Nuts about macadamias
Wendy McClusky frankly admits she never in her wildest dreams imagined herself as a farmer. Indeed, her career in TV production, advertising and marketing did little to prepare the Melbourne mother of three for her second life on a macadamia farm at Nashua in the Byron Bay hinterland.
Apart from a stint in Wangaratta, where Wendy’s parents briefly ran a motel and she completed her high schooling, she says her upbringing was very urban. When her first marriage ended, she was quite content forging a career on her own and raising her three now adult sons as a single mother. Then one night in 2013, she was out in the city with friends and literally bumped into Rob Keen, a sheep and cattle farmer from Tasmania who’d moved to the Northern Rivers of NSW to be closer to his family after his marriage had ended.
“All I knew about macadamias was they were delicious and you opened a packet and ate them,” Wendy recalls. “The closest I’d come to farming life was working for Bakers Delight, which had given me an insight into the importance of good, local produce and quality ingredients. My teenage years in Wangaratta had opened my eyes to the joys of country life and
