Tasmanian-born Rachael Treasure is a best-selling author, regenerative agriculturalist, and mother. A graduate of universities in Orange and Bathurst, Rachael uses story to empower women and change mindsets towards healthier food systems.
As a young country woman in the 1990s, Rachael saw a profound disconnection emerging between the land and women in the growing culture of modern industrial agriculture. She set her sights on becoming a rural journalist and writing a bestseller that would showcase contemporary rural women, who were comfortable in, and caring of their farming landscape. Drawing on her experience working on a Queensland cattle station, Rachael published her first novel ‘Jillaroo’, in 2002.
In the two decades since its release, Jillaroo has cemented itself as an iconic work of contemporary fiction, changing the face of Australian publishing and opening the floodgates to a plethora of novels in the ‘rural lit’ genre (chick lit).
Working as a rural journalist, Rachael also saw a growing disconnection emerging between nature and people, and a decline in human and landscape health due to modern industrial agricultural practices. Rachael has continued to use storytelling in popular fiction form to awaken mass consciousness towards caring for our planet, particularly within agriculture.
She has partnered with Mother Nature on several properties to help ecological repair using holistic grazing management, land hydrology principles and feminine wisdom. Rachael has helped bring Natural Sequence Farming to Tasmania, and hosts Tarwyn Park Training’s Stuart Andrews annually to teach landscape repair to the wider community. Her “Little Big Farm” has sold meat, eggs and other produce directly to conscious consumers via Open Food Networks – an online system offering an alternative to major supermarkets.
Rachael has travelled widely, writing wherever she goes. She has worked a number of jobs as a jillaroo, professional wool classer, veterinary nurse, rural journalist, stock camp cook, high country cattle drover, truffle sniffer dog handler and family farm manager.
She now lives in Sorell, Tasmania, with her two comedic teenage children and a collection of blissfully indulged animals. Her eighth novel ‘Milking Time’ has been longlisted for the Tasmanian Premier’s Literary fiction award, and is a story about cows and the cosmos.
Rachael’s daily work on the farm means she never has fancy nails. Her place of worship and comfort is the‘blue sky Cathedral’ that is the land and life that surrounds her in beautiful rural Tasmania.
