Anthea Fellows is a mum and a grandmother and over the past few decades she's worked tirelessly doing community work across various organisations and charities.  Anthea has been married for 35 years and her life has been anything but dull. At 22, she left the Adelaide Hills and moved to a cattle station just outside Alice Springs where she met a jackaroo, and, well, you know what happened next! Anthea had two children and struggled with her mental health at times. Her husband was also...

Karla Williams lives on a dairy farm in Tassie, she's a nurse and a mum of two little boys, and over the past two years I've grown to know her and love her through our Motherland Village group. To understand Karla's motherhood journey, you have to understand her childhood. Her parents are deaf, and Karla was just 10 months old when she first learned to sign which is how she communicated with them. In many ways, Karla was a mother and a carer, before having children of her own. And when she...

Kate Pianto is one of my dearest friends. She's in my Motherland Village group, and over the past two years I've had the pleasure of getting to know this amazing woman. But I'll be honest, sitting down with her for this podcast was a bit shocking at times, because she said things I've never heard her say before. Kate has ADHD and was only diagnosed when she was 26. She was seeing a psychologist at the time for postnatal depression and was in a really really dark place. Interestingly, ADHD...

Yesterday was International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day, and to honour all those parents who have lost a baby, I wanted to bring you a very special, but difficult episode today. It's personal, because Caitlyn Power is my friend. She's in my Motherland Village group which has been going strong for two years now. Caitlyn has four children- her third, Maggie, was delivered stillborn at full term just a couple of months after Caitlyn connected with our rural mothers' group. It shattered us all....

When deciding whether to pursue teaching or nursing, Annabel Tully flipped a coin, it landed on teaching, and that's what brought her to the bush where she found love.  Annabel and her husband have five children, most of them are adults now, but at one point, years ago, Annabel was terrified they'd grow up without a mother.  At just 29, what Annabel thought was just a blocked milk duct turned out to be breast cancer. She was pregnant at the time and had to go straight into two surgeries.......

Brodie Game lives on the far south coast of NSW on dairy country, and she loves her cows, I mean loves them! She's up at 3am milking every morning, living her dream. It's been a tough road though. Over the past 10 years, Brodie and her husband have grown their own herd from 2 cows, to more than 300, but there have been times they've nearly lost it all, or wanted to walk away.  Brodie's children were really little when they went through a horrific drought and had to sell half their herd. Then,...

Emily Bryant lives on a cattle station south of Katherine in the Northern Territory. Career wise, she was on fire in her 20s, moving from station cook to head stockman, to station manager in just a few years. Emily lived and breathed work- she admits she was married to her job. In that time, she fell head over heels with a bloke who she went on to marry. But at just 26, a year after saying 'I do' - she was divorced. So what happened? This isn't a story about a dramatic break up or a...

Stephanie Wurst was born and raised in the city, and unexpectedly met a farmer on the dancefloor, and soon found herself moving to Kangaroo Island! Steph and her husband Tom went on to have three kids where she had to adapt quickly to the realities of living remotely with limited services. She was flown off the island to have her first baby, and nearly lost her second child during labour. But after all that, as a mum of three, Steph thrived- she loved motherhood, and she grew to adore life on...

This week, I'm very pleased to introduce you to Motherland's Queensland Ambassador Alice Woods. Alice is based on a farm near Goondiwindi, she's a trained vet, and spent more than 4 years in a long distance relationship with her now husband Dave, until they finally settled down on his family's farm. The journey to parenthood was not easy. After having her first little boy through IVF, Alice had three miscarriages in a row...and if living rurally wasn't isolating enough, it all happened during...

Last week, we heard Steph Borowski's story, and today, you'll hear my very candid interview with her husband Josh. Josh is the first bloke I've had on this show, and this is one of the most important interviews I've ever done, because while my focus is on supporting rural mothers through Motherland, I felt it was time to hear a father's perspective to help close the loop. Josh is ready to talk. He's ready to share how initially becoming a father scared the hell of him, how he struggled with...

This is the two-part episode I'd argue every mum and dad needs to listen to. In Part 1 today, I speak to Steph Borowski, and next week, you'll hear my chat with her husband Josh- the first man to be on Motherland. Steph met her husband in L.A, fresh out of school, they were both young actors chasing a dream. Fast forward a few years, and they settled on Josh's family farm in North West NSW, where life got pretty tricky once they had children. Josh, like so many farmers, was working around the...

Sarra Riddick and her partner tried to have a baby for three and a half years, before she finally fell pregnant with their twin boys, Heath and Hunter, through IVF.  But after a devastating 20-week scan, Sarra and Jarrad had to make the toughest decision of their lives, terminating one of the twins, to give the other the best possible chance of survival. Sarra had to go through an unimaginable emotional rollercoaster after birthing her boys, experiencing joy after welcoming Hunter, who was...

Melissa Duniam lives on the far north west coast of Tasmania and has spent the past 20 years in the dairy industry. When she was 18, she fell pregnant with her first daughter and soon after, became a single mum after her relationship ended. Melissa once vowed she'd never marry a dairy farmer, but that's exactly what she went on to do a couple of years later after falling in love with her now husband. She had two more daughters, and navigated some intense highs and lows during early...

This week is Australia's first ever Loneliness Awareness Week. It's a national epidemic and through Motherland's work, we know there are so many rural mums out there who are struggling with feelings of loneliness and isolation. Simone Heng is a human connection expert. Her new book, Loneliness- Let's talk about it, details her personal struggles with loneliness, but it's also an incredible guide on how we can kick loneliness to the curb for the sake of our health and our families. Simone grew...

In last week's episode, we heard about Maddie's incredible highs and lows before she became a mum, and in Part 2, you'll hear about the rollercoaster she went through after birthing her little boy. She suffered a traumatic 24 hours after having her son, even passing out on the table in theatre. Her journey into motherhood wasn't what she imagined, and while things eventually go better, they, unbelievably, got a whole lot worse again. Last year, Maddie snapped her leg in two places and ended...

Maddie Staff lives on a station on the NT/WA border, and in this first part of her story, she opens up about losing her mother from breast cancer when she was just 18 months old, then years later finding out she was adopted. You'll hear what happened when she met her birth mother, plus how she found her birth father and slid into his DMs on Facebook. Maddie has also navigated two very toxic relationships, one that involved a miscarriage, and she also shares how she turned to alcohol to cope...

Georgie Somerset is a rural industry leader and a trailblazer. While a lot of us know her as the president of AgForce, and her many board roles including the ABC, and the National Farmers Federation, it's what she did decades ago that I've loved digging up. Georgie is one of the pioneers of agri-tourism. Growing up the land, she was just 17 when she set up a farm stay business on her family farm, later establishing national farm tourism body. After working in the city for a while, she...

Bronnie Taylor has been in the public life 10 years, four as a cabinet minister, and two as the most senior female in the NSW Government.  Until her party lost the election in March, she was the Minister for Women, the Minister for Regional Health and the Minister for Mental Health. She's now the Deputy Leader of The NSW Nationals and the shadow Minister for Regional Health.  But that's just a taste of her political CV. What I had the privilege of discovering is the real Bronnie Taylor, the...

At just 19, Georgie had finished school, bought a house, and met James... the man she wanted to spend her life with. Fast forward a few years, and her and James had gotten married, and were busy raising two beautiful boys on his family's farm. Life was pretty picture perfect, until it wasn't. In 2017, James was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given just 6 to 12 months to live. In our chat, Georgia bravely shares her story including what it was like losing her husband, what she told her...

Gemma Sisia grew up on a sheep and cattle property in northern New South Wales, as one of eight children. After finishing school, she went to Africa to teach... that was 22 years ago and she's never looked back! Gemma met her husband on safari (that's a cracking story) and had four children. You'll hear about the incredible cultural differences and how she was treated after having her babies over there. Amongst it all, Gemma had a dream to build a school that would support some of Africa's...

Alice Greenup grew up in Melbourne, and when she finished school, she went travelling on a gap year, got a job as a governess on a cattle station, where she fell in love with a jackaroo. At the time, she couldn't tell tell a cow from a bull, and how things have changed! Today Alice and her husband, Rick who have three teenage children, run one of Australia’s largest seedstock businesses, supplying bulls and cattle to the Australian beef industry. 10 years ago, Alice wrote a memoir detailing...

Sue Barclay lives 500 kilometres west of Sydney and over the past 12 months she's visited the big smoke far more than she'd like. Sue got out of the shower one night with a frightening symptom that changed her life. She was diagnosed with untreatable ovarian cancer, but refused to give up and sought a second opinion at Sydney's Royal Hospital for Women. Since then, she's made the trip back and forth to the hospital 17 times, in the fight of her life. At one stage, when her station succumbed...

In the 1980's, Sally Warriner returned to Australia after backpacking overseas, and she hitchhiked to the far north. It's there, she fell in love and married a cowboy, and spent the next 25 years managing pastoral properties in the top end while raising seven children, including three of her own. Sally wore so many hats. As a trained nurse, she was at the scene of many emergencies and accidents over the years. She was the station cook, her husband's business partner, and even a social...

Cassie Norris lives on her family cattle station in the far south west corner of Queensland. Right now, life looks picture perfect with her and her husband raising their two beautiful little girls. But there is an extraordinary and heartbreaking story behind the happy smiles you see today. Cassie was 15 years old when she discovered she born without ovaries- and her condition meant she'd have to seek egg donors if she ever wanted to fall pregnant and start a family. Cassie went through IVF...

In 2010, when Dr Alison Jones applied to be a contestant on Farmer Wants a Wife, she did it for a bit of a laugh, and had no idea just how seriously the show would impact her life. Fast forward to today and her and Charlie are busy raising three young boys from their property in Walcha, New South Wales. Alison is a long way from inner-west Sydney where she grew up, and admits it took her two years to adjust to life on the land after a 7 year long distance relationship with Charlie. After her...