[printfriendly]

By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] W [/dropcap]hen you think of a farmer’s wife, what comes to mind?

A cliched ‘reality’ TV show? A woman in sensible shoes slaving over a wood stove to feed the shearers? Or a highly capable, multi-tasking soul who milks – sometimes literally – the best out of life on the land?

A rural women’s forum to be held in Dunkeld next month (May 13) called Farming Fantasies-Rural Realities, seeks to connect those women who are very much the latter, but who because of distance, or a shortage of time, may not know each other exists.

Among them will be women who are not only involved in the running of their farming property, but also running their own businesses, raising children, organising community events or working to improve farming practices – and sometimes all of the above.

“There are so many women right across this region who are doing amazing things,” says Marty Gent from the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Authority that is coordinating the day.

“This forum, which is a first for us, is aimed at bringing them together, sharing their experiences, building networks, providing support for each other and, hopefully, leading to other events down the track.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he sort of inspirational women Marty is talking about include Leila Sweeney, a 27-year-old fashion designer raised on a NSW farm who has since returned to farming life at Tatyoon, near Ararat.

Tatyoon has a population of 326 which drops to 323 when Leila, her husband Sean McDougall and four-month-old baby Vincent go travelling, but despite its size and rural location, Leila successfully negotiates running her fashion label, Leila Sweeney, from their 1620ha sheep, cattle and cropping property near the town.

“I grew up on a farm and even when I was living in Sydney (on a fashion design scholarship) I was a country girl in a big city,” Leila says.

“To be honest, I love designing fashion, but I am not a fashionable person at all,” she laughs.

Having a small child meant Leila missed being involved in Melbourne Fashion Week this year, but she still nipped down to Melbourne to “keep an eye on what’s happening”.

She is also working toward releasing her next collection of wool garments by September next year that will, she hopes, be produced entirely on Australian soil. At the moment Leila has her range knitted in Singapore where she is, oddly enough, guaranteed the use of 100% Australian wool.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] A [/dropcap]side from running her own business, Leila also teaches textiles at Monivae College, Hamilton, and runs the Live Rural charity with Sean (are you exhausted yet?) to support Australian farmers.

Yet Leila believes she is not as atypical as what she sounds.

“There are a lot of women out there on farms who are running their own small businesses and doing their own thing alongside the main farm production, such as things like raising boutique lamb,” she says.

Yet despite all the creativity, skills and innovative ways that women bring to farm life, they are still rarely first in line to inherit the farm from their parents, even if their brothers show no interest.

The Farming Fantasies-Rural Realities forum may also be another step toward changing this tradition that remains more stubborn.

Leila will be one of three guest speakers at the forum, alongside Lisa Dwyer –  Chair of WestVic Dairy and a non-executive Director with the Australian Livestock Export Corporation Limited – and Naomi Turner from the Tarrington Progress Association and one of the driving forces behind the Swamp Stomp and the Woolly West Fest.

The free forum will also include discussions on community leadership, confidence and change; sustainable farming and soil health; business management and marketing; and farmer and family health and safety.

[box]The Farming Fantasies-Rural Realities forum will be held from 10am-4pm on Friday, May 13 at the Dunkeld Community Centre, 14 Sterling St. Free but RSVP essential by May 9 to Marty Gent at: m.gent@ghcma.vic.gov.au We must also mention that this project is supported by Glenelg Hopkins CMA, through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program.[/box]

 

Words and photos by Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #8F9F59;”] O [/dropcap]ne of the many beautiful things to come out of the inaugural South-West International Women’s Day Art Prize was the opportunity for people to see works by artists who don’t receive – or necessarily seek – a lot of exposure.

One such artist is the softly spoken, warm-smiled Anne Fleming, a painter and ceramicist who works from her home studio in the main street of Dunkeld and who operates a small gallery in the same location called The Waiting Room.

Like many artists, Anne is not particularly keen on spending precious creative time learning how to master Facebook, or worrying about how to run a website, so apart from a presence on the South West ArtsAtlas , most people find Anne’s studio by happy accident.

It is a delightful discovery.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #8F9F59;”] D [/dropcap]elicate, finely glazed ceramics are displayed alongside Anne’s often-dramatic oil paintings inspired by the landscape: not just that of her immediate surroundings, but those of her extensive travels in remote Australia. She and her husband Doug, a GP, love to head out in their Toyota troop carrier to “camp rough” – there is no caravan attached.

“I have never been interested in painting pretty, chocolate-box type images. I love exploring the contrasts and the drama and to say something about what this landscape means to me,” Anne explains.

There is a similar drama and movement in Anne’s sculptural work but these, unlike most of her paintings, are influenced by observing people rather than places.

Anne picks up one such work, “Catching up”, a beautifully white-glazed piece which at first appears to be two young women sitting having coffee, until you look more closely.

“One is talking on her mobile and the other is checking her mobile, which is how many young people catch up these days,” Anne says, laughing.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #8F9F59;”] A [/dropcap]nne chose one of her sculptural works to enter in the South-West IWD Art prize – ‘Dancer’, inspired by the Bangarra Dance Theatre – and it is this piece, and others like it, that hint at her first career as a physiotherapist.

This is a work by someone that clearly knows how bodies move and what they look like when they do.

It is the same with another piece, a bent-backed shearer, who again reflects another stage in Anne’s life when she and Doug decided to move from the Mornington Peninsula to the south-west.

“We decided we wanted to live on a few acres, so Doug started looking around for a practice in the country and there was one at Penshurst,” Anne explains.

“The only problem is that it is very hard to just buy a few acres in this part of the world, so we ended up with 500!”

The pair had never farmed in their life, but were thrown in the deep end when about 1000 sheep were delivered “to the front door” of their property and needed to be mustered into a back paddock.

“They had to go through this tiny gate. We had no sheep dogs, but we had kids on bikes, and it took forever,” Anne laughs at the memory.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #8F9F59;”] W [/dropcap]hile still working as a physiotherapist – and a farmer – Anne returned to study art at Deakin University in Warrnambool in the 1990s and picked up a thread that had lain dormant while she raised her family.

Growing up in Adelaide, Anne would watch the work of her mother, Dorothy Potter, who was part of Val Morgan Advertising and responsible for designing ads shown at cinemas and drive-ins.

“My mother was very artistic…and I had always loved art, but I hated art at school because that was all very formal, about colour wheels and that sort of thing,” Anne says.

Anne took a series of small classes and workshops, but it was only once she enrolled at Deakin and studied under the guidance of lecturers like Graeme Birt and Ross Gray that she began to find her “voice”.

“You are always learning,” she says, “and it’s never what you might call easy.

“A lot of people say, ‘oh, it must be so relaxing to just paint’, but it is often agony and very frustrating but then, at some point, the painting takes over and it works…and you realise you have created something that nobody has done before.”

[box]The Waiting Room gallery can be found at 107B Parker St, Dunkeld. Open “haphazard” hours, but mostly weekends. Contact Anne on 0438 361 761. See more of her work on South West ArtsAtlas here.[/box]

[button link=”http://the-terrier.com.au/subscribe-2/” type=”icon” icon=”heart” newwindow=”yes”]Bluestone is aiming for at least 500 subscribers in 2015. If you enjoyed this story, please click here to become one.[/button]

You might also enjoy…

 

Clarice Beckett Art Award open for 2015

‘Granny’ rises from the grave for IWD

Discover the many sides of Helen Fitzhardinge

Biblio art prize an open book for 2015

Farms, faces and wide open spaces: Peta Jolley

By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #512D97;”]T[/dropcap]he colour purple has always been linked to royalty, so it is the perfect decor choice for a new family-run cafe that is fast becoming the king of sweet treats in Dunkeld.

Everything from the purple floor to the purple coffee cups, napkins, chairs and tongs gives an indication that Dunkeld Delights is a place with a sense of fun and that’s exactly what to expect when you drop in to what is a stylishly converted shed next to the Phillips family home in Williams St.

The Phillips family are an extraordinary group.

Not only do they get along well enough to share a house – with three of the four children having moved away and since returned – but they now all share in the family business of baking and making delicious goodies.

Until recently, Dunkeld Delights had been a regular on the local market scene, with mother, Chris, and daughter, Shantelle, making a name for themselves over the past eight years through the homestyle quality of the treats they produced in their home kitchen.

“We had the idea for a long time to do something like this (a cafe), but it was only last year that all of the pieces started to come together,” Shantelle explains.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #512D97;”] O [/dropcap]ne of those pieces was the popularity of the Dunkeld Delights cookies and cakes at Cafe 109, also in Dunkeld, where Shantelle was working at the time and which stocked her cakes and slices.

“I started to think that maybe it was finally time to go out on our own and do our own cafe,” she said.

Another was the return home of sisters Aleesha and Tryleen (who is, as far as she knows, the only person named Tryleen in Australia), neither of whom were bakers, but who were prepared to learn.

Chris and Shantelle are the type of self-taught cooks who can make anything, so they quickly taught the pair the finer points of baking and each sister now has her own area of expertise (more about that in a moment).

The final piece of the puzzle was father, Gary, who had recently retired and was able to help out with the behind-the-scenes book-keeping and other business essentials.

There was only one sticking point.

“The shed that we hoped to use was absolutely full of junk – lawnmowers and all the usual stuff you find in a garage,” Chris recalls with a laugh.

The solution? Build another shed for all of the garage junk.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #512D97;”] E [/dropcap]arlier this year the front shed was converted into a commercial kitchen, shopfront and small cafe, with an outdoor dining area that overlooks the Phillips’ magnificent garden. The cafe opened for business in August and has not looked back.

Indeed there is already talk of expanding the premises to allow for more seating and the self-contained room that son/brother Jayson uses on visits home may have to be sacrificed for that one!

The menu has also expanded to include a range of savoury items, including what might possibly be the best chicken-and-mushroom pie I have ever tasted.

“We all have our areas of expertise now,” says Chris, while identifying herself as the maker of the pie.

“Shantelle is the slice person, I am the big cakes and pies girl, Tryleen is biscuits and Aleesha makes a carrot cake to die for,” she laughs.

And who decided on the purple floor?

“It was meant to be grey and white, but when I saw it, I thought, boy that looks boring, and I kept looking at the purple thinking, ‘hmmmm,” Chris says.

“It is all a bit of fun and that’s how I wanted it. I want my kids to go to work every day and say, I am going to have the greatest day.”

Judging by the amount of laughter and happy banter during our visit, the purple is definitely working.

[box]Dunkeld Delights is one of four cafes now operating in Dunkeld and can be found at 35 Williams St, off Victoria Valley Rd. Open 7 days from 9am-4pm. You can join them on Facebook here. The Discover Dunkeld Weekend is on from Oct 17-19: what a perfect time to visit the town. Full details here.[/box]

[button link=”http://the-terrier.com.au/subscribe-2/” type=”icon” icon=”heart” newwindow=”yes”]Bluestone is aiming for 500 subscribers. If you enjoyed this story, please click here to become one![/button]

You might also enjoy…

 

Cooking up a seachange at Cape Bridgewater

A cafe that feels like coming home: Tea Tree Gallery

From serious science to one cool cat: Day Kitty

Funky bar brings life to dead alley: Coffin Sally’s 

Timboon Railway Shed Distillery

Rocksalt rocks on in Port Fairy