Out of the Blue

Joanna Fincham moved from Melbourne to country South Australia to live on a beef cattle, sheep, cropping and forestry farm in 2008. She continues to live there with her husband Rob and their daughter Darcy. Jo runs her own commercial photography business when she’s not busy on the farm:

www.jofincham.com

You can follow Jo on twitter @JoannaFincham

Out of the

Blue

JOANNA FINCHAM

First published in 2012

Copyright © Joanna Fincham 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone:    (61 2) 8425 0100

Fax:        (61 2) 9906 2218

Email:     info@allenandunwin.com

Web:       www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74237 549 6

Internal design by Blue Cork

Set in 13/20 pt Minion Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to individuals who suffer from

depression. May your souls soon find peace.

Also, to my family—words cannot express my

love and gratitude.

And lastly, to my husband Rob. For helping me

look in the mirror, make some big decisions and

see the light . . .

Contents

Prologue

1     Back to the beginning

2     First love

3     My secret discovered

4     Helping hands

5     A new start

6     First instincts are always right

7     The beginning of the end

8     Starting again

9     The one . . . that got away

10     Out of control

11     From Byron to Farmer

12     ‘I have some good news!’

13     ‘Ladies, here are your farmers’

14     Five minutes with destiny

15     Falling

16     City meets country

17     The three musketeers

18     A dinner date to remember

19     Telling all on national TV

20     Life after Farmer

21     No turning back

22     Taking the plunge

23     Highs and lows of country life

24     New life, new ways

25     Fast forward . . . to a country wedding

26     Here and now

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Help is at hand . . .

Prologue

Everybody has a story, their own story. Just imagine all the tales of love, loss, heroism, adventure, sadness and joy that go untold from all walks of life, from all corners of the globe. Mine would also have been an untold story. Until now.

When I first toyed with the idea of writing a ‘memoir’, I asked myself, ‘Is my story one that is worth reading? Who would want to read a book about my life?’ I felt writing a book about myself was a bit self-indulgent. A little egotistical, perhaps. But when I thought of the experiences I could write about and the possibility of helping others, I began to wonder, ‘Why not?’

My story is in no way more important or more interesting than anybody else’s. What makes it a tale that someone may want to read is the battle I have had with an illness that many are unfortunate enough to suffer, an illness that, until recently, was considered taboo. It is a condition that people didn’t want to admit to suffering from, much less talk about and receive help for. That illness is depression.

For as long as I can remember, my friends, family and people I meet have always commented on how I seem happy all the time. Always smiling, laughing, joking and relishing in making people do the same. I got the biggest kick out of telling jokes and making people smile and laugh. But behind all the smiles and all the laughter lurks a secret that had been with me for seven years of my life. I was depressed.

A lot of people have the opinion that depression is not an illness, that it simply doesn’t exist, that those who say they suffer from depression are just having a bad day, week, month, year . . . Until I was diagnosed with depression in 2004, I admit I didn’t think it existed either. I didn’t believe that people could not possibly feel sad every day of their life, or that sometimes they just didn’t have the strength, both physically and mentally, to do ordinary things such as getting out of bed or eating. Now I understand.

My depression grew from a seed that was another problem altogether: bulimia. It is a word I have come to know very well over the past 18 years of my life. Bulimia is another health problem which wasn’t talked about in an open way until recently. Thankfully, over the last decade, bulimia, anorexia and other eating disorders, have been recognised as diseases that affect millions of girls as well as boys throughout the world. With the rise of celebrity culture as well as social media, teenagers today have so many pressures on them. These days, help is at hand for sufferers of these cruel, devastating, physically debilitating and life-threatening diseases. Now we just need to make sure those who have eating disorders feel they can reach out and ask for that help—not an easy task when a large part of the disorder is secrecy.

My battle to beat depression and bulimia, and all the side-effects that come with those illnesses, is one of the reasons I wrote my story. But this is not just a story about mental illness. This is a story about finding myself. It’s about how I found complete happiness, fulfilment and contentment, both emotionally and physically. It’s about finding a place to call home, somewhere to belong. It’s about accepting myself for who I am and being thankful.

Above all, though, it’s about love.

I was born in Melbourne and lived there for the first 31 years of my life. Here was everything I had ever loved and known, my family and friends, my house, my job, my life. Then, in 2008, almost overnight, I found myself living on a farm in country South Australia. Why leave everything I had, everything that was familiar and safe? I have asked myself this question many times. But there’s always only one answer: falling completely in love changed everything.

The way we met was a little different to meeting through friends, or at work, or at a bar. As some of you know, I met my husband Rob on a television program, a country-boy-meets-city-girl matchmaking reality show called The Farmer Wants a Wife. If someone had told me that I would appear on a reality dating show on national TV, meet a farmer, fall madly in love in front of more than one million viewers, leave everything I had known in the city and move to the country to live on his farm, I would have told them they were full of the brown stuff that features so prominently in our cattle yards! But fall in love and move to the country I did. And, although I didn’t know it then, it was the best thing I could have done for my happiness, my health and my life.

In this book, I talk about many topics from family, friends, past relationships and lifestyle choices, to sport, my photography career and, of course, The Farmer Wants a Wife. All of these parts of my life make me who I am today. Some experiences, especially early on, have contributed more than others to my psychological problems, but it’s important to know that I am not blaming any person or event. For this reason, too, some names have been changed to protect people who would prefer not to be in the telling of my story. In my life, it was a string of experiences which together led to my mental illnesses, but I am also grateful as these challenges have made me into the person I am today—a strong, confident, happy person.

The main purpose in writing my story is to make people aware that what you see on the outside is not always what’s on the inside. I want to show that mental illness, including eating disorders, can happen to absolutely anybody; that these diseases don’t discriminate. And I also hope to inspire people who suffer from psychological problems, to prove that these devastating illnesses can be conquered.

I’m a city girl, and before The Farmer Wants a Wife my experiences of country life were limited. Exposure to the country included a property my family visited twice when I was a child and one week in the bush on school camp. I was young then and everything seemed so different and exciting in the country. The smells, the textures, the sounds, but there was always a certain comfort in knowing that at the end of our holiday, we would head home to the city and its familiar conveniences. I would find comfort in being back in my own bed, listening to passing traffic outside my window.

There is, without doubt, a certain charm about the country which makes even the most city-centric person fall in love with it. Having lived in the city for 31 years, when I first arrived in the country it felt old-fashioned, almost archaic, but it had a pureness which I had never known. I noticed a difference in the people straight away—country people are always willing to say hello, ask you how your day is, and are genuinely interested in the answer. They’re willing to lend a hand when it’s needed, and expect nothing in return. They give you their attention, their time.

Another difference about living on the land which I had never expected was the satisfaction I feel eating our own produce, whether it’s vegetables from the garden, eggs from the chooks, or lamb or beef we’ve bred and raised. I was used to buying meat from the butcher or supermarket, not knowing or really thinking about how the meat got there. Now, I help Hughie, the local travelling butcher, dissect our own livestock into cuts of meat which end up on our dinner table. In the city if I wanted to heat my house I pushed a button; I had no idea how to build a real roaring fire. Chutneys and jams used to come from the supermarket in jars but now I have the pleasure of telling family and friends that I make and bottle my own. It is these little things about living in the country which at first seemed overwhelming but now they are an everyday aspect of my life which I love and wouldn’t change.

I used to find satisfaction in a good cocktail, now I find it in a good downpour of rain. I never thought I would worry so much about when the next rain would arrive, but the feeling of utter relief when it does come cannot be contained. Before I would get upset over sad movies, now it’s over a lost calf. Life for me has definitely changed, but I wouldn’t be living on the farm if I didn’t love it. The challenges we confront, the successes we have, are what makes it all worthwhile.

One of the things I love most about living on the farm is the beautiful way it brings family and friends together. When my family and friends stay here, they also embrace the country way of living. Going to sleep listening to horses gallop in the paddock next to the house, waking up to the sound of a bull bellowing, experiencing for themselves how much better a cup of tea tastes when sitting on the verandah watching cattle graze, gazing at the stars which seem impossibly clear and bright, and just enjoying the everyday things that make the farm such a special place—a place which I am so privileged to now call my home.

1

Back to the beginning

I come from a small family and we are, and always have been, extremely close. My father David and mother Jenny have been married for almost 40 years. With so many of my friends’ parents divorced, growing up in a family with both parents was, for me, a gift—one that many unfortunately don’t have.

My sister Jacquie is four years older than me, but the age difference has never affected our unbreakable bond. Sure, we very occasionally argue—what sisters don’t?—but we are always there for each other. Always. Jacquie and I are very similar in our mannerisms, personalities and our sense of humour. We both know what the other is thinking or about to do without either of us saying a word. It may be a cliché but she’s my best friend and we still speak to each other on the phone at least once a day.

I grew up in Hawthorn, a leafy suburb only a fifteen-minute drive from the Melbourne CBD. It’s a very pretty area, with lovely gardens and lots of parks. There was a park opposite our house where I learnt to ride my bike. I remember my nervousness when I rode my bike for the first time without training wheels and then the feeling of accomplishment when I turned around to see Dad was no longer holding on and I was on my own. Our house was a cosy red-brick Edwardian, with the family’s golden retrievers tearing up Dad’s immaculate lawns. When we were young, my bedroom had wall-to-wall posters of Madonna; Jacquie’s was wall-to-wall Bros. Whenever I had nightmares I would creep into Jacquie’s bedroom, crawl into her double bed with her, and feel safe again. She really is my guardian angel.

As well as Mum, Dad and Jacquie, I was also very fortunate to grow up with two aunts, Dad’s younger sister, Susie, and Mum’s older sister, Marion. Both my aunts are fun-loving and have a great sense of humour and love a good joke, but they also listen and give advice and support whenever it’s needed. Today, I have no living grandparents but I often think about my mum’s mother, Marion, and Dad’s mother and father, Mardi and Papa. I would have loved them to see where I am living and how happy I am. I never met my Mum’s father as he died when Mum was young. But Mum often tells me stories of him and always says, ‘You would have loved my father’.

For as long as I can remember, Dad has always had the opinion that if there is a problem, whether it be large or small, it is best discussed and worked through as a family. ‘A problem shared is a problem halved,’ he always said, and still does. So Jacquie and I grew up knowing that whenever something was wrong, or we had a problem we couldn’t fix ourselves, we could go to our parents. Mum and Dad told us there was nothing we couldn’t come to them about, whether it was a grazed knee or a boyfriend break-up, on any day, at any hour. Having this understanding, support and love in my family helped tremendously with the future issues that were to surface.

I have great memories of our holidays together, especially when Mardi and Papa were alive. My grandparents owned a boat, the Coolagong, which was moored in Tasmania and my family would go there often on holidays. We’d go fishing, swimming or just enjoy hanging out on the boat every day. I remember once Dad and Jacquie caught an octopus which Jacquie poked through the port hole of the shower while Mum was in there. Mum loves to tell the story of how I used to finish my dinner and throw my plates overboard when I was very young; and she would have to retrieve them, one way or another. We would pick oysters from the rocks and catch fish and cook them for dinner. And I can still hear the soothing sound of the water lapping against the boat at night when we were falling asleep.

Jacquie and I both attended a private all-girls school from kindergarten to year 12 that was close to our home in Kew. It’s amazing the little things I remember about my school days—Mum garnishing our sandwiches with sprigs of parsley much to the amusement of Jacquie, me and our friends (this one always makes me giggle because today I do the same when I make sandwiches). I enjoyed school, but if I were to have daughters of my own, I would definitely send them to a coeducational school as I strongly believe coeducation is a healthier, less competitive and more realistic environment for learning.

In year 5, I met my best friend, Anna. Like me, she comes from a very close family. Anna and I were inseparable at school, and we’d talk for hours on the phone every night as well. We had silly jokes and sayings that only we understood, and sometimes we didn’t even have to speak to know what the other one was feeling. As I was growing up, I could talk to Anna about anything and everything, and her friendship became my lifeline in later years.

At school Jacquie and I were both very sporty. Jacquie was an outstanding tennis player and swimmer, and I was a gymnast and springboard diver. I took both sports very seriously and competed in two Victorian championships with my gymnastics. Although I trained and competed in gymnastics outside of school, and as a child was always cartwheeling down the hall, or doing handstands and marking the walls with my dirty school socks, diving became my preferred sport and one in which I excelled, both in and out of school.

Sport was a massive part of mine and Jacquie’s lives and, in later years, we would organise our social life around our sports. One of the things I admired about Mum and Dad is that they encouraged us with our sport, but never pushed us. When I was in year 11, my diving coach told Mum he wanted to train me with a local squad as he believed he could make a national champion of me in 12 months. A national champion? I had always loved watching gymnastics and diving at the Olympics—I still do—but it had never occurred to me that I could be that girl on the springboard, totally focused, taking deep breaths, representing