Blog

Over the years we have had to rely on farm sitters if we wanted to get away from the farm. It has been a very enriching experience. Our first farm sitters came from Alstonville in NSW. Ewen and Karen flew over to Western Australia. We lent them a car , introduced them to the animals, gave them a crash course in life at ‘Gulnare” and we headed off for a road trip to the Kimberley to see out son, Josh who was working on the Kimberley Quest ll and our daughter, Laura, who was working as a ringer on ‘Liveringa ” station. It was very daunting having complete strangers come into your house and the stress of leaving everything in good working condition was nearly enough to not go away. They were amazing people. We felt like we had known them for ever and Ewen took to “Watson” our number […]

  Laura spent her gap year in 2008 working on a cattle station in W.A’s Kimberley. It had a big impact on her and gave her a love for the north of Western Australia.In her words… “Now unable to return until I complete my studies I would like to share that feeling that so many people get from being up north.  That yearning for the place of hard work and good people. The tie of red dirt.”                                        “Red Dirt” Towards the town of Fitzroy, in W.A’s true north Is a land of dust and desert, so deceiving of its worth. Red soil and coursing rivers, gorges open wide. A soil that thirsts all year for rain then is flooded in wet tides. Here lives forgotten legends, the true loved Kimberley souls […]

My daughter, Laura, has a real passion for the land and a real love for writing poetry. I have her permission to post her poems on my website. They link well with my love of our rural life. Hard to Not Look Back Down upon a grassy bank, beside a flowing creek sits a girl. A little red cloud kelpie pup curled up upon her feet. She looks over distant paddocks, over oat crops growing tall and she daydreams of her country while the kookaburras call…   She dreams about the harvest and the wheat bins noise and smell, of summer with relentless heat and the cockies screech and yell. The days of stormy weather and the frosts upon the ground, the seeder in the paddock with dad going round and round.   Lambs and baby animals. That hope that comes with spring, the beauty of a fading dusk and […]

As a rural woman born and bred to farming, who was lucky enough to marry a farmer and continue the rural experience as her life long journey, I get great pleasure from the advent of social media that allows us to share, experience, compare and learn from others in similar situations. It gives me great joy and a sense of having been there, done that, to read blogs of new wives, city girlfriends, partners who are prepared to take the leap and enter this rural life of joy, heartbreak and new challenges. The wonder of the fact that now a lot of them can incorporate their careers into their new lifestyles, develop them to suit, and value add to the richness of rural communities. My husband, Phil and I farm a mixed cereal/sheep farm in the Great Southern region of WA. I was born in my local town, Dumbleyung, grew […]

November 2013. The days are getting longer, the countryside is turning from green to golden. The crops are ripening and the men are very busy getting machinery ready for harvest. This is our life. Long days and hard work but with lots of rewards. Working together as a team, sharing the ups and the downs. This year is the best cropping season that we have had for 10 or more years. It is filling us with nervous anticipation and quite a bit of cautious optimism. We know that with our old machinery, it will be nerve wracking, with the hope that it will hold together, and not cause any fires. There will be delays in getting the grain delivered because of sheer volume of a good season and the speed at which it can be delivered to the bins, and there will be weather delays. Too hot and windy some […]