MEET GALAH MAGAZINE. BECAUSE RIGHT NOW, IT'S ALL ABOUT AUSTRALIA.
The second issue of Annabelle Hickson's Galah magazine takes flight in mid-April. Have you heard its raucously musical call yet? It's trying to tell you something.
It’s trying to tell you that the unique character of Australian country living is something to be celebrated, and that regional Australia is not our past but our future.
First published in December 2020 by Annabelle Hickson from her family’s pecan farm in Northern New South Wales, Galah (I so love that name) is a modern voice from the bush, covering regenerative farming, art, food, gardens and landscape from a creative perspective.
The second issue celebrates the polarising concept of ‘the domestic’ (the first issue was themed ‘limitations’), with stories on the different ways we make a home a home. There’s much more besides , on country sheds, converted churches, carving, cooking and business survival skills, across 160 pages that are completely advertising-free.
This isn’t ‘country porn’, or eco-chic, but someone’s respectful, intelligent, funny, gorgeous take on what’s going on out there. Because there’s a lot. Stuff we knew (rainwater tank stands are very beautiful) and stuff we didn’t know existed. It’s equally a celebration of Australian writers, photographers, and artists, with the opening issue featuring the portrait work of Zoe Young. They deserve our attention, says Annabelle Hickson.
“I'm really interested in examining what makes us unique in Australia” she says. “A distinct sense of place is such a valuable, interesting and joyful thing”.
World, we love you and we miss you, but right now, it’s all about Australia.
Read my interview with Annabelle below, and get your own Galah.
JD: What do you hope to achieve with Galah?
AH: I want Galah to shine a light on the exciting things happening in the regions. When I first moved out to the farm, I did so with a city-centric perspective. I thought it would be the end of my career, I thought it would be the end of my social life. I thought it would be good for my young family, but death for my own ambition. I could not have been more wrong.
Australia is such an urbanised country these days. The myth of the Man from Snowy River hangs on (perhaps by a thread) but the reality is about 85 percent of us live within 50kms of the coast.
I, like a lot of Australians, was not at all intimate with country life and, as is the way when you have no first-hand experience of a place or a group of people, you can make some pretty unfounded assumptions about what happens. Or rather what doesn't happen. I think a lot of the news coverage shows regional Australia through a lens of disadvantage too - bushfires, terrible droughts, doctor shortages - which adds to a sense that ambition and opportunities exist in the big smoke.
But my own experience of life out of the city has been one of great advantage. To my great surprise and delight, living on a farm an hour out of a town with population of 4000 has been the making of me, not the end. I am surrounded by a strong supportive community, business opportunities - and not just ag ones - are plentiful, there are smart, sophisticated, innovative people everywhere I look. What a fool I was to be scared of anything at all. I feel incredibly lucky to live in regional Australia.
So I hope that Galah can shine a light on the dynamic, vibrant lives people lead in the regions, that it can tell these stories through a lens of advantage, not just disadvantage. But I also hope it can be a bridge between the country and the city, something to show the people like me that there are lives full of great dignity and opportunity and joy in regional Australia.
JD: Tell us one story from the current issue.
AH: In Issue 2 (editor’s note: this will now appear in Issue 3) we meet Courtney Young and Ian Congdon, a young couple who mill flour on their family's organic wheat farm under the brand Woodstock Flour.
I love this story because instead of having to save up to buy their own 5000 acre farm (a typical scale needed to have a viable farm in the area), they have worked out how to make a viable business with 500 acres, milling the grains they grow and selling the finished product to both retail and wholesale customers.
Some of the flour they mill also ends up on local kitchen tables. Often commodity crops get taken to a central processing facility and totally bypass the kitchen tables where they are grown, but this business maintains that connection between the food growers grow and the food they eat, which surely has to make for better food.
JD: Why the focus on food production?
AH: In terms of yields and efficiency, we do industrial farming so very well in Australia. Those millions of acres of commodity crops are a triumph of efficiency and show how clever Australian farmers are.”
But in Galah, I am more interested in looking at food production that prioritises things like taste, sustainability, healthy soils and nutrient dense food.
I want to meet the growers behind these systems and talk to the growers who are re-orienting their businesses that way. I believe that we as a country, and a world, will have to re-examine the way we use chemicals in food production (American doctor Zach Bush's talks about glyphosate are interesting - incredibly damning of Round-Up but respectful of farmers) and the growers who are experimenting with these sustainable systems now are the ones who will show us how we can farm like this as the norm and in a profitable way in the future.
I'm also really interested in telling stories about growers who are expanding their businesses through vertical integration, rather than buying more and more land. Huge farms run by only a couple of people are efficient, yes, but they don't make for vibrant communities.
The regional Australia that I want to live in and that I want for my own children if they choose to stay on the land when they grow up, is full of people of different ages, different skills, different businesses. And the more businesses we can sustain on a given amount of acres, the more exciting the community will be.
JD: Hasn’t anyone told you about dwindling magazine subscriptions, the death of print, etc? How successful was the first issue, and what does long-term success look like?
AH: I was really thrilled with the response to Issue One. I was pretty nervous about embarking on a printed project, but if I could sell about 3000 copies via pre-sales (thank god for instagram) I knew I would have enough in the bank to cover my printing and production costs and eliminate the bulk of the financial risk.
Pre-sales were extremely encouraging, more than my minimum 3000 needed (I still feel amazed that so many people were willing to buy a product that did not yet exist). I chose to have no advertising and opted instead for a high cover price of $30.
Under this model, if I can regularly sell 10,000 copies of each issue, which does not feel too greedy, it's a great business that can pay contributors, a designer, production staff, me and a business partner a wage. And in terms of growth potential - more magazine sales, as well as events, retail and digital platforms - it could be huge. I would love the business to grow to a size so that it could employ a number of regional-based people full-time, as well as providing mentoring and publishing opportunities for up-and-coming writers/journalists/podcasters based in the regions.
As a side note, it's interesting how we value things: $30 is an expensive magazine, but it's a cheap book. I also caught myself paying more than $30 for one of those lovely Japanese notebooks that is literally full of empty pages, which made me both want to laugh and cry knowing how much work went into filling the pages of Galah!
Thanks Annabelle, and more wind to your wings, Galah; you speak for many of us. Not just those already well aware of the beauty and resilience – and crazy-good cakes - of country Australia, but those of us who love the printed word, quality stock, long reads and great photography. Oh, and Mother’s Day is coming up. Just sayin’.
To stay in country mode, here’s my recipe for buttermilk scones, to be found also on Good Food. Thanks William Meppem for the come-hither photography.
BUTTERMILK SCONES
Scones are country cooking at its finest, and surprisingly fast and easy to make. Just 10 minutes in the oven, and you have a batch ready to slather with butter, cream or jam.
450 g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp icing sugar
Half tsp salt
60 g butter, fridge-cold and diced
250 ml (1 cup) buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
1/ Heat the oven to 220C. Line a baking tray with baking paper and set aside.
2/ Sift the flour, icing sugar, salt and baking powder into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre, add the butter to the well, and, rub the butter into the flour between your thumbs and fingertips until it is no longer bitsy, lifting it up to get air into it.
3/ Whisk the egg into the buttermilk, and set aside 2 tbsp with which to glaze the tops. Pour the remaining mixture into the flour, mix lightly with a spatula until a soft, slightly sticky dough comes together, then turn onto a floured bench. Flour your hands and form it into a rough ball, then gently press out to 2 to 3 cm high.
4/ Flour the inside of a 6 cm wide pastry-cutter, and cut out as many scones as you can, arranging them quite close together on the tray. Bring the off-cuts together, press out again and cut out remaining scones - you should get about 12 in total.
5/ Brush the tops with the reserved buttermilk mixture and bake for 10 to 12 minutes until puffed, golden, and firm when pressed in the middle.
6/ Wrap in a clean tea towel to keep warm, and serve with butter or jam and cream.
Thanks for reading (and liking, commenting or subscribing). Copyright © 2020 Jill Dupleix. All rights reserved. I live and work on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging.