Country Style
has been around for 30 years and I’ve been lucky enough to have been its editor for more than a decade. Last night, I sat at my little desk at home cluttered with the debris of a deadline and thought about all the wonderful people you and I have met together on these pages. Dairy farmers, artists, wool
growers, novelists, market gardeners and even prime ministers... they have been a very diverse crowd but all with one thing in common — their experiences of life on the land have made for some fascinating stories. Talking of great tales, there are many in this issue. Maggie Mackellar writes about one of the annual walks that she does with her walking group, the Tough Old Goats (don’t you love that name!). “I met them seven years ago sitting around a fire at their legendary annual ladies lunch. I’d arrived a stranger and many hours later found myself invited on their next trip.” Everyone needs friends like these in their life. Turn to page 23 to see how they went.
A person who has always inspired me is on page 40. In my early days as an editor, writer and stylist Sara Silm was always up for a challenge and had many funny anecdotes about her adventures on the road. And the same can be said of everyone who I have worked with on Country Style over the years — thank you for your hard work, dedication and sense of humour.
But many of my favourite stories have come from you, the readers. From Sharne, who wrote to me about her dad Bill’s famous passionfruit sponge cake that went on to be one of the most popular recipes we ever had, to the reader who wrote to me after she had moved just down the road from my m0ther’s place in NSW’S Kyogle. “After years of reading the magazine,
I was inspired to move to the country and I’m very happy that I did, but why didn’t you tell me about all the black snakes?” When I told my mum, who had recently called the snake catcher to extract a lovely six foot red-bellied black from under the kitchen dresser, she completely agreed with the reader. “Yes, why didn’t you!”
Usually, I sign off and say ‘until next month’ but this is my last editor’s letter to you. There, I have written it down and I’m looking at it in black and white on my laptop screen. It has been a wonderful journey and thank you for keeping me and our team company along the way. I have loved every minute.