If you’re looking for a non-fiction rural read then Liz Harfull’s Women of the Land may be for you. Liz  is an award-winning journalist and Churchill Fellow. She grew up on a small farm near Mount Gambier in South Australia, which has been in the family since the early 1860s. Liz trained as a journalist on a regional newspaper and worked for metropolitan and specialist rural newspapers before spending twelve years with a leading national public relations consultancy. However in 2006 she left the corporate life to concentrate on her writing. Her first book, a celebration of South Australian country shows and show cooks, The Blue Ribbon Cookbook (2008) became a surprise best-seller. It is now in its fourth print run and was named runner-up at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Paris in July 2009.

Women of the Land is a non-fiction work which brings together the inspiring and heart-warming stories of eight rural women who run their own farms, or in the case of one, manage a cattle station on behalf of an entire community. Often juggling the demands of raising a family, they have overcome tragedy, personal fears, physical exhaustion and more than a little scepticism to build vibrant futures that sustain them and their families, in the process inspiring their neighbours and communities with their entrepreneurship, humility and determination. Here is a sneak peak of some of their stories.

  • Susie Chisholm from Adelong in NSW, the original ‘earth mother’, raised in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, who overcame the grief of losing the love of her life to cancer, to become an elite beef cattle breeder.
  • Cecily Cornish, from Wando Bridge in western Victoria, in her 80s and still farming sheep and cattle, and a passionate horse woman who, as a young woman, sailed to an England still recovering from the war to find and bring back a remarkable
  • Keelen Mailman, Augathella QLD, the first Aboriginal woman in Australia to manage a cattle station.

 

Women of the Land was released in April and although I have tried to make contact with Liz my emails keep bouncing!