KINDRED SPIRITS
A SHARED LOVE OF FAMILY VALUES IS THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT IN THE STRONG BOND BETWEEN A FARMING MOTHER AND HER ENTERPRISING DAUGHTER.
Trish O’brien and her daughter, Treen White, reminisce about family life on their farm near Walgett and share the admiration they have for each other.
WHEN TRISH O’BRIEN first set foot in the house at Cryon Station in 1973, it was a far cry from the crisp white homestead of today. But, having just walked down the aisle with husband Dennis, Trish was on cloud nine. “It was a ratty old thing,” Trish recalls. “Everything was broken down and we had to boil our water, but I thought it was Christmas.”
The newlyweds were locals born and bred, Dennis from Come By Chance and Trish from Walgett, both tiny dots in the Narrabri region that sprawls across the Namoi Valley in north-west NSW. “I thought I was taking a leap moving 70km east,” she laughs.
As a Tresillian nurse, Trish was an expert with babies, which came in useful once their own started arriving. “I didn’t really plan it. Seven of them just turned up.”
Each time the little cottage reached capacity, they added a room or two, although as Treen White, their eldest, likes to remind them, “We only had one bathroom between nine of us!”
Focused on wheat, fava beans, chickpeas and more recently Dohne sheep, life at Cryon Station has been a roller-coaster ride that’s familiar to farmers all over Australia. “It’s completely hit and miss,” says Trish. “You might not get a crop for three years, but when you get a good one, with a bit of luck it will cover you for those three years.”
Treen, now 45, recalls the highs and lows. “I remember going out to feed animals with Mum and Dad during one really bad drought in the ’80s, and all these poor sheep were just dying. It’s a harsh reality of growing up in the country.”
Another was boarding school. All the O’brien children – Treen, Tim, Penny, Lucy, Sophie, Justin and Sam – would catch a bus from the end of their driveway to the local primary school, but once they reached secondary school age, there was nothing nearby. “It was very hard sending them away,” admits Trish. “We’d drop them off and I’d cry halfway home.”
Treen boarded for six years at Frensham School in the NSW Southern Highlands, 750km away. “We’re a very close family and I missed home desperately, but at the same time I was given a great education. And home has always been an oasis to come back to.”
Her favourite memories are of learning to cook with her grandmother, Trish’s mum. “She was a really good bush cook. She’d come to stay for four or five weeks at a time, and we’d do lots of cooking together.”
Those early lessons planted themselves firmly in Treen’s mind, coming to fruition years later when she studied at the renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland. She was still overseas when a storm hit the farm. “It wiped half the house out,” says her mum. “We got halfway through rebuilding, then lost all our wheat to a flood, so we had to stop with just the frame up. Eventually we put in a crop of sorghum and got out of jail with that, so we could finish the house.”
They moved into their sparkling new home in 2001, 50m away from the original, just as Treen returned from Europe, full of energy and plans to launch a catering company. With the kitchen of the old house still intact, where better to start her business than the very place where she first learned to cook?
Once Relish Catering proved a winner, Treen relocated the operation to the town of Narrabri, 90 minutes’ drive away, where she now lives with her husband, Shane, and their daughters, Willa, nine, and Bonnie, six. “I still speak to Mum every day.”
Trish and Dennis are still on the family farm, which is now run by Justin and Sam, their two youngest offspring. They live elsewhere on the property with their own young families – though with 12,000 hectares, there’s plenty of space, and more than one bathroom.
TRISH “My parents were farmers, and so were Dennis’s, so that’s all we know, really. You’re never going to get it right all the time, but at least you’re your own boss. I like the casual life, never knowing who’s going to turn up. A friend rang up yesterday saying they couldn’t get into their place because it was too wet, asking if they could come and stay here, and bring a takeaway. Suits me!
Unfortunately, we’re going through the mouse plague at the moment and when they pulled the blanket off one of the beds, a mouse flew out, ran up the curtains and disappeared. We catch about 30 a night, just in the house, which doesn’t do much for me.
When we built the new house, I had to be different: I decided I wanted two storeys. There are probably two other two-storey houses in the district. Everyone says, ‘Why have you got such a big house?’ but at Christmas time, we’ll have 32 people staying here. It’s full-on, but I can’t get enough of my kids. We usually have a dinner on Wednesday night and they come over, and we all hoo-hoo and carry on – especially now that there are 14 grandchildren. I love having a big family, and now they’re looking after me, which is good. I don’t know if they’re really enjoying it, but that’s what’s happening! Dennis still helps Justin and Sam with the farming. He’s had a few hiccups: five bypasses and a fall off a motorbike that broke his ribs. That’s quietened him down, but he’s pretty good now.
Treen and I are quite similar; we both have to get on with things straightaway. I love her cooking. She was devastated by COVID, but I knew she’d be okay. Treen can dig herself out of any hole.” >
“Treen and I are quite similar; we both have to get on with things straightaway.”
TREEN “I loved my time in the kitchen with Fan – that’s what we used to call my grandmother, although I don’t know why; her name was Betty. She had a real sweet tooth and was well known for her desserts. We often made chocolate blancmange, and I remember putting our toffees in the local show.
I still use her recipes for things like butterscotch, Christmas pudding and lemon curd, which she called lemon cheese. I’d love to do a recipe book one day, in the way she wrote them: ‘A piece of butter the size of an egg.’ I’m sure with some of the things I cook these days, she’d say ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Things like rare meat, or quinoa. But I think she’d be super-proud.
Growing up, we had this big old apple tree with a cubby house. Mum and Dad would let us go down to the dam and go yabbying. We always had poddy calves and poddy lambs. That’s all part of growing up in the country – which my husband and I both did. In Narrabri, we saw the houses going up around us, and started feeling a bit claustrophobic, so we moved to five acres on the edge of town and built a house. The other day our neighbour said, ‘I just love the fact your kids are always outside, on their bikes or playing with the dog.’ I did some nannying in Sydney and the children would be picked up from school and taken to flute, then taken to soccer, in the car the whole time. They didn’t seem to have any time to just kick a ball around. I understand, because you’ve got to keep them entertained. But I love that my girls don’t need to be entertained; they can entertain themselves.”
“We usually have a dinner on Wednesday night and they come over, and we all hoo-hoo and carry on.”