NOTHING PREPARED ME for the culinary awakening I was to experience when my family and I left the bustle of inner-city Melbourne 20 years ago for a bucolic patch of rural Tasmanian countryside.
I had always been drawn to the country – perhaps it was my mum’s influence, as she grew up in rural Deniliquin, NSW, on a sheep station. During a stint in England, I took a position in a leafy part of Essex made famous by renowned landscape artist John Constable. Once back home, I hassled Maggie Beer for a job at her eponymous restaurant in the Barossa Valley. Later, I moved to Tassie to launch a large country restaurant in Woodbridge, just across the channel from Bruny Island. And in 2009, I achieved a lifelong ambition to have my own country cafe.
Prior to leaving the mainland, I had arrived at the juncture in my career where I wanted to
