Big hearts fill the middle of nowhere

I travelled more than 16,500km to explore Australia for a year. I ended up staying almost six months in the middle of nowhere - and I absolutely loved it. My first impression of the Mallee was the front of the IGA in Hopetoun. At the time I was...

By Wimmera Mallee News

Dutch farm worker Naomi Buma with Flossy.

I travelled more than 16,500km to explore Australia for a year. I ended up staying almost six months in the middle of nowhere - and I absolutely loved it.

My first impression of the Mallee was the front of the IGA in Hopetoun. At the time I was working for the cancer support organisation Canteen. It was the middle of April and extremely cold outside.

I'd never been to Victoria before so Hopetoun was not particularly the most exciting place for an initiation.

Getting people on board wasn't the easiest, either, because as anybody would attest there are probably more tumbleweeds than people crossing the street on the average day.

Nonetheless, the first thing that stuck out to me was the genuineness of the area.

Unlike in the bigger cities, people actually seemed open to having conversations with me.

Whether they could afford to help out or not, I was overwhelmed by the compassion, care and encouragement we received.

They offered to buy us food and coffee and even brought us blankets to shield us against the wind.

On my second day in Hopetoun I met a farmer from the area, Jeremy Hose.

While filling in his contact details, he mentioned his farm. I had no farming experience, had never driven with a trailer and (probably still) have the worst sense of direction known to man.

But I needed to do my 88 days of farmwork in order to be eligible to re-enter the country with a second-year working holiday visa so I asked Jeremy if he might have any work for me.

We exchanged phone numbers although, quite honestly, I never expected to speak to him after that.

However, a week later I rang him up. We discussed my date of arrival and he sent me the address of his farm. This led to Google Maps being my second impression of the Mallee.

Subsequently, I started seriously doubting my decision.

As a woman traveling alone, going to the middle of nowhere to work for a man I'd only met for half a minute in front of a store was a huge gamble - but I decided to roll with it.

Best decision ever.

From the moment I arrived in Beulah I was welcomed with open arms by the Hose family and their community. Not only that, after six months of travelling, I found that the flat fields reminded me of home back in the Netherlands.

It mightn't seem like much but it was exactly what I needed after being away for such a long time.1

On the weekend I got my first look at the town. Beulah struck me as old, breathing its last breath. But over time I learned that it's actually a timeless place.

Yes, it needs more people. Yes, there has to be more government support to maintain the area. Ideally, it needs more backpackers to help out. But it breathes history.

It's a proud farmers' community - and this shows.

Hope drives them in their work and their lives. Hope for rain and the excitement that it triggers when it comes.

Hope for people to move to the country and in turn help to grow food for the world. Hope for their children to live a life surrounded by nature and with passion for their work.

This hope is shown through the brand-new homes that are spring up next to ramshackle houses.

It's by no means perfect, but it's easy to forget sometimes that any imperfection is not due to anyone's lack of love for their area.

I'd never felt that way in any of the places where I'd lived before.

This enthusiasm sparked something in me and I soon felt a similar pride towards working in the Mallee. The area is full of hardworking people who know how to enjoy life to the fullest.

I describe their attitude with some of the first words I said to Jeremy as soon as I arrived: "I'm not here to f*ck spiders." And neither are they.

One of their great joys is the local footy. Aside from absolutely loving the game, I loved becoming the local Uber to take several of the men to and from the footy ground.

I tried to be at every training and every game to hear the many stories people wanted to tell me. That's what they do in the Mallee: they tell stories for ages about the area, the history and the people.

They recall fun and hard times. Nobody ever gets tired of it.

Like me, they can talk for hours on end. All they need is a beer and a fire, and then the stories start to tell themselves.

In addition to being a beautiful and rustic region during the day, the Mallee offers some of the most beautiful scenery at night. For the first time in my life the nights were dark enough to see a whole sky full of stars, unpolluted by man-made light.

I can't count the number of times I sat outside at midnight, with only Flossy the farmdog for company.

None of the stars I saw were the same as back home in the Northern Hemisphere. None of the constellations were familiar to me. Never before had I seen the Milky Way so clearly.

If I could, I would take my Dutch friends and family up to the Mallee to light a fire and look at the night sky together so we could share stories and drink beer with the locals.

A Dutch man named Cass Witte arrived in Beulah long before I did. According to the many tales, he became a local legend.

He told stories that people nowadays still laugh about. He helped the community and loved it dearly. He even has a cabin near the lake dedicated to his memory.

Jeremy told me: "I knew of a great Dutch man once. He arrived in the area and never left. Who knows, maybe you'll be the second one."

I think he might have been right.

I will have left the country by the time you read this but I have certainly left a piece of my heart with the roaring fields, the potholed roads and the people I met along the way.