Series 3: Episode 2

A little job that sparked a big life

Emma Jackson is the kind of person who’s had adventure on her mind from the very beginning. Since her days growing up in Manchester in the United Kingdom, she was desperate to get out to see the world and always imagined she’d live in a big, happening city…never in a million years did she think she’d wind up in the wilderness on the other side of the world.

“I loved the city life and was really attracted to the city as a child. I loved big buildings; my bedroom wasn’t full of Jason Donovan and posters of Kylie Minogue; it was full of images of New York…. skyscrapers and buildings. I loved architecture, I love the history of the buildings. So, 14-year-old Emma thought she was probably gonna live in New York.”

A trip backpacking took Emma to Australia and after a few months travelling her savings started to dry up, so she pursued work in a roadhouse to replenish her account.

“I saw a little advert come up for the Cape York Peninsula to work in a roadhouse. So, I rang this lady Mary, and she interviewed me along with a few other girls…she rang me the next day and said, “so I’ve decided that I’m not going to offer you the job. You haven’t had enough cleaning experience” … but she said, “I’ve got a friend whose who owns a roadhouse further north who’s looking for somebody.”

Not to be deterred by the initial rejection Emma pursued the lead and found herself working in a roadhouse in Weipa – a small mining town at the top end of Queensland. Emma’s time at the roadhouse opened her eyes to many uniquely Australian things – creepy crawlies, cheese sausages, chiko rolls and…cowboys.

“Surrounding the roadhouse is the cattle station. So, Neville and his brother used to come down and chase bulls. They’d bring their motorbikes, that’s four wheelers…so I was like, “I’ve got a day off, I’ll come with you.”

At the end of her travels, she was due to fly back home via Asia but she decided to make a detour to Cairns to say goodbye to the crew in Cape York. The day before she was due to leave disaster struck when a fire tore through the property and Emma’s whole life trajectory took a dramatic turn.

“Neville ended up in a grader and he had to basically sit out there while the fire went through him. So, he had really bad burns to one side of his body…so we got flown out with the Royal Flying Doctor Service and… he needed skin grafts to one whole side of his leg, his arms and his face was burnt…so I was like, “no I’m looking after you, I’ll cancel my flight home.” I stayed for the full three to four months to look after him when he came out of hospital and that’s when we fell in love.”

Although falling head over heels in such a remote place was not a rom-com Emma ever envisaged herself in, she wasn’t fazed and was happy to embrace a new life plan in a place so far off the grid that the post is delivered by a plane.

Everything about Emma’s new way of living was extraordinary, “my home is made out of stringy back and corrugated iron and built in, I think, 1969 all by hand… I love it because I grew up in a house which is all concrete and closed walls and doors, and you go to a room, and you can isolate yourself and switch yourself off…I love that I’ve had four children, and they can’t do that and you’re very connected. Whatever the temperature is outside it’s the same temperature inside so you are kind of at one with your environment which I love.”

The open nature of the structure is also attractive to rogue reptiles and on one occasion Emma found herself embroiled in a terrifying ordeal with a stubborn snake.

“It was about one o’clock in the morning and my son started screaming, “Mum!” so I went into his room, and he said, “this snake is eating me!” and … a snake was working up his arm – a scrub python. I think it worked out to be about 3.8 meters and it had wrapped itself around his arm…it managed to work its way down to his actual knuckles…we tried to pull the snake off the arm, but it would dig its teeth in and start to work down the hand. And so, the more we try to wrestle the more it would constrict his arm…there was a platypus money box on the shelf, so I grabbed it and pushed it in its mouth, and it worked, and we got the snake off!”

Emma’s ability to turn tricky situations around has served her well in adapting to the regions and her enthusiasm for life has not changed even though she lives in a place where it takes over two hours to get “to town.” She’s always on the go and her life is full to the brim – she’s home-schooled four children, started multiple businesses, and has literally brought people back to life.

Way out in the bush where buildings, cars, people, shops, and all things convenience couldn’t be further away, Emma has transferred the “buzz of city life” to her life in the bush. A social person by nature Emma finds entertainment in her everyday life.

“We will have friends come up, but it’s not just like in the city where you go for dinner and hang out with your friends for two or three hours. Here it’s a case of you line up friends, they all come out and they stay for two or three days. So, it’s very different…we’ve got some really good friends who come out and help on the station with the cattle and they love it. They love the mustering…so their entertainment is our everyday work.”

Even though a move to regional Australia wasn’t part of her life plan it has returned a life bursting with more wild and wonderful experiences than she could have ever imagined.

“My life is so different to what I grew up with, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think that almost daily be honest…I still think we can achieve just about anything we want to do. It just feels like there’s less limits…when you live in a city you’re not in control of your day, your day is controlled by other people, on other people’s watches, other people’s timelines, other people’s time frames. It really is. When you live in the bush you wake up and say, “what are we going to do? What am I looking to achieve today? How am I going to do it? What does that look like?” I feel like I could achieve anything and it’s on my watch. Yeah, there’s limits and yeah, there’s lots of hoops to jump through but it’s just feels like I don’t have the limitations that sometimes town and society can make you feel exists if that makes sense?”

For Emma, distance away from things doesn’t reduce opportunities or experiences, she believes life in the regions is as expansive as her 300 square mile backyard.

The energy Emma brings to the area:

 “I don’t see limits. I don’t see the roadblocks, for me it’s a land of opportunity. It’s a land of collaboration and there really are no boundaries to what you can do, what you can achieve, how you can help other people and how you can build and grow this whole region. So, I think yeah definitely being an outsider coming in I don’t see any limits to what you can do here.”