For many young farmers like myself, moving to the city to further our education is a daunting and unpleasant prospect.
Just now, as I sit in my high-rise apartment on La Trobe Street, the screams of ambulance sirens are abusing my eardrums and the concrete building outside my window seems to sneer at me, as though it knows that I would give anything for it to turn into grass. Upon arriving in Melbourne I immediately began hounding my parents with desperate schemes for escaping the place; haven’t you heard that there’s an urgent need for young female bricklayers in the Jerilderie district? The problem was that in my determination to escape, I was not allowing myself the chance to explore how the city life could actually benefit me.
Laura getting around the farm with her Kelpie, Jess
As farmers, we are inherently adventurous and resourceful. We are constantly upgrading the bloodlines in our stock, innovating new precision technology, and if the irrigator breaks down, inventing the latest model of swear words. Through the “droughts and flooding rains” that Dorothea Mackellar so aptly describes, we have adapted and endured. And yet, when I asked a family friend and fellow prime lamb producer about his university experience in Melbourne, he said “I couldn’t stand it, so I went jackarooing instead.” This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, but it did lead me to wonder what it is about city life that turns so many of us young rural people away; what is the reason for this metaphorical ‘divide’? I believe it is this.
From the moment we are born, kids in the country ‘belong’. We have the same pets, play for the local football/netball club, we can all argue about whether John Deere trumps Case, and we gossip about the latest B&S outside the IGA. No matter what part of the country you’re from, you’ll always have plenty to discuss with a fellow rural. However, everything changes in the city. I walk Elizabeth Street daily, and I see new faces each time. Coles is a mosh pit of flustered mothers, and instead of crops the landscape is a picture of bright lights and Wilson car parks. Our safety net is gone, so we panic. My first lesson was to open my mind. Quit trying to get out of the city, and start looking at what you can get out of the city.
Why not apply some of that farm-girl resourcefulness and start living this as though it’s another adventure?
As of June 2014, 71% of the Australian population lived in major cities (ABS, 2015) thus I assumed that it must have an abundance of redeeming qualities that I just hadn’t discovered yet. So I went to the theatre and danced on the stage with a nationally renowned actor. I fought back tears in the ‘G as the Bombers were taken to school by Collingwood on ANZAC Day. I danced with hundreds of people at a local band gig and I planned an exchange trip to West Virginia. I slowly, gradually, fell in love with aspects of Melbourne that you just can’t find in the country.
I think the key for young farmers attempting to survive university in the city is to stop trying to find the country in the city, like I was. It isn’t here and it’s not going to be. But we can adapt, and if we do we might just become a new hybrid generation of city-trained country kids.
Laura is her first year of an undergraduate degree, studying Public Relations at RMIT University in Melbourne.