JOHNNY MAC SAVED US!
When he learned the Green family were being deported, the country music legend reached out
We’ve been on a rollercoaster ride,” Mark Green says, sighing with relief. Talking to Woman’s Day just 24 hours after being saved from deportation, the Scottishborn, would-be proud Aussie can’t believe he’s still in his adopted home of Adelaide.
Thanks in part to country music icon Johnny Mac, Mark and his family are able to stay in Australia – at least for now.
“I was horrified and did everything I could to help them,” Johnny says, of finding out his good friends were being forced to leave Australia, despite making a home here for more than a decade. “They’ve got a good case
– they shouldn’t even have to apply, they should be residents.”
Johnny, 90, is a regular at Mile End bakery Cafe De Vili’s, where Mark’s wife Kelly, 45, works. As Kelly served the Pink Champagne And A Room Of Roses hitmaker, she began to tell Johnny about their struggle to stay in Australia after moving here from South Ayrshire, Scotland, in 2012 with their daughter Rebecca, now 19.
“When we started to fight this, Johnny was there from day one, helping us out,” Mark, 44, explains. “If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
Johnny sparked a last-minute intervention by reaching out to his old friend and South Australian politician Frank Pangallo, who then passed it up the chain to SA Premier Peter Malinauskas. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has now given a last-minute lifeline to the Greens, granting them a one-month stay while he considers their case.
The family have been in a lengthy battle to avoid deportation after Mark’s former employer failed to sign promised residency paperwork.
DETERMINED TO STAY
After being “inundated with calls of support”, Mark, an electrical expert, says he and Kelly are more determined than ever to remain here in the country they love. “Australia will always be where we call home,” he says. “It doesn’t matter where I am – if I’m in Scotland in a few weeks, Australia is where my heart is. This is our life.”
And that “life” included joining Johnny at Garden Island, Port Adelaide, last week, where they celebrated their special friend – and saviour’s – milestone birthday.
‘Australia is where my heart is. This is our life’
Wes and Shari Hughes always had a big dream to run a farm one day but having zero experience, they didn’t know where to start.
Typing “easy farming” into Google, Shari, 37, scrolled down the list until snail farming popped up. She was quickly catapulted back to when husband Wes first won her affections with his quirky cooking.
“Wes used to be a chef, and when we started dating, he’d always try and woo me with impressive and different dishes,” Shari tells Woman’s Day. “Having worked with chefs from France where escargot is an excellent appetiser, he knew how to prepare and cook snails to perfection.”
One evening, he presented Shari with some slippery little suckers for dinner. The garlicky butter aroma filled her nostrils, and with Wes’ assurance that it would taste good, she ate her first snail – and agreed it did!
Shari and 43-year-old Wes realised snailing their way to success could fulfil their farming dreams.
“We both knew how hard it was to get fresh snails Down Under, and tinned ones were no way as good!” Wes, dad to Clay, 13, Daisy, five, and Primrose, three, explains. “That’s when we decided to bring Australiangrown farm fresh escargot to the nation.”
“It was the perfect farming venture,” Shari adds.
SNAIL EMPIRE
Over the next few months the pair swotted up on heliciculture – the term used for snail farming – and everything about their habitat, lifespan, diet and reproduction. Along the way they found out snails are a great source of protein, iron, magnesium and omega-3.
Naming their business Greenhouse Snails, based north of Toowoomba, the pair were excited to learn the common garden snail – Cantareus asperses – is edible.
“When we learned that, we put a call out on Facebook asking to collect garden snails from people’s backyards,” says Shari. “We came home with bucketloads and built a huge greenhouse, filling it with flora and fauna for our snail empire to thrive.”
Then the farming process began. With the help of their kids, the family began the quarantining process. For four weeks the common garden snails were detained before being transferred into a huge greenhouse to allow them to grow and be safe for consumption.
‘We asked people to collect snails from their backyards’
BACKYARD BUDDIES
Amazingly, Wes and Shari soon had more than 70,000 babies. By the time they opened for business in October 2021, Shari and Wes had a range of clients lining up for their snails, from local market stallholders to restaurateurs.
But contrary to their initial research, the couple admit there’s nothing easy about snail farming.
“It’s been a full-on effort,” says Wes.
As for their children, not only are they helpful snail farmers, they’re also enthusiastic snail eaters.
“They’ve even tried our favourite, garlic-butter gastropods, as well as escargot pate and even snail pizza!” Shari says with a chuckle.
The family plan on starting snail trails and tasting tours of their property, so visitors can learn all about our edible backyard buddies and how good life is in the snail lane.