Big Thinkers: the 2025 RAS Rural Achiever Award

To James Gilmour, sheep farming is inherently Australian. “As the old saying goes,” he tells Millie, “Australians rode on the sheep’s back.” His love of farming started when he was a young boy, helping his parents manage the farm he still works on today. James’ focus is breeding award-winning rams that help produce generations of healthy livestock for Australians. Driven by his passion for farming (and a customised buggy he modified to suit his physical needs), James is living proof that you can do anything you set your mind to.  

Georgina “Georgie” Haire is a woman of many talents – while she is a practising physiotherapist in Wee Waa, NSW, you might also find her working on her family’s cotton farm. Georgie pulls double duty because of her drive to help people: “It's really important to provide good quality healthcare that’s a little bit closer to home for these residents just to save the financial barrier of travelling further distances or taking days off work.” But Georgie’s not happy just solving the aches and pains of her community – she's also committed to maintaining her family’s water-saving innovations on their cotton farm! The system collects runoff water and uses a sump pump to rewater the crops, reducing the water demands of these notoriously thirsty plants and making farming more sustainable for future generations. 

Next up, we head to Condobolin, home of Shannon Noll and the iconic ‘Utes in the Paddock’. Condo, as the locals call it, is also home to Tasha Hurley, our next RAS Rural Achiever finalist. Tasha is bringing the age-old trade of livestock and farm equipment into the 21^st century. Conducting her trades on an online sales platform, Tasha enjoys a lot of flexibility from working remotely: “Agriculture is a very broad industry. You can work in marketing, banking – you can do anything!” When she’s not supplying farmers with their essential livestock or machinery, she’s advocating for the local Condobolin show. “It’s mainly about the agriculture,” she said of the show, which is celebrating its 129^th iteration in August this year, “it really is just putting on display all the best things about our local community.” 

Roy Elder has seen first-hand all that the agriculture community can offer. As a project manager for a processing company, Roy plays a key role in designing, constructing and maintaining silos that store and protect grain. He showed Millie the streamlined process of bringing grain from the region to be stored in the silos and then transferred straight into trains to be transported across the country. As a child of an immigrant Chinese mother, who instilled a love and respect of farming, and Vietnam veteran father, who demonstrated commitment to country and community, Roy has a unique take on the Actual Aussie way. “It’s about having a united and common purpose. That’s what makes the communities here so good – everyone works in agriculture growing the food or getting it to the people who need it.”  

From storing grain to keeping them healthy – this year’s Rural Achiever finalists represent a cross-section of the wider Agriculture industry, which couldn’t thrive without agronomists like our next finalist, Katherine Munn. Think of agronomists like her as plant doctors who travels across Australia to assess crop health, educate farmers, and ensure Australians have access to nutritious, sustainable food. With a background rooted in her grandparents’ sheep, cattle, and broadacre farm, Katherine’s passion for agriculture grew through her studies and hands-on experience, especially with cotton, grains, and cereals. Through her travels around the country helping farmers adapt to extreme weather events like droughts and floods, Katherine has felt what she says is the Actual Aussie Way: “I’ve never been with a flat tire on the side of a public road without help. I've always had someone stop to help and I think that's something so amazing about Australia, which I don't think we get elsewhere in the world." 

Brooke Watts is a trailblazer in agricultural technology. At 25, Brooke is the operations manager at Bralca 2.0, helping farmers embrace technology to solve everyday problems. Based in Molong, she’s passionate about solving real on-farm challenges through innovation and has already trained over 1000 growers in NSW in skills like sending drones into hard-to-reach areas or saving time and energy with aerial crop assessments. During a visit, she even let Millie fly a drone, showing her how this technology can be used to monitor crops, check water levels, and more. Brooke’s work is helping bridge the digital divide in rural Australia, modernising farming in the community that grounds her: “They inspire me, their success stories. When I see the benefits that they're getting and the return on investment they're getting from implementing technology, that just keeps me going.” 

Jacob Moriarty has deep roots in farming, where the rhythm of breeding and shearing is part of a legacy passed down through generations. With this mix of nature and nurture, Jacob has collected over the years a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of agriculture – from managing different types of livestock to a variety of crops. He works alongside a former Rural Achiever from the 1980s, learning the craft and values of farming that are now being shared with the next generation – his daughter.  For Jacob, farming is more than a job – it’s a way of life grounded in community. “The actual Aussie way is being so community minded,” he says, “Everyone’s there to help each other. Like any disasters – floods, fires – we’re all there to actually lend a hand.”  

Unlike Jacob, our next Rural Achiever is a first-generation cattle rancher, James Stephens. Calling the Hunter Valley home—a region more often associated with wine than with beef—James was originally from Sydney and moved to the country as a farm contractor. Making up for lost time, James has been growing his herd to nearly 50 cattle through hard work and reinvestment. “To be honest, it just came out of working for everyone else and thinking, if I can do it for them, why can’t I do it for myself?” he says. James takes a holistic approach to raising cattle, focusing on low-stress environments that support animal welfare and produce better food. Beyond the paddocks, James is active in his community, advocating for farmers and helping bridge the gap between agriculture and the broader public.