I grew up on a 100-acre property on the edge of a conservation park, 45km from a small town of just 200 people. It was an unusual childhood—one where my family lived closely with the land, growing our own food, tending to fruit trees, and raising animals. We ate seasonally, as locally as possible, and relied on an understanding of our surroundings to get by. Of course, we still went into town for things we couldn’t produce ourselves, but our way of life was deeply connected to the rhythms of nature. My sisters and I spent our days playing in the garden, picking beans straight from the stalks and searching for strawberries hidden under the leaves. It wasn’t always easy. Droughts, frosts, and financial struggles eventually forced us to move, but not before we had learned some fundamental truths—animals were our friends, the garden was our playground, and food wasn’t something that simply appeared on a supermarket shelf.

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When we relocated to the suburbs of Meanjin (Brisbane), I quickly realised how different my upbringing had been from that of my new peers. They had little connection to the land and didn’t seem particularly interested in where their food came from. I remember feeling out of place, noticing the disconnect between people and the environment that had been so central to my childhood. Growing up, we had woken to brumbies and kangaroos in our yard, played in the gullies, and eaten from the veggie patch. In town, we had been known as the “bush babies” at the end of the dirt road. In the city, that identity no longer fit.

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Years later, I found myself moving again—this time to Gimuy (Cairns), in Far North Queensland. The shift from a subtropical to a tropical climate brought new challenges. The plants I was used to growing didn’t thrive in the heat and humidity, and I faced failure after failure in my own veggie patch. But it was through joining the local community garden, tucked behind my university, that I found my footing. The people there, along with the land itself, taught me what it meant to grow food in the tropics—how root vegetables like taro thrived in the wet season, how Asian greens flourished, and how summer crops from the south only grew here in winter.

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Moving from a rural childhood to a suburban adolescence and then into the tropics shaped the way I see the world. It made me aware of how our environments, experiences, and daily interactions shape our understanding of food, place, and community. These shifts have been more than just geographical—they have shaped my perspective on what it means to live with, rather than separate from, the land.

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This website is a space where I reflect on these ideas, sharing thoughts on food, sustainability, and the ways we engage with the world around us. My research is not just academic—it’s personal. It’s about living the ethos of my work, learning through doing, and staying connected to the land, no matter where I am.