MY COUNTRY CHILDHOOD

A FIFTH-GENERATION SOUTH AUSTRALIAN, OUR FIRST FEMALE FOREIGN MINISTER LOVES COMING HOME TO THE ADELAIDE HILLS. OUR EDITOR IN CHIEF VICTORIA CAREY VISITS JULIE BISHOP ON THE FAMILY FARM.

Growing up on an apple and cherry orchard in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills has kept former foreign minister Julie Bishop grounded.

ONE OF JULIE BISHOP’S favourite books as a child was South Australian author Colin Thiele’s February Dragon. Thiele is famous for his novel Storm Boy, but it was this lesser-known work that struck a chord with our former foreign minister when she was a little girl. “It was about a bush fire and it made me cry, because it reminded me of the stories that my father would tell about our property when the place burnt down,” says Julie, referring to the Black Sunday fires that destroyed her family’s Adelaide Hills farm. Isabel Bishop — Julie’s resourceful mother who went on to become the mayor of East Torrens District Council — was at home alone with her oldest daughters, Mary Lou and Patricia, on January 2, 1955, when the fires hit. Her husband Doug, a member of the local fire brigade, was away fighting bush fires at the time. “Mary Lou tells the story of Mum putting her in the bath with lots and lots of blankets. She has a recollection of getting out of the bath and going out onto the balcony and seeing the pine trees shooting up like rockets and her skin just bubbling up, so Mum whipped her back into the bath,” says Julie, as she points out the spot where a shed burnt down. It may have happened more than 60 years ago, and a year before she was born on July 17, 1956, but it’s clear that the memories of this disaster are still vivid for the Bishop family — it took them nearly 2o years to recover. But while life on Tetratheca, named after a purple wildflower that grows in the Adelaide Hills, had some challenges, it was usually idyllic, with the Bishop children — younger brother Douglas joined the family six years after Julie — running to the orchard in the morning to pick an apple to take to the little stone school house up the hill. This trip to school was often the only time they would leave the farm. “We didn’t have to go anywhere else, I wouldn’t leave the place for weeks. Our milk was delivered, our bread was delivered and our groceries were delivered,” she explains. As a 12-year-old, Julie would often cook dinner. “Mum would be there, but she just wasn’t a great cook. She would do things that all country housewives did… make preserves, jam, tomato sauce and things like that, but she wasn’t that interested in cooking. So we all learnt to pitch in.” Amongst the roasts and grilled chops was a family favourite. “I did a great veal dish — Veal Birds! I made a stuffing of apricots and fresh breadcrumbs, and then you rolled the veal up.” Does it ever appear on the menu these days? “No!” she says with a laugh. Her early country life has had a lasting impact. “The values and principles that I live by were obviously instilled in me here,” she says, walking around the orchard in front of Willow Cottage, her parents’ first home. The foundations for the strength and determination she showed during her political life were laid on this property. “We had sheep and they would often be attacked by wild dogs. We would head out with Dad to help him pick up the lambs that had been savaged. It makes you very resourceful and very resilient,” she says. Her father Doug eventually moved off the farm and into the north Adelaide suburb of Medindie when he was 90, working up until the day he left. He died in 2017, but the pull of home for his Perth-based daughter is still strong. “When I’m back in Adelaide, I can come back to the places of my childhood and the family is so deeply connected here, that I feel very much at home.” The Waterfalls cottage on the property is available for short stays, bookings can be made at bishopsadelaidehills.com.au/property/waterfalls.aspx >

MUM TOOK ME OUT WITH HER into the orchard from the time I was a baby. We all worked from the time we could carry a cherry bucket. By the time I was about seven, I had a job in the shed. That’s how we got our pocket money — sorting and packing. I did it right through university. You would sit on a stool at the conveyor belt with the cherries — everybody had a different task along the conveyor belt. Mine was generally picking out the affected fruit and then, at the other end, my father would be packing it into boxes. My uncle, his task was to carry the fruit out of the cold storage, but that was all after a day of picking. So you’d be picking in the morning and then pack late into the night. Then Dad would take the cherries to market, getting up at about 3am. I’ve spent many, many weeks picking cherries in this orchard. I was at home with my parents until I was five and then I started in Grade 1 at Basket Range. It was only about two kilometres away. I guess, as a little girl, it took quite some time to walk home. My grandfather would drive us to school in the mornings with my two cousins, Geoffrey and John, who lived on the family property with their parents, my father’s cousin Murray and his wife Jean. My dad’s brother, and his wife and children, also lived here. Growing up, my aunties, uncles, cousins… we all lived on the same property. My great-grandfather Charles Bishop started the school in the 1890s. He was one of the founders of Basket Range Primary School. And my grandfather was a teacher there. My father attended Basket Range Primary School, as did all my siblings. When I went there, it was a two-teacher school, a husband and wife, Harold and Gweneth Nitschke. [Their son was pro-euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke.] There were about 20 children at that stage. So when we had to field a football team, everybody played. I was usually on the wing. I lived in a world of make-believe with my two older sisters, Mary Lou and Patricia. My mother had a magnificent dress-up box. It was a trunk, an old steamer trunk, filled with her dresses and jewellery. Mum kept all her dresses — her wedding dress and her beautiful debutante dress. We would dress up and clump around the orchard in these dresses. Some people were stunned that Mum allowed us to do that, but she didn’t mind. We had cats galore — one day, the family cat had a litter of kittens, and we were all allowed to keep one — and we also always had chickens. Every year my father would let us buy a box of coloured chickens at the Royal Adelaide Show. We would bring them home and raise them in a box under a light in the kitchen. Most of the time we played outside, until we discovered Monopoly. We got a set one Christmas, and for some reason Patricia and I became obsessed with playing Monopoly under the bed. I think it was so Mum couldn’t see us. We’d crawl in under our bed and play Monopoly into the night. With our cousins Geoffrey and John, we used to play Robin Hood and there’s a grove, see those big pine trees over there. We made out that that was Sherwood Forest … so we played hours and hours of Robin Hood in there. The tragedy was that Mary Lou was Maid Marian. Patricia was Robin Hood. John was the Sheriff of Nottingham. And Geoffrey was one of the others, but they made me be Friar Tuck. I was five and rather round, and I had to wear a sugar bag with a little rope around it. My mother unfortunately used to cut my hair in a way so I looked like Friar Tuck. Mary Lou as Maid Marian would traipse around in one of Mother’s beautiful gowns, while Patricia had a little outfit with a bow and arrow as Robin Hood. It was wonderful, an idyllic childhood, apart from the Friar Tuck bit!

MY COUNTRY CHILDHOOD Surrounded by a cherry orchard, Willow Cottage was Julie Bishop’s first home — she shared a bedroom with her two sisters. FACING PAGE Julie’s family have lived on the Adelaide Hills property, which is still a working farm, for over 135 years.

MY COUNTRY CHILDHOOD Bishop Orchards produces more than 20 different varieties of cherries each year — you can buy direct from December to January.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT Julie walking on the Adelaide Hills property where she grew up; Julie Isabel Bishop at 18 months old; a carefully restored stone cottage, The Waterfalls, sits on a ridge on the property; with partner David Panton; a huge oak tree outside The Waterfalls; inquisitive sheep; apples ripening on the tree; the third of four children, Julie is pictured here with her older sisters Patricia, eight, and Mary Lou, 10, on a family holiday on the Murray River; three-year-old Julie with Patricia, six, and Mary Lou, eight.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT The home that Julie’s parents, Doug and Isabel, were living in when she was born in 1956; this photograph of Julie on her 21st birthday was published in South Australia’s Sunday Mail newspaper; Basket Range Primary was the former foreign minister’s first school; sheep under old apple trees at the family property; the 16-year-old helping her dad, Doug, on the barbecue — younger brother Douglas, 10, is far right, playing with cousins Felicity, seven, and Belinda, nine; fruit boxes at the orchard; on holiday with the family; at Basket Range in 2019; the sisters with two of their three cats, Beauty, Tartums and Twinkle Toes.