Film - Sophie Boord (filmmaker), 'Kerry Wilson on Women on Farms Gathering', Museums Victoria

I’m Kerry Wilson and I farm with my husband John in Northeast Victoria, a little town called Violet Town. We have merino sheep for wool and we’re hoping that this year is the end of quite a prolonged drought. I come from an urban background in Melbourne…came here in the ‘70s. I worked as a teacher and then retired from teaching to have children and was very involved physically in the farming partnership. Women on Farms I heard about via the radio and we’d been through some very hard times on the farm and I thought that sounds like something I’d really like to try. So, I enrolled and my first gathering was in Beechworth in 2001 and what really impressed me was the welcoming of the women and the diversity of women from different farming backgrounds and all the things that they were involved in over that weekend from workshops to tours and it involved not just farming enterprises but wonderful things like textiles and produce and lots of animals and plants. Yeah, but it was the camaraderie too…and the support from the rural women at that gathering that I became a convert too.

Our flock, our flock of sheep was diagnosed with Ovine Johne’s which is a wasting disease when sheep are in their prime. So the policy in Victoria at the time was if you de-stocked, which meant all the flock went for slaughter, that you would get compensation. So we chose that option because we’ve got farm in three different physical places and we weren’t allowed to have stock on the road for a couple of years. But, it meant that the breeding program that we were doing since John started in the ‘70s, we lost that genetic pool. He also had a couple of heart operations and a cancer operation…and we had to decide what we would go back into, so we chose a bull beef operation, but since the drought this year we’ve had to de-stock the bull beef because of the high cost of feeding…and the other thing, that when we did go back into sheep we struck…a couple of summers ago now…we struck the coldest ever day recorded in February and of the 1,200 sheep we had, we lost 1,100 overnight where they basically suffered hypothermia and it was the most amazing thing to experience, as animal farmers who sort of care about their animals, to see them. You felt like they, you know that they were still alive, they were sort of sitting in groups, under trees and anywhere they could huddle really, but...yes… it was quite a thing to see and to sort of recover from. But now we’re back into sheep and we’re hoping for rain and then we can stop feeding them all this expensive grain.

There was a wonderful icon developed by one of the women’s daughters who made this beautiful sculptural icon of a rose. She used a long barbed wire stem which really to me symbolised the strength and sinew that’s involved with people who work on the land and also it symbolized the theme of ‘Take time to smell the Roses ‘…and so the bloom, which was made from a recycled tobacco tin, has this wonderful pattern of bronze into sort of, mild gold colours and just reminds you that life’s not all tough, that there’s some beautiful moments and you know, we should enjoy the journey.

At the Beechworth gathering, that was my first gathering, the curator from Museum Victoria talked about this possibility to have a unique partnership and I thought that seemed like a terrific project to get involved with… so I signed up and I have found it really a life enhancing program because it’s an opportunity for a grass roots community group to work with, perhaps the major institution for recording stories and memories in Victoria.

The Museum itself has actually recognised the Heritage Program by making Rhonda Diffey and myself Honorary Associates of the Museum and to us that really strengthen our relationship with Museum Victoria and it recognises that it’s the women themselves who are the keepers of their own stories.

Film - Sophie Boord (filmmaker), 'Lyn Johnson on the Women on Farms Gathering', Museums Victoria

LYN JOHNSON: I'm Lyn Johnson. I was a dairy farmer and a cheese manufacturer here on this farm, Hillcrest at Neerim South. And also, I came from Melbourne, so I had an interesting introduction to farming. But I became involved with the Women on Farms in about 1989.

Well the first one was held in Warragul, and that virtually came out of a group of women who wanted to gain skills-- farming skills like fencing and using chainsaws. But I went along, and I was really surprised to see who was there and how many women were there. It was quite enlightening, really. I'd been farming here for a number of years with my husband Rob. We farm in partnership. And I was keen to perhaps broaden my horizon, just not milking cows-- see what else was happening.

They had workshops. They had speakers, quite inspiring speakers. They had two women from Sea Lake. At that time it was fairly dry, and they'd been having a very hard time. And some of the menfolk were finding very had, struggling on the farms, and some of them were losing their farms. They were fifth or sixth generation farms, and it was a very hard time. Those two women came down and told us about that, and we were very moved by it, really. So the next year, it was decided that that's where the gathering would be held-- at Sea Lake.

So there was 120 women, I think, went to that second Gathering. It was a long way from Gippsland, Sea Lake. They didn't have enough chairs in the town. So everywhere we went, the different meetings, there was a lorry with 120 chairs followed us around the town. It was fun. We had a great time. We found that we had lot in common with those women. We also found that we gained an understanding of the wheat industry, because we came from this area which is dairying.

I've been to 17 gatherings, so it's being quite a journey. I've met some wonderful women, learnt a lot, seen women grow. There's a famous quote of Elaine Payton who says that she went an ordinary farming person and came back a farmer.

A number of the women were already farming on their own due to being widowed or perhaps having suicide in the family or some situation. And I think the Gathering gave them a safe environment to come together with a lot of other women. And it's really a talkfest. The Gatherings are a huge talkfest-- a great sharing of information in a sympathetic type of environment for women to tackle some of the needs, to discuss how hard it is for them perhaps farming on their own or farming in a family if you're a daughter-in-law or something like that that is not a sympathetic environment.

Among the Women on Farms Gathering Heritage Committee, Lisa Dale has been our coordinator, and she's been very, very supportive to Women on Farms. I first met Lisa, I think it was with the Australian Women in Agriculture First International Conference. She came along to a couple of Gatherings and perhaps sensed that here was something that was worth preserving. The women had stories to tell, and we heard stories from older women, a generation ago from us. We heard stories from younger women. And I think Lisa, perhaps, saw that they should be preserved. And I think it's a very fine collection, and it's very well presented.

The other thing that came about were the memory sheets. And women are encouraged to put their memories down of the Gatherings, their experiences.

[LAUGHS]

They're not just memories of someone who's passed. They're living memories.

By the time of the third Gathering, people with thinking more about icons. And the situation there at Numurkah gave rise, I think, to the cow pat and the shovel. So since then, the icons have been weird and wonderful things. Benalla was a wire rose because Benalla's the city of the rose. Sometimes farming can be prickly. Sometimes it can be good. You can have your hard times, your good times. And that symbolized that Gathering.

In 1999, the tenth Gathering was held in Warragul. The theme was success through challenge, and the icon was a boot, like this. The boot actually belonged to Win Macreadie, but this was one of my boots. Success does come from challenge. And we found on our farm here at Neerim South in West Gippsland that we needed to undertake a challenge, because we were getting poor prices for our milk. We had to do something about that.

In 1978, we organized a dairy farmers study tour to America. Well, we went to a goat farm, and the man there was milking 1,500 goats, selling the milk direct to the public. And we thought, what a wonderful idea. Maybe we could do that when we came home. But we couldn't do that. We weren't allowed to do that.

So in 1984, we took another group to Europe. And we saw a Dutch farmer making cheese out of goat's milk and cow's milk and selling that direct to the public and to all the tourists that came to his farm. So we thought, what a wonderful idea. Perhaps we could do that.

It was quite a challenge. It was quite different from being a dairy farmer. Eventually, we came together with Laurie Jensen, who is our partner still to this day. We were now cheese manufacturers. We were sending our product off the farm. We then became price makers, not price takers. And we had some control over our destiny. I think sometimes farmers aren't given credit for being innovators, and we have to be that if we're going to survive in today's climate.

I remember one day my son came home, David, and said, what do you do all day, Mum? And I said, well, I do this. I do that. I go to the dairy. I look after the calves. I look after Dad. I look after you, do the household. And I said, why was this question? And he said, well, the school teacher had asked them to please write down what their parents did, and he couldn't really quantify what I did. If I'd gone out to work nine to five, he would have been quite satisfied and said, my mum works. But because you live on the farm and you're on the job, you're not really deemed to be going out to work.

The Gatherings offer an opportunity to bring back the ideas to the farm. You can even educate your husband or your partner or your parents about tuning the chainsaw or doing the books or using some computer program. Women are great disseminators of information-- the old saying, tell a woman and it'll be spread around. We're not afraid to ask questions.

Film - Sophie Boord (filmmaker), 'Yvonne Jennings on the Women on Farms Gathering', Museums Victoria

YVONNE JENNINGS: Swan Hill's an agricultural service center, and any woman who works here in the town is part of that scene-- really part of that scene. And women have historically not gone to gatherings because, I'm not a rural woman. Yes, you are. You're a rural woman because you live out of Melbourne.

Ann Young and I went to Tallangatta to the Women on Farms Gathering there, and we were so blown away by the event. And we said, we need one for Swan Hill.

Things were pretty dreary back then. They really were. There were many empty shops in the town, and things were crook-- really crook then. We did a brainstorming, and actually it's in our scrapbook-- the 10 things that we could see needed to be done.

We looked at it 15 years later and said every one of those things, you can now give a tick to. Now, we can't claim that we did them personally-- like, setting up a shop with local produce. Other people have done that. But putting it out there, things started to happen. And there's always magic things happen after a Gathering has been in the town.

When I said something magic happens in a town after a Gathering's been there, it's because a group of people have learnt to work really well together to showcase where they live-- to start looking with different eyes at what their place is. And that's where the magic starts to happen after the Gathering goes.

I've been asked in interviews, why Women's Gathering? And I say, why not?

With the Swan Hill Women on Farms Gathering, we worked hard at pulling all women's groups in the town together to work together on this function. Business and professional women did the registration for us. Penguins-- it's a group that teaches the art of chairmanship and public speaking, so they helped with the farm women who stood up and told their stories.

It was women telling their story. And so instead of history, his-story, we had her-story of being on the land.

The Swan Hill Gathering was unique in a couple of ways. We set down as a group and talked about previous Gatherings. And our sense was that our blokes and the part the play in our lives wasn't being truly depicted.

We approached Bryce Courtenay as a keynote speaker. Now having a man as a keynote speaker at Women's Gathering did not gel with some people, but we believed it was important because we love our blacks. We work beside them. They're with us every day. They're part of it. Bryce Courtenay-- God bless him-- little bantam rooster in amongst the hens, he strutted up and down that stage. He was brilliant. He really was.

The other way Swan Hill was unique was we were the first Gathering to recognize career women. So we got Ivy to tell her story, and it's in the booklet. We got career women to do a workshop on medicinal plants. And we actually had quite a large contingent of Aboriginal women come from South Australia, because South Australia were ready to start Gatherings in South Australia too. So they were part of that. So Swan Hill-- that was a first for Swan Hill.

The Saturday night dinner was just truly inspirational. The Italian ladies group were brilliant. They sang in Italian, and brought tears to our eyes because it was a very moving, powerful thing for them to stand up and sing to an all-women group.

At the end, the Aboriginal women-- the Ngarrindjeri women from South Australia-- they were so moved. They wanted to be part of it. They stood up as a group and said, can we sing? Can we sing? And we said, yeah, of course. So up they came, and they sang hymns.

You see, those icons to you guys are so important. But to us, they were, oh bloody hell. Do we have to do this? They done it at the last one. But that is the thing with a sense of history. Don't we wish-- well, don't I wish-- that I went crazy with a camera when I was a kid and recorded what our life was really like then.

We didn't actually sit down and have a formal committee meeting and go, what's really relevant? And what means us? And all of that. It was very informal. Isabel said, oh, my son does woodwork. We'll get a mallee stump. And I said, a mallee stump? And she said, no, no, no-- It'll look good. It'll look good. Don't worry about it.

When Cath brought it in, here it was-- a mallee root sawn in half and the top had been polished. And inside the mallee root is this beautiful grain, of course, and my thoughts-- of course-- were, it is like us Mallee women. Yes, because we work so hard, because we're often outside-- knobbly on the outside, tough, resilient. But on the inside, you just chip away and have a look and great beauty-- great beauty, softness, warmth, tenderness.

The thing I gleaned from the Fourth World Congress for Rural Women was the incredible support that women give women over there. It's vital to our being as women-- to be supported when we step out. And I suspect it's why often women don't step out in leadership roles in rural communities-- because they don't feel supported and enabled.

Now, the Rural Women's Network have played a very, very important role in each of the Gatherings. They have come to the country and been part of the Gathering committee in a purely advisory role. And I can remember vividly Janet Barker sitting up at my kitchen table where we were having a Gathering meeting and saying, have you thought about multiculturalism? And we went, huh? Well, you have a strong Italian community here. What are you doing? Oh. Oh, yeah.

So she didn't say, you should have Italian women being part of this. She put it on the table. So yes, we recognized cultural diversity, and now we know what it is.

A classic quote from the Fourth International World Congress for Rural Women which says, "Nothing about us without us."

As a member of the Women on Farms Gathering Heritage Committee, I look at Liza Dale and the role that she's played, and it has mirrored what the Rural Women's Network has done along the way. And there's been nothing about us without us. And, you know, maybe that's a slogan for Museum Victoria's work in this with the Heritage Group. When I said, who's going to be the keeper of the Gathering? Maybe it is Museum Victoria, because I believe they have taken their shoes off and stepped into our space with us.

Museum Victoria and the Heritage Group have woken us up to the fact that this is her-story stuff. And we need to consciously reflect on what we're doing and look after it. And that it's precious.

Film - Sophie Boord (filmmaker), 'Discussion on the Women on Farms Gathering project and the Perpetual Banner with Liza Dale-Hallett and Marian Quartly', Museums Victoria

-The thing that's been challenging for me is that I've had to really redefine how I work.

-Mhm.

-So I'm not just working with things. I'm working directly with community and the meaning that that community holds. The objects that we're collecting are still alive, and the women who created and helped organize the Hamilton gathering last year are coming in to sew this on to the perpetual banner.

-I'm Sally, and this is Ann, and we've come down from Hamilton.

-The "Hats off to rural women," slogan actually celebrates the role that women play in the community. The four hats that were chosen for the logo, the first one being the akubra, and that represents the agricultural contribution that women make to the agricultural industry. The helmet is actually representative of the emergency services, and certainly, community service that women participate in. The academic hat is obviously representative of their qualifications and the education that they had participated in either a paid or voluntary role. And the fashionable hat, representing their social interaction and their personal life.

The color purple probably doesn't necessarily represent rural, but it's a nice--

-Feminine color.

-It is a nice, feminine color, the lavender and the purple. But as we said, we were pleased with the result. And once again, we could have certainly put a lot more hats on the hat stand if we were to represent all the roles that we women play in the community.

-The banner is made up of-- each previous year's been represented by an image, with usually a statement. So they use both imagine, and word, and symbols.

-And they're very clear really about the layers of meaning that they want to build into that.

-Yeah. This is pretty precious. This is from the Numurkah gathering.

MARIAN QUARTLY: Is it really the real cow pat?

-It is the real cow pat that they had at that gathering, and it was a bit of an afterthought from the stories that we've collected. The actual icon, it's a jewel icon, the cow pat, and an irrigation shovel. At this particular gathering, the minister for agriculture, at the time, gave a very-- well, it was one of those patronizing speeches. So on the formal handing over ceremony, which is part of the rituals associated with these icons, someone added the cow pat as a sort of symbol of what had happened.

MARIAN QUARTLY: Foolproof.

LIZA DALE-HALLETT: It's a very powerful.

-And it's very political, because it does definitely say, we don't quite like your approach to the minister. The whole process is a communal one in which people work together, and they make their meanings as they go. Now, that's hard for the museum, isn't it? It's not just hard for the museum, and they're just taking in an object, which has got to change under its hands, as it were. But it's also hard, because the museum has to grasp the fact that these women continue to claim the right to make the meaning for these objects.

-My interpretation of the value of this material is shared with the women. And we come in it from different angles. And just like your interest, it comes from another angle again. So in a sense, we've got not only the diversity of the women themselves, but we're opening up the possibility that there's a lot of different ways of valuing this material.

-And there's a lot of different histories in the material in exactly the same way as you're going to have to struggle with persuading the museum that affects can carry meanings that are not determined by the museum.

-Mhm.

-A lot of historians of beginning now to come to terms with the proposition that their sore spaces, their collections of documents and things, may actually need comment coming in from the people who are the subjects of those. And it really is going to change that sense of any fixed history or any determined authority of history.

-And it keeps evolving. And I suppose the other thing that really, I think is I suppose one of the areas that I'm interested in is the way in which these women have identified themselves through symbols, because if you think back to the museum's practice, we collect things. And usually, those things have an intrinsic value. The value and the essence of this collection is that it resides beyond the tangible. It's beyond the object, beyond the perceived value.

We've got everything from a magic wand to a cow pat. These things have no intrinsic value in the sense of what they are. But they have through the symbolism that they represent. The other interesting thing too is in a sense, the community's taking the leadership here. They've actually, quite separately to the museum, assigned their own significance, have articulated that these things are important to them, that they want somehow to preserve them and locate them somewhere that makes sense of them.

And that empowerment, that sense of not only participating in it, but making meaning, and then creating some other outcome is pretty exciting, like the women's involvement in the various conference presentations, and talking about it. It's not just me as the curator. And then it becomes more like a community curatorial process.

-It allows community ownership of a communal memory.