Rural Women and Reinvention

She grew up mustering cattle in Central Queensland. Now she’s publishing a magazine from a dairy farm across the Tasman. This is how Graziher founder Claire Dunne turned a simple idea into the voice of rural Australian women.

Words: Louisa Harvey
Photography: Kiah Collins-Soo Ulugia

Ten years ago, a 23-year-old from Central Queensland had an idea that would change how rural women saw themselves. That woman was Claire Dunne and the idea was Graziher - a blog which has since become a multi-platform brand celebrating rural women that now spans print, podcast and digital.

A decade later, Claire hasn’t found time to mark the milestone. She has her hands full raising two young sons, Flynn (4) and Henry (20 months), and running a dairy farm in Taranaki, New Zealand with her husband Tom.

“Maybe we’ll celebrate when we get back to Australia for Christmas,” she says, smiling. Returning home to where Graziher began around a kitchen table feels like the right moment to pause and reflect.

“That’s how the storytelling began.
I found all those aspects of life fascinating.”

Claire grew up on a 30,000-acre property near Duaringa in Central Queensland - where her childhood was filled with cattle work alongside her dad and five siblings, swimming in creeks and boiling the billy on a campfire.

At boarding school in Rockhampton, Claire realised how different her upbringing was from her town friends. “They went shopping or to the movies on weekends. I went home to check the waters by myself, put feed out, or do branding and mustering with Dad. That’s how the storytelling began. I found all those aspects of life fascinating.”

After school, she started a graphic design degree but deferred, returning home to work on the property before eventually starting a blog about the women around her. “You can’t be what you can’t see” was its tagline, which also became a mission that echoed through subsequent magazine issues.

In those earliest days, Claire learned as she went. “We were about to send [the magazine] off to the printers when I realised no one had proofread it, so I asked Mum.” Her mother was also responsible for many of the first 400 pre-orders after sharing the news on Facebook. Claire laughs, remembering it now: “It was a big learning curve with years of late nights and deadlines.”

A break came when ABC’s Landline ran a feature on Graziher, bringing 700 orders from all over Australia in 24 hours. “It was massive,” she says. “It threw the idea further than Central Queensland.”

The community began to take shape. “It was so nice to draw rural women together,” Claire says. “They were seeing their lives represented authentically. Everyone has a story and sharing their stories tells them, ‘We see you. We see what you are doing.’”

As the idea grew beyond her kitchen table, Claire built a small team led by her most important hire: magazine stalwart Victoria Carey who is now Graziher’s editor (“one of my best decisions,” she adds). And then came her move to New Zealand to live with her now-husband Tom on his dairy farm, initially an isolating period that prompted another reinvention of sorts.

“They wear gumboots and not Blundstones and their pastures are green whereas ours were mostly dry grass full of snakes.”

“I missed not being recognised in the street,” she says, “or being able to chat to cousins or people you went to school with when you pull up at the service station.” Still, she’s doing her best to give her boys a childhood like her own - “except they wear gumboots and not Blundstones and their pastures are green whereas ours were mostly dry grass full of snakes.”

Motherhood has coincided with Claire’s changing role at Graziher where she now works on building the brand. “I’ve been consistently learning - from knowing how to run a business to managing the team that runs it. It’s very layered, and I get a lot of enjoyment from working on the business and the brand,” she says. “But I thought I didn’t have time before kids. Now I really don’t,” she laughs.

As Claire reflects on her journey, she remains humble about what Graziher has become: a celebration of women whose lives shape the land. When it’s suggested that her own story resembles those she has shared over the past decade, Claire pauses, smiles and softly replies, “Thank you. That’s really nice to hear.”

Graziher’s 10th birthday edition is on sale now.