The great escape

Anthea, a school teacher, and Damian, who worked in fleet management transport at the airport, had no farming background, apart from a vegie patch and small fruit orchard in their suburban backyard.

But they yearned for the wide-open spaces.

“When the lockdowns finished and the borders opened up, we escaped to the country,” Anthea said.

They looked for small properties around Warrnambool and Portland but found the ideal site across the South Australian border on the outskirts of Mt Gambier, making their home on Echo Farm.

“We were always gardeners and liked growing fruit and vegetables. This is just the same thing on a much larger scale and with a lot of animals,” Anthea said.

At just over 7ha, Echo Farm is a mixture of old-style pioneer farm and family-friendly animal encounters.

It is also home to the Harrison family.

“At the time, it was just ‘let’s get out’,” Anthea said.

“We always liked going for a Sunday drive to the country and visiting little country towns. With two years of lockdowns, we were deprived of that and the beautiful green pastures and fresh air and sunshine.”

Echo Farm was established in 2007 by Jenny Butcher, who turned the old house into a museum and invited visitors to see and feed the animals.

“It was more of a petting zoo tourist attraction,” Anthea said.

“She sold in 2018 but the new owners were hampered by the lockdowns. They sold when the lockdowns were over and it was a great opportunity because we were looking to get out of Melbourne.”

There were already cows, goats, sheep, chickens, donkeys, ducks, geese, peacocks, guinea pigs and a cockatoo.

“It was a typical farm but with a few exotic and native animals and we introduced more sheep, alpacas, goats, a new ram and we’re breeding peacocks and heritage turkeys,” Anthea said.

It was a steep learning curve.

“We had to learn everything from a quick study of Google,” Damian recalled.

Neighbours, mostly beef and dairy farmers who were pleased Echo Farm would continue and not be converted into a timber plantation, also helped with advice about animal husbandry and feeding.

“We had to research everything but now when we get out in the morning, we’re on autopilot and know what we have to do,” Anthea said.

“I recently cleaned out the chicken coop. I knew exactly how to restructure it so they have privacy when they nest, the right amount of straw as bedding.

“You’d think I’d been a farmer my whole life but it’s only been three years and we’re still learning.”

While their neighbours helped with feeding formulas, Anthea and Damian soon found that nothing goes to plan on a farm.

“You can follow a given formula, but that’s not always a guarantee,” Anthea said.

Their first year enjoyed near perfect rainfall but the next two years were crippling droughts.

“Three months ago, it was a dustbowl,” Anthea said.

“We’ve got green now but you could still call it a green drought with not much growth.”

They had some food donations to help and a shed full of hay from the prosperous first season was a good back-up.

Like many larger scale farmers, they also had to sell some animals to get through.

“We might be a small farm but we really resonate with the bigger farmers who struggle with drought,” Anthea said.

“If it affected us on such a small scale, we can only imagine how they must have suffered.”

The conditions forced the new farmers to repurpose and not waste anything.

The farm has a 620-tree black truffle orchard, which has been restored. They found that when the trees are pruned, the oak branches offer good quality animal feed.

If a gum tree falls — and that has happened a few times recently — the goats will eat the leaves and branches.

The chooks and ducks go through the cow and donkey droppings to sift through for beetles, bugs and worms.

“We’re not using any chemicals to manage the pastures. We’re trying to do everything as naturally as possible and let nature teach us rather than try to control nature,” Anthea said.

Anthea does some relief teaching to keep a steady income to help pay for necessary projects such as fencing and animal shelters.

“We get a bit of the tourist dollar but that’s mainly in summer, and we also sell eggs to visitors and locals,” she said.

The winter crops of truffles will be sold as another source of income and Anthea and Damian have restored an old garage into a tea room that’s waiting to be opened.

They describe it as a “step-back-in-time pioneer farm”. The earliest records indicate it was established in 1890 but it is believed to have been settled in the 1870s as a dairy farm on a much larger block.

They have heard a few colourful stories and legends about the property. One owner was known not to take any nonsense and nearly drowned a visitor in the fish pond. The visitor left without all his teeth and legend has it the teeth are still in the pond.

There’s also a grisly tale of an eyeball being lost to a hook in a tree and two boys playing with a shotgun and accidentally shooting through the wall.

The original house has been restored to what it would have looked like from the turn of the century till the 1940s with old telephones, clocks, oil lamps and furniture, perfect for visiting school groups to learn how people used to grow vegetables, milk cows and churn butter.

Tourist visitors get grain to feed the small animals, get to cuddle the guinea pigs and say hello to the dog, and then get bigger buckets of fruit and vegies for the larger animals, along with a lesson in how to safely feed them.

“The animals are very user friendly,” Anthea said.

“They see food and they’re your best friend, although they do jostle for pole position to get the first feed.”

Anthea and Damian also do a lot of animal re-homing, including a lamb that was recently found wandering and dropped off to the farm, and pets that elderly people can no longer care for.

They spend more time with the smaller animals and have become attached to their growing menagerie.

“The smaller animals require more attention, become pets and you get a connection with them,” Anthea said.

“It’s like having children … many children.”