Story Excerpt: ‘Continuous Creation’

The final bell for Grace McLeod sounded nothing like a bell at all. It was the rattle of a b-double up the dirt driveway of her family farm in Nhill, western Victoria, coming to collect the last of their stock. "I was organising myself, packing up, when I heard the truck,” she says. 

12 months earlier, the McLeods began selling off their holdings in the nadir of a turbulent period for the family ("there were quite hurtful times"). But this day felt different - lighter - as the last of their merino sheep was loaded. "I'll never forget it," she says. "It just started pelting down and me, my Dad, our stock agent and this truck driver were out in the sloppiest rain." It was a climatic punctuation mark so appropriate for the generational farmers. "I went inside absolutely drenched." It was time for her to go.

McLeod Farms began as an 11-acre block in the Wimmera, on which John and Jeannette McLeod built a homestead. They gradually added property as it came on the market, and established a wheat crop and merino flock. For Grace and her three siblings, they were idyllic years: "It was such a great playground. We were outside all the time, riding bikes, camping, exploring.

"I was always into ag - as a very young kid, my dream was to be like McLeod's Daughters." We laugh. Grace shares the moniker of the eldest daughter in the long-running Australian TV series.

"It was fate then?" I joke.

"Oh it must have been."

With her idols (on and off screen) in agriculture, Grace saw a clear path into the field herself. "That was always my plan as a kid - to become a jillaroo riding off into the sunset," she says. McLeod Farms was her lodestar - that constant glowing presence toward which the axis of her world pointed. She left for years, travelling around Australia, visiting Canada and the United States, but always knew she'd return home - one day.

Her opportunity came in 2017, when she was called back to the farm to cover for her Dad, who needed a double knee replacement to end years of pain. "It was a big incentive because we thought: right Dad can get this get operation and I can come home and we can make it all work."

But it didn't work - the operation, or their plan. "Dad describes it quite well: he says he looked at a brochure and saw a beautiful oasis on the other side, and arrived and it was a shithole." The physical pain was still there, and soon it was joined by mental anguish.

"It was hard for him because he was feeling guilt for not being there and not being helpful - and not being the boss and leader that he is," Grace says. "And it was hard for me too. When you step up and take on a role, you need support yourself, but there was no support there." Their relationship broke down.