Trip down under takes few rural twists
A young woman from the other side of the world has enjoyed the challenges of rural life in New Zealand, as reports for our series,
Kate Scott is definitely not your average country girl.
What started out as a trip down under for a few months as a 20 -year-old turned into a seven year love affair with rural life in New Zealand.
Scott is from Cornwall in England and originally had her sights on Australia.
But her fear of spiders, arachnophobia, meant she wasn’t prepared to deal with the creepy crawlies over the ditch.
Neighbouring New Zealand looked a safer option.
Scott arrived on a work visa and had a job as an Au pair in Miranda on the Thames Coast.
It only took her a short while before she felt she wanted to stay, applied for a visa extension and cancelled her ticket back to the United Kingdom.
Enveloping herself into the community, making friends, another job came up, as Au pair on a dairy farm near Putaruru, looking after three children under six-years-old.
A fatal farm accident left the family without a husband and father, leaving his wife to run a 800-cow dairy farm on her own.
Scott was called upon to help out by feeding calves, giving her first hands-on experience in farming.
This piqued her interest in farming and she moved from looking after children to working as a contract dairy worker.
Not stopping there she embarked on a learning regime, graduated her Ag ITO Level 4 course which enable her to take on a number of positions as dairy farm manager.
She joined Young Farmers and when the challenge of a fundraising boxing match was raised she literally took the challenge on the chin.
Scott was enjoying her rural life but felt she needed a new challenge.
‘‘It was just one of those bad days you have, I was on Trade Me and saw a job as a salesperson for a real estate company in Cambridge so I applied for the position,’’ she said.
Scott gained her real estate licence in July 2016 and as a sales person for LJ Hooker in Cambridge, she keeps at least one foot in the milking shed by assisting with relief milking.