The great rural pivot
JULIA FOYSTER
The good harvest
Growing up in rural Germany could never have prepared Julia Foyster (opposite, with her family) for the rewards and heartache of a farmer’s life in Australia. Arriving in 2009, the backpacker signed up for work picking fruit, though falling for a fifth-generation farmer wasn’t part of her plan.
Julia married that Aussie farmer, Nathan, and worked alongside him on his family properties, first in Queensland’s Atherton Tablelands and then in northern NSW. She remembers learning to delicately hand-pick mangoes and driving the tractor during pawpaw harvest “while our baby daughter slept happily in a sling”.
They had two toddlers, Eve and Sam, when their NSW property – which grows pumpkins, avocados, watermelons and macadamias – was hit by a devastating flood. But, as Aussie farmers do, they kept going. They replanted quickly … only to watch in despair as another close-to-harvest watermelon crop floated
