Interview by Alice Armitage Photography by Tessa Cox

This interview forms part of our conversational series, where we speak with everyday country kids who call regional Australia home. I wanted to put together this series to highlight some of the brilliant young minds making the active decision to come home and make a real contribution to the future of regional communities. To show that it only takes a willing few to really make a difference to the prosperity of a region. Isabella Hanson perfectly reflects this ideology. At just twenty-two, Isabella wears many hats – working for the family’s stud (Bullakeana), studying full-time, freelancing as a journalist, winning Queensland Country Life Showgirl, consulting for her local MP and running a podcast with her best mate. Is there anything this young gun can’t do? And all from the family farm in rural Queensland no-less.

“Maybe that comes back to my biggest advantage in life, the lessons of work ethic that come with being raised on the land.”

Can you tell me a bit about yourself? How did life start for you? My childhood was filled with tutus and cattle. I grew up dancing. I started when I was three and then danced professionally after school. So I was always juggling those two loves. Very different ends of the spectrum, I guess. I grew up on a property and living rurally was a dream childhood. Then when I finished school I studied musical theatre at the Brent Street Performing Arts School in Sydney when I was seventeen. I wanted to be a performer on a cruise ship, but Covid had something to say about that.

How did you go from that to studying journalism? I always had the plan to step into journalism after dancing. After my time dancing, I was ready to leave Sydney and my parents had bought a new property outside of Theodore in Queensland. I decided to move there with them to live and work on the property while I studied journalism and business communications online through Griffith University. I’ll be graduating next year.

So set the scene for me, what does a typical day look like for you at the moment? How are you juggling all of the things you’re working on at the moment? I’m pretty involved in the day-to-day running of the farm and the stud, so a lot of feeding cattle! We’ll often have over two hundred head of cattle in the feeding shed, so that’s a pretty big job every day. Then general farm work, moving cattle, fixing fences – all the fun stuff. I’ve also started to get involved in the marketing side of the business. I do photography, write-ups, social media, advertising and website work for the stud.

And you’re also doing some freelance writing? Yes, that started at the end of last year. I’ve written for Queensland Country Life, some stock magazines and camp drafting magazines. I’ve also been doing some media work for our local MP, which was an opportunity that came to me after becoming the Queensland Country Life Showgirl. It’s been such a great experience, learning about the political space, writing press releases and the like.

What do you think have been the driving forces behind pursuing a career in journalism? There seems to be some juxtaposition in all of the things you’re working on and have worked on, but I’m sure there are some threads that stitch them all together. What do you think that is? When I was younger, being a journalist was a way to be on TV! It seemed like a good enough reason when I was in high school but my perspective changed when I was living in Sydney. After having conversations with my friends down there, they just had no idea what life was like back home in the country. It would drive me crazy when a friend would come to training and announce that they were going vegan that week to save some cows, without having any understanding of how beef is actually raised and the nature of the supply chain. I came to see journalism as a way to advocate for agriculture. I think education about the industry starts with sharing stories and my drive to become a journalist has formed around that desire.

Living in Sydney must have been quite the culture shock for you generally. Studying at an arts institution must have been such a different environment from where you were raised. So different! Where I was training was so dramatic, they’ve now made a reality TV show about it! But the whole experience was so eye-opening and I learnt so much. I was living with an older lady and her family. She was a professional performer and I lived in their spare room in Elizabeth Bay. I was seventeen years old and I would walk through Kings Cross every day to get to college. I absolutely loved it but it did make me grow up very quickly, I guess.

Did you like being in the city? I did find it quite lonely and isolating but Covid definitely shaped that whole experience. There were many days when the only time I interacted with someone else was at training, which is such a different experience than living and working very closely with your family and your small community.

Tell me about Cowgirl Channel. What’s going on there and how did it come about? Toni, my co-host, and I were actually discussing this a few days ago and we couldn’t quite remember where the initial idea came from. But somewhere along the line, we decided to start a podcast. Toni is my best friend. We met at school and our friendship has been through so many different phases. We’ve basically lived together, been long-distance besties and now we’re back to living only an hour from each other, which is pretty good by country Australia standards. We just wanted to make something together. Toni has always been very interested in writing and poetry. We wanted a way to get stories out into the world. Initially, Toni wanted to work on a book but we landed on a podcast.

As someone who has self-published a book, I think going for a podcast is a much wiser choice! Yeah, I had helped produce a podcast before, so I had some of the knowledge to get us started. It’s been a great medium to have a crack at! Our goal has always been to create a community of inclusion for young girls living in rural Australia and those longing to be. We wanted to incorporate both sides of that dynamic. Really, we are just sharing conversations, lived experiences and advice that people have gained from their personal journeys. We want to highlight that young people have meaningful insights and stories to tell as well. They might not have all the wisdom of someone much older but they’ve still got something to say – something to share.

I want to know what you think about this huge rise in the popularity of country and western culture. I’ve thought about this a lot, it’s my Roman Empire at the moment. I really started to think about it when I first saw the footage of Bella Hadid cutting and how viral it went. Initially, I was a bit taken aback by it. What was she doing?! But I had to rein myself in. I think this rise in popularity is really good. It’s exposing a whole lot of people to a very precious way of life and an industry that feeds us all. I’m not quite sure why I was initially so defensive. Ultimately, I think it’s a good thing to see so many people jumping on this trend. I just hope the rising interest continues and doesn’t suddenly come to a stop when the next trend emerges. We don’t want a section of the culture to be appropriated for a moment in time and then revert back to this lack of understanding of the industry.

What do you think is the most challenging thing for you, as someone trying to do something a bit different building a life and a career around writing and creative endeavours, in the middle of nowhere? Probably that I don’t have a physical team around me to draw from or bounce ideas off. Even though I work with people and I’m always talking to someone, at the end of the day it’s just me here doing it. I sometimes feel like it’s not the same, having those creative conversations virtually. The energy is just different. It might be my greatest challenge, but it can also be an advantage. The distance gives me the space to really dig deep into my own ideas and actually get what I want across, rather than being too heavily influenced by others’ ideas and critiques. That can be really positive.

I guess that runs into my next question about the advantages of doing what you’re doing from where you’re doing it. When you’re working to build a career as a creative and a journalist from the country, what advantages do you think you have compared to someone living in the city? I personally think there are plenty. Oh so many! Just the ability and motivation to get out there, to get in front of people, network, make connections and have conversations. You really have to seize any opportunity because you never know when another will be coming your way. Whereas I feel that people in the city have so many opportunities in front of them, sometimes the drive isn’t the same. Maybe that comes back to my biggest advantage in life, the lesson of work ethic that comes with being raised on the land.

I was going to say, that just sounds like the attributes of a farmer’s daughter to me. You’ve also learnt so many skills as a dancer, particularly when it comes to structure and discipline. All of which contribute to who you are as a person. I think all of those experiences would make you a better storyteller, but also give you the resilience to build something for yourself. Definitely. My dad likes to say that he wasted so much money on dance lessons but I know that it’s all been incredibly valuable to me. Even the way I conduct myself in social situations, the way I stand and the way I talk to people. I wouldn’t feel so comfortable doing all of those things if I hadn’t spent so much time performing growing up. I was never forced to be on stage. I always wanted to be, since I was three. It all comes back to being able to stand up and say what you have to say.

What do you hope your life will look like in five years? I hope it’s still full of cows in paddocks. I hope I’m still based rurally, working as a creative and living on the land. I suppose I wouldn’t change much from what I’m doing now. Hopefully, I’ll just have developed more of a career for myself.

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