GRAZIHER PODCASTS

A warning before you press play – there’s a bit of sensitive language in this podcast, so make sure young ears aren’t too close by. This episode also discusses topics of mental health. If you or someone who know needs someone to speak they can call Beyond Blue they offer immediate support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on 1300 22 4636.

When you’re 20 years old, can you remember what life was like? Maybe you’re 20 now. Mostly it’s dominated by work, well-lubricated social events and exploring the world.

This was definitely the case for Samantha Longmore from Binalong in southern New South Wales – until one night – something you could never imagine happened and for her, this carefree world was gone forever. One night, after being called up to work a night shift at a nightclub in Canberra – Sammy had a car crash on the way home and then the ambulance she was travelling to the hospital in, also crashed and the injuries she sustained when she went flying through the front windscreen left her a hemiplegic and in a wheelchair for life.

I’ve told Sammy’s story a few times now – and you can probably hear that my voice still shakes a bit when I explain – it’s just so frightfully tragic. In her typically frank way, we speak about all things in this interview, about navigating doctors and the health system as a 20 year old, finding a boyfriend while in a wheelchair, what she loves about living the farm life and the development of her own baby, woollen knitwear business OhhBullDust.

Tell your friends about Sammy – she is truly one of a kind – with a whole lot more life left to give.

Thank you to today’s sponsor Allen and Unwin’s novel Something to Hide by Fleur McDonald.

Our guest on Life on the Land this week is prolific rural fiction writer from Western Australian Fleur McDonald. In the last 12 years she’s written 18 books, the latest ‘Something to Hide’ is out this week.

Long before Fleur was a writer, she was chasing the dream to be a farmer, hassling the patriarchy at every opportunity so she could build her skills and one-day own her own piece of land. She realised this dream when she moved to Esperance in Western Australia but her story gradually became complex and difficult, even her writing had to be done in secret sometimes.

Fleur’s own tale is of a lifelong love of the land peppered with challenges; isolation, anxiety, divorce, disability and many disappointments.

Thank you to our Series Sponsor – Blundstone Australia.

From a school of the air childhood, where afternoon’s meant sticky hands from the molasses feed run in the 90’s drought to riding bikes, chasing birds and starting mini-businesses, there emerged a girl with a quite confidence landing her as a lawyer, an ag-tech innovator and an exciting new advocate with an inimitable spark, that’s hard to extinguish.

Even in the wee hours of the early morning, while soothing sleepless babies, Elisha Parker is excited about the opportunity to spend time not catching up on sleep but working.

Elisha is from Clermont in Central Queensland. Daytime means working full time as a lawyer, night-times mean fine tuning her innovative website cattlesales.com.au which she co-founded in 2015. There’s also two young children in the mix and handful of other community projects – not to mention the fact that she’s the QLD finalist for the Agrifutures Rural Women of the Year award this year. So what is the perfect childhood recipe to produce such a go-getter of women? By the sounds of things is just a freedom to explore life possibilities.

Thank you to our series sponsor Blundstone Australia.

If you haven’t grown up on the land the foray into rural life is often closely followed by a the feeling of isolation, being separated from your people and different from your normal environment where everything you knew was familiar and ordered. Isolation is definitely not unique to the bush it’s a challenge that so many mothers in rural Australia have experienced.

Stephanie Trethewey is one of them and she’s making much of it. Her podcast, Motherland, interviewing ordinary and extraordinary rural Mum’s has had over 110,000 downloads.

Her new vocation is not what Steph ever imagined , she was born in Sydney and with a career as a TV reporter she had not a thought for a life on the land. But on a quiet news day while working in Queensland, she interviewed her now husband Sam Tretheway and thought he was kinda cute and the rest is history. This is her story.

Thank you to our Series Sponsor – Blundstone Australia.

This chick, ARIA award winning Australian country music singer and song writer Fanny Lumsden is a such a legend. The energy that she gives off even via a computer screen is pretty special.

Fanny is a born to be entertainer, who somehow maintains the authenticity of a girl who’s grown up on a farm, she sees the true beauty of small communities in Australia and yet has eight golden guitars awards sitting on her mantle piece. And is still surprised at the ongoing success or her career.

Part of her story is what happened in 2020. One thing was bushfire – her home was in the middle of the Dunns Road fire. It became a mega-fire, 6-hundred thousand hectares in size. A proper Armageddon. Then on the day her third album was to be released – COVID lockdown hit. It was bad. We talk about this but not before we wind it back to a topic that’s is pure delight; her childhoods and the days of singing in the sheep shed and doing circus moves on the back of her horses.

Thank you to our series sponsor Blundstone Australia.

Our guest for today’s show is Grace McLeod, a young farmer from Western Victoria.

If you fancy a McLeod’s Daughters joke she’s already beat you to it – often seen on horseback with her three working dogs never far behind she lives her own version of Drovers Run every day.

Grace is currently managing her family’s two properties which straddle the Victorian and the South Australian border with around 6,000 acres of arable and 2,000 acres of grazing for just under 3,500 head of sheep it’s been a busy 3 years since Grace came back to work on the farm full time.

She very kindly drove to town to get reception for this conversation with Emily Herbert. They speak about a vast array of topics from mental ill-health, the challenges of isolation on the farm, this year – compounded by COVID-19 and properties by a state border to the importance of travel beyond the farm gate to gain new perspectives.

Thank you so much to this episode’s sponsor, Just Country.

It’s fitting that Julie McDonald is our first guest for the Life on the Land podcast.

Her story is extraordinary, but many of the challenges and triumphs she’s lived through, run parallel to the experience of other women all over rural and regional Australia.

For Julie, her story is about falling in love; a life on the land; her husband Zanda, her four daughters; being CFO of one of Australia largest privately owned, beef enterprises, McDonald Holdings and so many more things. Sadly life was to become unhinged seven years ago, when Zanda, passed away after a farming accident on their cattle property 75 kilometres south of Cloncurry in Queensland.

She shares this story and talks about life now with Skye Manson for this edition of Life on the Land.

Thank you so much to this episode’s sponsor, the Zanda McDonald Award.