What is it that makes a ‘country’ kitchen? Do we take it literally; is it any kitchen a certain distance from a capital city CBD, where the paved road narrows and eventually turns to corrugations and red dust that gathers on the window sills? Or is it something a little less tangible?

It’s hard to know why this little kitchen - positioned as it is in a house just outside of Adelaide’s city mile - could have quite such a ‘country’ feel to it.

Because somehow it does; this kitchen - more than a century old - feels as country as they come.

Perhaps it’s the furnishings; at the heart of this little kitchen is my Granny’s old table, salvaged from her homestead on the property where I grew up at the back of Buckleboo, with her home-stitched linen tea towels and faded white bread bags still in its drawers. If you know where to look you can see the ghost of the linoleum squares that protected its surface from decades of family life on the farm.

When most people speak about jumping and hoping their parachute works, they’re speaking metaphorically. Not so Sarah Hayes, host of the very first Rural Women’s Day event in Western Australia, who names the day she jumped from a C-17 military transport aircraft over a foreign country as one of the best of her life.

This farm kid turned soldier turned barista turned dairy farmer is not your average country mum (if there is such a thing). She jokes that her friends would describe her as kind, empathetic and a good cook, while her family would say she’s independent, strong-willed and stubborn.