Summary

This image is one of fourteen photographs of trout farmer Sally Hall taken by curator and photographer Catherine Forge on 5-6 May 2017 as part of the Invisible Farmer Project.

This particular image shows Sally Hall holding a trout on her farm, Mountain Fresh Trout and Salmon Farm, Harrietville, Victoria.

Sally Hall (nee Baldwin) was born in 1958 in Watford, London, and came to Australia when she was four years old. In her interview with Catherine Forge Sally spoke about being an 'outdoor kid' and always feeling a connection to the land. She became actively involved with farming when she married her husband, a farmer, and spent seven years farming sheep and cattle in Wialki in North-Western Australia. In that time she had two children with her husband and experienced droughts and rising interest rates that eventually resulted in a decision to leave that farm. The young family then moved to Lightning Ridge in New South Wales and spent eighteen years working in opal mining. Sally became a jewellery maker and established a small business selling handcrafted opal jewellery. This off-farm income helped to enable the family to purchase land in Narromine and Trangie, New South Wales, for the purposes of cropping and cattle farming. The subsequent decision to purchase a fish farm in Harrietville, Victoria, occurred during a family ski trip to Mount Hotham. Sally's son David was at that stage studying Aquaculture at the University of Tasmania and the family made a mutual decision to purchase the fish farm together and start an entirely new venture.

Sally's roles on the family's fish farm are wide and varied - she works indoors and outdoors and balances a number of multifaceted duties including: feeding fish, office work, feeding staff, cooking fish products such as pate, selling fish to consumers at farmer's markets, serving customers and tourists at the farm's front desk, taking orders and liaising with local restaurants and consumers.

This photograph is part of Museums Victoria's Invisible Farmer Project Collection. The Invisible Farmer Project was the largest ever study of Australian women on the land, uncovering the histories and stories of Australian women in agriculture. It began as a pilot project (2015-2016) and evolved into a three year (2017-2020) nation-wide partnership between rural communities, academic, government and cultural organisations, funded by the Australian Research Council.

Description of Content

Digital photograph depicting a woman standing outdoors holding a trout with autumn colours in the background.

Physical Description

Digital photograph

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