I spent part of this weekend staying with my special friend Bev and her husband Don and their gorgeous grandson Julian who is just about to turn 16 happened to be staying too
Now the dairy industry owes a great deal to Julian who doesn’t farm but does drink a lot of milk. Julian’s claim to fame in this instance for dairy is he put the Australian dairy industry on the map literally
In 2004 when I started advocating for dairy the dairy industry had NO pictures ( believe it or not agriculture had no pictures) and I engaged Bev’s equally gorgeous daughter Jo to take a series of photos for me which she did pro bono
Bev’s daughter Jo and her husband Matt in 2005
I sent them to the current communications manager at Dairy Australia – Vicki Surwillo who at that time was working as a marketing consultant for Dairy Australia. She lobbied her then boss Richard Lange and Richard came up with a campaign called Impressions of Dairy. Dairy Australia then hired a series of well-known photographers to go out to farms all over Australia and take beautiful photos of our farmers and their families and their farms
The premise was so beautiful and so simple and so customer focused
Our dairy farmers are just like you. They have families. They have hope and dreams.
I then lobbied Dairy Australia to take over half the cattle pavilion at the Sydney Royal Easter Show and we had an Impressions of Dairy Art Exhibition and did lots of other great stuff.
Julian aged 3yrs seen here in this photo kissing the calf was the star of the exhibition
The exhibition
All the big wigs (John McKew DA, Ian Langdon (Chair Dairy Farmers Milk CO-OP board, Pat Rowley Chair of Board of DA, Janet Moxey, Richard Lange Marketing and Comms DA) of the dairy industry were there
and so were the cows 
We had lots of great food
and these fantastic little milk cocktails
The farmers took time off from their precious show cattle (they had plenty to eat too) and
popped in to see what their levy $ where being spent on
The Hon. Duncan John GAY, MLC was at that time the shadow minister for agriculture in NSW
I had frizzy red hair – those curls are natural when my hair is short
The Dairy Australia team had lots of fun
There were lots of speeches
and industry displays
we had lots of fantastic activities for kids at the show
Some many reminders of all the wonderful people who supported me over the last ten years. Love you Chris, Neil, Tom, Vicki and Philip xox
and Julian even learnt to show cattle – what a little cutie he was. The judge didn’t give him the blue ribbon on that day. Then he didn’t have much of an eye for cattle – that little calf -whose nickname was Joster – went on to do very well at International Dairy Week when she grew up
Thank you Julian for putting the Australian dairy industry on the map in pictures
