Jenny Wellington pours the brewed tea into the distinctive blue-and-white Willow pattern tea cups and settles in for a good old-fashioned catch-up at the kitchen table.
Her cooking credentials are well and truly established by the spread of scrumptious date loaf and scones with a hint of ginger, laden with jam and cream.
Husband Peter has spent the morning mending fences and spraying for noxious weeds on their 400-hectare (over 1000 acres) property near Kenilworth.
So, he decides to take a breather and join in the late morning tea.
The Wellingtons’ 30-plus years together show as laughter and banter come easily over the next hour of animated conversation.
It’s clear they are living their ‘happily ever after’ on top of the world in rural Belli Park.
The politics and 24-hour news cycle that once dictated much of their lives now reside in a land far, far away.
Peter, a former Queensland Speaker and state member for Nicklin, spent seven terms and nearly 20 years in politics, in which he held the balance of power in the legislature – twice.
Jenny, a former journalist, was his dedicated, unpaid ‘Jill-of-all-trades’ – offering campaign, research and communications support after her own hectic career as a rural reporter, including a stint as editor of the former Nambour Chronicle and Sunshine Coast Citizen newspapers.
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Their iPads ensure they both still take an interest in the outside world, but life on the farm they share with their beloved three kelpies and two Jack Russell dogs is a much more agreeable pace for them.
With spectacular views out nearly every window of their grand old Queenslander, life 2.0 for the Wellingtons is an idyllic existence – one the former policeman turned solicitor turned local government representative turned politician turned farmer rarely has the inclination to leave.
Jenny still has a little wanderlust – most recently expressed by a cruise to Fiji with a girlfriend.
But for the most part, she, too, is satisfied with the ‘busy-ness’ of their lives as ‘retired’ Sunshine Coast graziers, breeding a few hundred head of ‘his-and-her’ cattle – angus (a long-time passion for Jenny) and droughtmaster (which Peter inherited from his late father).
Running the farm (complete with old train carriage guesthouse, Australian flag billowing from a flagpole and Peter’s take on an outdoor ‘loo with a view’), entertaining an eclectic mix of friends and neighbours, and indulging the grandchildren gives them newfound pleasure.
But Jenny, somewhat reluctantly, has found herself back in the spotlight since July last year, after writing her first novel.
Damengin is a light-hearted romp that peers into the lives of the charismatic, outrageous, courageous, endearing and even corrupt folk living in a fictitious, drought-stricken country town somewhere just beyond Longreach in central western Queensland.
“I’ve always wanted to do a book,” Jenny says from the veranda of the Wellingtons’ beautiful old Queenslander that would look right at home in any glossy interior design magazine.
“Over the years working as a rural reporter, you meet an awful lot of characters and one of the things you do is, you report local government – I reported several different councils over the years.
“Having a country background, all those characters were spinning in my head. I thought: ‘I really want to do something with this.’
“Everybody has got a part in this play. Everyone needs to have a role because I really like them so much.
“We’ve got the publican, the crooked shire clerk, the crooked bank manager, a delightful hectare hunter, an ex-Wallaby (Australian rugby union footballer) who owns big property.
“Then you’ve got another guy who has a property about to be reclaimed by the bank and of course you’ve got the greenie who’s got a very interesting background and another hero, Angus – he’s like the aristocracy of the west but a lovely, lovely fellow with the biggest sheep station and the biggest problems.
“And then you’ve got Dee who’s an absolute hoot. She’s the daughter of the bank manager and she can’t stand the fact she’s expected to be a proper little miss and she wants to go out and be a jackaroo.
“You’ve got the most marvellous matron, Maggie Spink, who I absolutely love and she reminds me of a matron I knew many years ago.
“When I was a girl, I went out west with my girlfriend. My girlfriend was a nurse and she was going out to this particular town to work and I went with her.
“I stayed in the nurses’ quarters and the matron, she told us hair-raising stories about delivering babies and coping with major accidents in the bush.
“We went out to this pub and had a drink.
“All those sort of people I hid in my mind and I can see the characteristics and what fantastic people they were and what a wonderful job they did in the country.”
Jenny distinctly remembers reporting on a council meeting about 35 years ago, as a rural journalist for The Gympie Times newspaper, when a discussion on drought relief came up.
“The poor beggars. It was in a really dry area but they weren’t eligible for federal drought relief because it was just this side of the (Great) Dividing Range,” Jenny says as Mimi the Jack Russell is contentedly perched on her lap.
“So, I sat through that council meeting and it was really, really sad because they were all farmers. They all had properties that were doing it tough. They were having to sell off their cattle or shoot their sheep. It was just awful and they were the nicest people.
“When you retire, you have time to reflect on what you’ve done in your life and you remember the characters you’ve met.”
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Jenny had the characters and now she had the theme.
Peter’s retirement and COVID-19 provided the spare time to allow all the pieces to click into place.
Now men and women alike seem to enjoy her foray into light escapism – complete with its backroom deals and secrets, lust and romance, not to mention hilarious tangents and subplots.
But Damengin is set against a backdrop of struggles, heartbreak and loss that the crippling drought brings.
“One of the reviews I had was in America, and the (reviewer) said: ‘If you didn’t ever know anything about Australia, this gives you an insight into what the farming industry is like in Australia,’” Jenny says.
“Some of the instances there in the book are based on experiences. I do know what drought is like.
“I have two daughters who are both nurses – one was at Longreach and one was at Barcaldine.
“It is absolutely glorious out there when the Mitchell grass is sky high. It takes your breath away.
“But then you go out again and there’s just nothing. It’s just dry.
“People are wondering how the hell they are going to get through it and this is absolutely true of what happens in a drought.
“Australia is a vast country and somewhere there’s always a drought and somewhere there’s always a flood.
“(In Demengin), they’re all desperately trying to get some help for their whole district to share because without that help for the drought, it’s not only the farmers who suffer … it’s the whole town that’s going to suffer.”
Damengin (which gets its name from the paddock where the dam engine pumps water up to the tank at the Wellingtons’ house for the lavatory, garden and cattle troughs) has been so well received that Jenny is toying with a sequel.
“When I played (the Chapter 2 audio, narrated by Coast theatre personality Carol Burns) for the group at Noosa Library, they laughed, they chuckled and they clapped. That’s how I’d like people to see the book,” Jenny enthuses.
“I would never write a memoir because it wouldn’t be interesting.
“But if you’re writing a novel, you want to be slightly outrageous and satirical, which I am, and you want to have a bit of fun with it, too.
“Like Maisie Mattens who owns the Four Square store. Maisie is a real sexpot and she’s battling with a teenage daughter (and we all know what they’re like) who wants to wear skirts up to her knickers.
“But Maisie’s delightful and you just love her.
“You want people to be entertained. I want to write a book that people will say: ‘Oh yes, I can relate to that.’
“I want a feelgood book that has a happy ending.”
Damengin is available in hard copy, eBook and audiobook at Annie’s at Peregian and at online stockists including Booktopia, Amazon and Angus and Robertson. Sunshine Coast Libraries and Noosa Libraries also have copies for loan.
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