One woman’s journey from ecological despair to finding hope in the soil beneath her feet.
About the Film
For many years, her Nambucca Valley property was a family retreat, conventionally farmed by Rachel’s neighbour Mick. The 2019 Black Summer fires spared the farm, but the near-miss – and a first grandchild – set Rachel thinking hard about the future. Mick encourages Rachel to challenge established farming practices and take on a new approach that starts from the soil up. It’s hands-on hard yakka, but she’s determined, and her joy at finding solutions – not to mention dung beetles – is palpable. Rachel’s Farm is about the environmental threats we face, but it’s also the story of one woman’s resolve to tackle them head-on, intent on making a difference.
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Rachel’s Farm is a triumphant film, featuring intimate interviews with Rachel, her family, and the people she has been inspired by on her transition from the world of entertainment to the world of farming. It gives a unique insight into her voyage from wilful ignorance about the ecological impacts of conventional agriculture to embracing a movement to restore the health of Australia’s farmland, food, and climate.
Witnessing the fury of those fires firsthand, in tandem with the birth of her first grandchild, forced Rachel to confront her own role, however small, in the precariousness of our environment. What impacts were overgrazing, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers having on her farm? Worse still, how was her ecological ignorance impacting Australia’s rising temperatures, loss of topsoil, and biodiversity?
Film director and actress #RachelWard is not the first person you’d expect to join a farming revolution. In 1984, she starred in the iconic TV series The Thorn Birds, which glamorized the rugged Australian Outback. The whole world fell in love with it, and Rachel fell in love with her co-star, Bryan Brown. They married and moved to Australia and several years later they bought a farm where they raised cattle and their children, endured droughts and flooding rains, and finally the catastrophic bush fires of 2019-20, which threatened Rachel’s farm and devastated the country.
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