GRAZIHER PODCASTS

To be honest, our host Emily Herbert struggled to know where to begin when writing this intro. Tracey’s resume is incredibly impressive. She was the first female CEO of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association. She has been a vital, driving force behind the watershed class action against the Federal Government’s 2011 live export ban to Indonesia – which has won the unwinnable, with an expected $600-million in compensation for producers and beef businesses.

She has recently been awarded the 2021 Queensland Country Life Beef Achiever at Rockhamptom’s Beef Week. She has been named one of Australia’s 100 Women of Influence, owns and runs a successful small business and is the mother of four sons who are sixth generation Territorians.

She has also known unbelievable tragedy and grief. But tough country calls for tough people and resilience was interwoven in the blueprint of Tracey’s childhood.

Our amazing sponsors for this episode are the team from SG Off-Road – make adventure happen with SG Off-Road.⁠

When a monsoonal low hit Thea Harrington’s farm, she and her husband Dudley sat in silence for hours, in fact days while downpour after downpour battered their tin roof – it was the stuff of nightmares – there was no communication with the outside world, and no way of moving from their home, no way to quantify the devastation.

For Thea – not originally from the country – there could have been no bigger introduction to Life on the Land – she’d only lived at Werrina, 30km north of Julia Creek for 18 short months before this great test of their relationship and new marriage.

The result is an awe-inspiring partnership, tested over and over again – each time coming up trumps with a growing gratitude for life and the people in it.

Thank you to our sponsor for this episode brought to you by the Queensland Rural and Industry Development Authority, or QRIDA.

Today’s guest on the Life on the Land is Edwina Robertson. If you don’t know who that is, there’s a very strong chance you’ve seen one of her photos.

Eddie is a wedding photographer whose work is iconic in regional and rural Australia. The ‘queen of dust’ has been shooting weddings in the bush and across the world for eight years, some of which have gone viral globally.

Eddie grew up on a mixed farm outside Deepwater, NSW with her two siblings, mum and stepdad. She was estranged from her biological father, who was tragically killed in a plane accident when she was just 12.

After boarding school, she went on to study fashion in Sydney, before working in real estate in Brisbane. I picked up Eddie’s story in 2013, when she was at a very low point. She had been in what she described a depressive state for four months, since she had found out the guy she thought she was going to marry had been unfaithful.

Unemployed and with no idea where she wanted to go in life, she sat down and wrote a list of the things she wanted from a career. Four things instantly sprang to mind.

Thank you to our sponsor for this episode brought to you by Queensland’s oldest law firm; Rees R & Sydney Jones.

Our guest today Mea Campbell is a lawyer by trade, who’s good at making things happen and quick. Her massively successful social impact business was a daydream one day and a registered business the next. Within a year there was more 15,000 people signed up to take part, as well as schools and big business.

ConnectedAU and its flagship The Letterbox Project, which is basically a pen pal project were inspired when Mea thought of her late grandfather and how lonely COVID lockdown would have made him. And Mea know’s loneliness too; in fact it triggered her own young family to pull up their roots near Walgett in NSW and moved to the regional city of Dubbo.

This story is about so much more than writing letter’s, it’s a different form of social and cultural education – breaking down stereotypes, creating connections between the generations – and as she says what’s she’s doing is changing people’s lives.

Thank you to our sponsor for this episode The Rockhampton Grammar School.

Driving home from work is the first chance Ali Cooper has to take a deep breath in her day. The mum of three is part of the CC Cooper & Co family farming empire, nearly two million acres spread across six properties across NSW, South Australia and WA.

If that’s not quite enough, Ali has also recently taken on Jamestown’s ‘The Park’, breathing new life into the cabins and caravan facilities. She leads a big, busy, full life married to fifth-generation farmer, Seth.

The Coopers have been on a mission to expand and diversify their operation, contending with devastating droughts and floods along the way. Theirs is a story of unearthing opportunities and seizing the moment while dealing with the inevitable challenges along the way.

Thank you to today’s sponsor RB Sellars.

Today’s guest is a household name in the Australian bush. It’s Landline’s Pip Courtney who’s been gracing our TV screens for close to five decades.

There have been two men in Pip’s life. Her biggest mentor was her journalist father who she rarely saw, except on Saturday’s, when Pip would listen on with eager ears as he dissected the style, tone and headlines of the weekend papers. And then there was John. I think we all follow Pip’s journey with a certain degree of affection having watched on in shock and dismay as she lost her cameraman husband John Bean, in a helicopter crash that also took the lives of reporter Paul Lockyer and pilot Gary Ticehurst.

Despite it, all Pip still genuinely regards herself as the luckiest girl in the world.

Thank you to today’s sponsor Marcus Oldham College.

A note that this conversation includes discussions around grief and loss. If you or anyone else you know needs someone to speak with, they can call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

This week, we’re taking you into the belly of the Graziher team and flipping the mic so to speak. Emily Herbert’s silky words have graced the pages our magazine for 4 years and last year she joined the Life on the Land podcast team. She’s had a break from the podcast as she gave birth to a beautiful boy Huckleberry in January.

The more I get to know this woman the more my awe and admiration grows. She’s ridden out a really tough year in 2020 as a self confessed COVID refugee, who got married, moved back in with her parents and then fell pregnant.
But in the scheme of things 2020 hasn’t been her toughest year, Em’s lived through a lot. When she was at University her best friend, Maddie took her life, which Em says split her in two. She suffered terribly including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and as she continues to work her way to better mental health, she’s also become a sensible, smart and incredible articulate advocate for this important issue – and we talk lots about this. The caveat is that Emily is not a health professional and this is her own version of her story, the advice is in no way supposed to be taken as professional.

We did start the interview on a happier note, by congratulating her on the birth of baby Huckleberry!

Emily has also written about her experience at University and beyond in this article for Mamamia.

This episode includes conversations about Depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Mental ill-health, if you or anyone you know needs to speak to with anyone about these issues, you can call LifeLine on 13 11 14.

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.