Life on the Land

Eliza Lockyer takes putting nutritious food on the table very seriously. Obsessed with gardening since her late teens, Eliza also developed a fascination with rare breed stock and has dedicated a large portion of her life promoting the benefits of their continued breeding. If you’ve ever been interested in gardening, or you live in a place where it might be difficult to grow because of clay or rocky soil- then this is the episode for you!

Growing up on a small property, nestled amidst the picturesque Tasmanian north-west coast, Eliza’s appreciation for growing fruit, veggies and protein, gradually blossomed into quite the obsession that’s followed her across the continent. Spending the last six years between the Pilbara and Kimberley regions in Western Australia, she and husband Andy bid farewell to the red earth and rugged terrain, home-bound, to pull up stumps on Andy’s family cattle property in Walcha, New South Wales.

Can you imagine taking eight horses, 14 working dogs, three goats and two toddlers on a six-month long road trip? It’s certainly not for the faint hearted, but for the Northern Territory’s Curtain family, it’s Situation Normal. In this episode, our host Emily Herbert is in conversation with Annabelle Curtain, a wife, mother and urban designer, who has built an incredibly diverse business alongside her husband Tom.

As a mother, wife and business owner, Jade Lord is deeply invested in bringing health and wellbeing to rural and remote communities.

Originally from Moreton Bay, Jade spent most of her early childhood on Stradbroke Island. A blissful beachside oasis, surrounded by crystal clear water, white sand and rocky outcrops.

It’s a stark contrast from where Jade now calls home, a remote cattle station, 150km outside of Richmond, in Queensland. There, with her husband Nikko and three kids, Jock, Sandy and Ruby, they run a significant beef cattle operation, spanning across northern Queensland. Jade and Nikko had somewhat of a fairy tale romance, meeting on one of the early seasons of Farmer Wants a Wife, but as you’ll hear in this episode, Jade’s life on the land wasn’t without some major challenges.

Melinda O’Donoghue is often compared to ‘Cinderella’s fairy godmother’. Known as The Outback Wedding Dressmaker, she’s made close to 300 wedding dresses for country and city brides around the nation- and some even overseas!

Melinda is a classically trained seamstress, working alongside the likes of well-known designer Alex Perry in Sydney. Melinda and her husband, Des, now live on a property in Gurley, just over 30 kilometres south of Moree, in New South Wales.

This is Melinda’s story of the trials and tribulations of living on the land, coupled with the magic she brings to brides across Australia. 

Baker, green thumb and former country journalist Maya Linnell is about to release her fifth book. The bestselling Rural Romance, or RuRo author has an amazing story to tell. From a startling introduction into journalism following America’s September 11 attack, to realising her aspirations as a novelist at nearly 40 years old, Maya demonstrates there’s no time limit on achieving your dreams. In this episode Maya takes us through the arduous process of writing novels, spurred by her passions for baked goods, tending roses and a rural lifestyle. 

Camille McClymont’s life in Western Australia’s Kimberly region is well reflected in her Instagram posts, (@thecattlemandaughter); the red dust, the blazing sunsets and the days of mustering, the 31-year-old gives a little snapshot into her days spent managing her family’s property, Kalyeeda Station.

 In this episode Camille gives an insight into life managing 10,000 head of cattle spread across 122,000 hectares, during some of the most extreme weather Mother Nature has thrown at them in recent history. She also gives a heart wrenching, yet deeply insightful look into her idyllic childhood preceding a series of devastating twists of fate in her early teens that marked the beginning of a life-threatening eating disorder. This is a story about family, commitment, love and most of all, a truly wonderous sense of belonging. 

Rural photographer and farmer Kim Storey was preparing for a flood in November 2022, but what she, and her neighbours didn’t know, was that it was a one in 5000-year event. In a matter of hours, Kim went from calmly preparing her property by taking her motorbike and dog next door, to a frantic helicopter evacuation while raging waters lapped at her door. This is the story of how Kim, and her nearby town Eugowra; a small rural community in the Lachlan Valley of central west NSW weathered an extreme weather event and came out the other side. 

Felicity Weal has her eyes set on a spot in the 2024 Paralympics. And if qualification took into account her steely determination and incredible optimism, she would surely secure a place. In 2017, Felicity fell six-metres through the roof of her family’s farm shed on their 800-hectare sheep and beef farm near Cowra, New South Wales. This is the story of what happened after the fall- when Felicity woke up to a life altering experience that left her without the use of her legs when she was only 21-years-old. Just six years down the track, she’s living her best life, surrounded by the love and support of her friends and family, entering motherhood and living life on the land. 

Welcome to Graziher's 2nd podcast, The Farm Diaries based on our regular column written by Tasmanian based author Maggie MacKellar.

In 2021, Graziher's editorial director Victoria Carey asked Maggie, an author and freelance writer she has always loved if she would pen a new column for the magazine and the The Farm Diaries was born. All about life on a fine wool Merino farm on Tasmania's east coast , Victoria knew that Graziher readers would also have read Maggie's memoirs that laid bare the grief she felt at losing loved ones and the challenges of starting life anew. The Farm Diaries started out as an extract from Maggie's farm journal that she kept during a lambing season of 2018/2019 and has become an account of daily observations of life on the farm and now we are turning the written word into the spoken work through this podcast. The Farm Diaries will be release on a Wednesday for the next six weeks with thanks to our sponsor Blundstone.

Mid way through 2023 Maggie's work will be published by Penguin Books as her latest book, Graft.

“What would Dad do?”

These are the words Sallie Jones thought to herself in the midst of the dairy crisis sweeping the nation in 2016. Sallie was a daughter of dairy farmers, entrepreneurs, and a daughter left reeling, grieving the loss of her father, Michael Bowen, who had completed suicide just weeks prior.

Sallie is force of nature. A changemaker. Someone who takes personal pain and channels it into something to improve the greater good. In the aftermath of losing her father, Sallie created Gippsland Jersey, a dairy cooperative that is 100% Gippsland made and family-owned, paying farmers a fair price for their milk while spreading awareness for mental health and producing premium pure Jersey dairy products.