oz, which has been wonderful, but I'm now working on an online course, covering everything from cloning a mushroom right through to harvesting and cooking. Students will get multiple cultures on petri dishes, as well as multiple tubs of grain spawn, dowels, and a bunch of resources to enable them grow lots of mushrooms.