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As much as it’s a cliché, there’s no denying the truth of ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.
But what happens when you live in rural or remote Australia and that village is nowhere to be found?
For Tasmanian beef producer Stephanie Trethewey, the answer to that question - 'create your own village' – seemed simple enough.
Little did she know, it would result in a podcast with more than 500,000 downloads, a registered charity, Australia’s first online rural mothers’ group program and, most recently, a book.
“I created Motherland to celebrate and connect rural mums around the country by providing a platform and online community dedicated to supporting rural mothers and reducing the isolation many of us feel,” Steph said.
“Through the podcast, I share the raw reality of rural motherhood, and through our online program, Motherland Village, we are connecting country mums around Australia.
“It’s my mission to put rural motherhood on the map, and enable the incredible mothers who are the backbone of our rural communities to form meaningful connections with each other.”
It’s these meaningful connections that were missing for Steph in the early days of her motherhood journey.
“To cut a very long story short - all the juicy details are in the book - I interviewed my husband, Sam, for the 6pm news when I was working for Channel 7 in Rockhampton in central Queensland, and I realised soon after meeting Sam, you can’t take the country out of the boy,” she said.
“It wasn’t long after we got married that Sam first broached the idea of whether I would be open to moving to Tassie and starting a farming business one day, and I said yes.
“I had watched enough Farmer Wants a Wife episodes and all these shows that romanticised life on the land, and I was really excited for this new chapter.”
In mid-2019, with six-month-old Elliot in tow, the couple packed up their lives and moved from Melbourne to the central north of Tasmania to start their beef business, Tasmanian Agricultural Company.
“Motherhood was a real shock for me, I really struggled in those early months, but I was living in a city; I had access to support services, I had a mothers’ group that I was allocated to after Elliot was born, we had family and friends nearby, and I didn’t really feel that alone,” Steph said.
“I was very naïve because I’d never been a farmer before; I didn’t realise how relentless farming is, and I didn’t know that Sam would be working seven days a week and how full on it would be to grow and maintain a food business, and so I felt really alone.
“I was just cut off overnight, just lost my village, and so my mental health took a tumble.
“I remember thinking ‘what have you got to be upset about; you’ve got a beautiful farm, a beautiful husband, a beautiful baby’, but I was just so depressed, and I didn’t know what to do with myself or how to pick myself back up.”
It was on a day like so many others, when Steph was home alone with baby Elliot, that the feeling of isolation and being lost reached a peak.
“I got really frustrated because everyone has heard the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ - it’s pretty common and overused - and I remember thinking ‘if they say it takes a village to raise a child, well, where the hell is mine’,” Steph said.
“I just couldn’t find a platform dedicated to celebrating rural mums and I couldn’t find a way to connect with rural mums specifically, who just got it and could understand what I was going through, so that’s when I decided to create Motherland.”
Saving herself and other rural mums
The project was exactly what Steph needed.
“I just did it selfishly to help myself. I know it sounds silly, but Motherland has literally saved me,” she said.
“For me, it was a form of therapy to interview these women week after week, and now we’re in a position where we’re helping hundreds, if not thousands, of rural mums and I’m just so stoked.”
It was after Steph and Sam had their second baby, Evie, that the idea for Motherland Village came to be.
“I had two under two and it kind of all just clicked, like surely I’m not the only rural woman who can’t access a mothers’ group,” Steph said.
“I did a survey to which over 200 rural women responded, and over 50 per cent said they didn’t have access to a mothers’ group, either because of their geographical isolation or because of a lack of local services.”
In December 2021, the Motherland Village was launched and since then over 150 rural mums have gone through the personalised online rural mothers’ group program.
“We survey the women before and after the program, and of the women that said they were suffering with their mental health before the program, 90pc say the program has had a positive impact,” Steph said.
“I know through the data we’re starting to capture that we’re actually making a real difference.
“We’ve created over 15 virtual villages and these beautiful friendships, so it’s amazing what you can do on a farm with a laptop and a decent internet connection.”
The next piece of the puzzle for Motherland is venturing into the events space.
“We want to bring these virtual connections and our growing virtual community of loyal rural mums together and enable that physical connection,” Steph said.
From small things, big things grow
The ‘tiny little side hustle’ Steph started to keep herself sane has grown well beyond anything she could have imagined, with the most recent milestone being the release of her first book. 
“Motherland is based on the podcast, but it goes deeper into the lives of 14 rural mums across different age groups, cultures, and backgrounds,” Steph said.
“There’re mums in their 30s, right through to my mate Pat Fennell in Queensland who is turning 90 this year, and it’s just an incredible way to celebrate rural mums.
“It shares the good, the bad and the ugly, in a really unfiltered insight into their lives on the land.”
The project was two years in the making, but a book was never in the plans for Steph.
“I’m a talker not a writer, but in early 2021 I got an email from Annette Barlow who’s a senior publisher at Allen & Unwin and I thought it was a joke,” Steph said.
“She asked if I’d consider writing a book and said that Allen & Unwin might be interested in supporting me through that.
“I had a two-year-old and almost six-month-old at the time, and how can you say no to that?”
So, she said yes.
“It has been the hardest professional project of my life, I would say, given everything I’ve been juggling, but it’s deeply personal as well and it’s just incredible,” Steph said.
“I am a journo through and through, and have worked around the country for all the flashy shows, but I was never a journo with as much heart as I have now, and I think that’s what motherhood and life on the land has given me.
“It has completely broken me and I’ve had to kind of build myself back up, but at the end of the day I’m now a far more authentic, vulnerable, engaged, open woman and, therefore, journalist.”
Steph said the book, like the podcast, is the epitome of everything she stands for: being vulnerable, being raw, speaking your truth and knowing that every person - every woman, every mother - has a story.
“The podcast, it’s all in the virtual space and it’s really great, but just to actually hold something in your hands and to bring Motherland to life in that way, is just amazing.”
A journey just beginning
The book is the culmination of a ‘surreal’ journey for Steph, though by no means is it the end of the great things the 2022 AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award national winner will achieve.
After all, there are plenty more stories to share through the podcast and many more mothers to connect through the village.
“I can’t believe I’ve made such an impact, and I don’t know if it’s ever going to sink in because I’m just little old me,” Steph said.
“I run around like a headless chook most days, I don’t have amazing work-life balance, I’m trying to be everything - a good mother, a good partner and a good business owner - and I’m still trying to look after my vegie patch.
“I’m just trying so hard, and I don’t always nail it, so I don’t see Motherland as some incredible thing that maybe other people do.”
Rather, Steph sees it as something she must do.
“I feel like it sounds corny, but it’s just something I’m meant to do, like everything in my life has brought me here,” she said.
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t a tv journalist, because if I wasn’t a tv journalist, I wouldn’t have interviewed Sam.
“If we didn’t fall in love, we wouldn’t have had kids and if I didn’t struggle with my mental health and move here, then Motherland wouldn’t exist, so it’s just proof that the universe works in amazing ways.”
