When budding Australian journalist Annabelle Hickson quit her day job on a national newspaper to follow her new love deep into regional Australia, she didn’t think twice about ​it...

By her own estimation, the panic set in several months later. And while the boy was a keeper, finding an outlet for her creative passions was trickier. With writing skills firmly honed, she mastered floristry and then photography. She started a blog. She published books. And most recently, she has launched a beautiful magazine call Galah, sharing incredibly touching and beautifully captured stories about life in regional Australia. There’s also a podcast with her friend Jillian Bell called Dispatch To a Friend. A prolific creative, Annabelle insists she’s not an entrepreneur. Instead, she concedes to having grit. Her journey as a curious storyteller will inspire. And her pragmatic approach to getting things done is a masterclass in how to be a fish out of water… and thrive.

Annabelle Hickson with her family

I want to go back to the beginning when you were living in the city and working as a journalist at The Australian. You got a cadetship at the paper by ringing someone who was working at the paper and campaigning for the role, which was quite extraordinary. I love the determination there. What were your career ambitions and where did that grit and confidence come from?

Well, I definitely have grit. I don't know where it came from, but grit is something I've got. Confidence is a little more complicated, isn't it? I mean, I have this very critical internal voice that I think a lot of us have, and I don't really seem to have any confidence with the day-to-day stuff, but with the big stuff, I have heaps of confidence. I would worry about what someone thought about me, but I had complete confidence that I could get that job at The Australian. I don't know how that works.

Did you always know you wanted to be a journalist?

When I finished uni, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. But when I landed on wanting to be a journalist at a newspaper, I was obsessed and I just went for it. I did hound that poor person until I got a foot in the door, and then I worked for free for a few months and did not hold back my enthusiasm. I think that really gets you a long way. Lots of people try to play down their enthusiasm because they want to be cool, but I didn't. For me, the more enthusiastic you are, the more people seem to respond.

You met your husband, Ed, a pecan farmer from Western New South Wales, and you had to make the decision to leave your job to follow your heart. There's a lot of prestige associated with The Australian so it was a real leap of faith. Tell me about that crossroad in your life. Were you worried about your career?

Well, at the time I wasn't worried at all. I didn't really think about it. I was young. I was in love. He was gorgeous. In a very un-feminist way, I just quit my job and went for it. It was only about a year after that I thought, "Oh my God, what have I done? What have I left behind?" It was only once I was in deep, really, that I started questioning. In a way I'm grateful for that, because if I'd stopped to think about it, I might not have taken the leap. It hasn't always been easy, but I'm actually really glad where I've ended up.

So you arrived on a pecan farm. How did your work life start to unfold in your new life?

It unfolded immediately. I mean, I had no idea that I hung my identity on external stuff like my job until I didn't have one. Then my self-esteem crumbled. We didn't actually move straight to the pecan farm. First, we moved to the town of Moree, which is a little further west than we are now. Moree had a newspaper called The Moree Champion and I thought, "Well, here we go. I'll become the editor. It will be fine." I mean, that just shows how little I understood about regional communities and how there is not a lot of employment that's not related to agriculture. So I walked in there and the woman looked at me like I was an alien. She said, "We don't have a job. You can't edit the newspaper. I'm the editor here.”

That must have been hard...

Well then I walked to a cafe across the road and tried to get a job there. They didn't have any work either. Then I was like, "Oh my God, what am I going to do?" I felt lost. I didn't know how to start something myself, for myself, by myself. I'm not a natural entrepreneur at all. I'm a very good employee. So that was a really tricky time, and then I went and started having babies, which I found really difficult. So it was a weird time, but I think quite an essential time for me to work through how to take a bit of control and make things happen for myself.

I didn’t really enjoy those early days of having babies very much. They were hard. I had two babies that didn't sleep, but also I've always loved working and I thought when I had children, work would take a back foot, but I actually needed my career even more...

There’s nothing I've found harder. I mean, quite honestly, I find working so much easier than being a mother or being in charge of a domestic life without going crazy. The women I really look up to are the ones that dedicate time to looking after family and friends and children. I have such respect for that, but I find it really hard to not drown in it. 

I want to talk about rural life because it's often described in terms of hardship and disadvantage, but they are not the only narrative for regional Australia...

I hear stories of regional Australia in mainstream news and it’s always stories of disadvantage. It's a poor farmer who's lost everything because of drought or a flood. Then there are the fires and lack of jobs and medical services. It's just doom and gloom. I don't want to underplay those issues—they're real. But my experience of living in regional Australia has been one of utter delight. I grew up in Sydney so I had no idea about regional life. I'd never really spent any time on a farm. So after moving to Moree and realising that I can't get a job, instead of following this course of it being all difficult and lack of opportunities, I've just been blown away.

So what surprised you about the life you found yourself living?

There are smart, dynamic, interesting people everywhere in the bush, and there's all sorts of opportunities if you're willing to give then a go. There's just so much joy and beauty. I really think this life out here has been the making of me, quite genuinely. I mean, if any of my kids said that they wanted to spend their life in regional Australia, I'd be so thrilled for them. I don't see it as some second rate life to the city. So I feel really passionate about telling stories that aren't just about what you can't do.

I think it's a really exciting time for regional Australia. Crazy real estate prices in the city are pushing people out. The COVID work-from-home opportunities also make it possible. Then I think that’s also combined with the cultural blossoming of some of these regional centres. Look at like Orange, Ballarat, Toowoomba, and places like that. They have amazing restaurants, excellent concerts, lovely theatre. You can have all these beautiful experiences in these regional towns that you could only have had in the big cities before. So I just think it's this perfect storm with all those three elements really making regional Australia very attractive to a wide range of people.

It's been 12 years since you moved west and found yourself craving stories from regional Australia that you knew to be true and filled with the joy and the beauty of your rural life. So you founded Galah, which is the most beautifully written and photographed magazine. Tell me about the bold decision to do a hard copy magazine in a digital world?

It does sound bold, courageous or possibly stupid. But I found it to be a much less crazy idea doing print than digital. I did look at setting up a site, but it required a massive investment to do it well. So it felt much less risky putting together a printed publication. I’d also actually done a book before and I'd been able to see that process, so it just felt actually easier.

Did social media play a role in the launch?

Yes. I pre-sold enough copies of the first issue through Instagram to cover printing and design costs. So before I'd even pressed print, I felt I wasn't really in a very risky position. It felt quite safe and cautious. And the response has been amazing. Turns out, people still want to read printed stuff! They want to be able to hold it in the bath without getting electrocuted. They want to access something without a pin. There is a demand for beautiful print, but I really do think it needs to be done differently. There's a reason why lots of magazines are shutting their doors. If I'm not going to learn from that, then I'd be a real idiot. I think this is an exciting time for niche, independent publications and perhaps a less exciting time for those big, mainstream ones.

You said, of creating Galah, that you completely underestimated how much work went into it. So can you talk me through some of the challenges of putting together such a beautiful magazine and how it's consumed your life since you launched?

I mean when you start a magazine yourself and you are a journalist, you are everything. Well I do contract a designer, so thank God I don't have to that too. She does a brilliant job! I'm a publisher, I'm a marketer and run the business side of things. So it's going from, I guess, a freelance writer and photographer to then all those other things. It's been a massive learning curve. Like I said before, I'm not a natural entrepreneur. I'm not a natural business woman. So it all feels pretty new to me, but I also think it's really empowering to do it yourself.

You also have the most incredible podcast with your friend Gillian Bell who lives interstate called Dispatch To a Friend. I love the concept, which is that you share your letters to each other in a podcast form. Tell me about the importance of female friendship and sisterhood in your life...

Well, it's everything, isn't it? I have one sister, so right from the beginning, having a strong female bond has been a huge part of my life. But I'm hopeless at putting enough time into the relationships that matter the most to me. I think it's a really big weakness of mine because without doubt, the most satisfying relationships in my life are the ones with my sister and with friends like Gillian. They mean so much to me, but I need to get the balance right more in my life instead of just working like a maniac. My husband Ed and I spend a lot of time together because we live in the middle of nowhere and that is a relationship that brings me much joy, but no matter how great your marriage is, your girlfriends are crucial.

You are a self-taught photographer, just to add to your long, long list of amazing achievements. And you also published a very successful book called A Tree in the House, which features your gorgeous writing and photography in the context of flower arranging, yet another one of your talents. When did you first pick up a camera and then how did you turn it into a book?

When we moved to Moree, before we'd moved to the pecan farm, I was in those lost years of not really knowing what to do. I was at home with our children, and the burning desire to do something creative just overtook me. So I started a blog, which just is such an ancient sounding word these days, but it was so cool because I write from home. But then I wanted to illustrate my articles. So I thought, "Well, I need to learn how to take photos.” So I did a few workshops in women's houses on farms. A photographer like Louisa Brimble would be there and she'd teach us how to do it. I’d make great friends, and then I'd go back home and we'd keep in touch online. It dawned on me that I wanted to do some sort of storytelling, which felt like really meaningful work to me. 

I want to talk about motherhood because you are a mother of three. Take me back into that transition to motherhood. What was it like to be a new mom in a place where you couldn't just order Uber Eats every second meal and your friends and family couldn't pop in at short notice? How was new motherhood living in regional Australia?

For those new motherhood days I was in the town of Moree, so that was probably easier than if I'd been in Sydney. There's no traffic and everything is five minutes away. There’s also a great community of people, many who were my age going through the same early baby stage. So I guess I had no structural reason as to why I found it hard, but I certainly found it so hard. I mean, my kids are now 12, 10 and 8, and I think of being a mother now versus being a mother... I just can barely even remember those early days.

Motherhood has such an enormous impact on our careers. So I want to ask how it has shaped yours because you don't work in a traditional nine-to-five sense, but I have no doubt that you are on the computer late into the night or earlier in the morning. So how have you navigated career and motherhood over the years?

Even though I talk about how hard I find motherhood, I really do want to be there. I want to spend a chunk of time every day being a mother. I had to come up with work that I can do from home and that I can do in the time between everything else in a way. I mean, now it's probably the opposite and everything else comes in between work, but that's how it started. So both the geography of where I live and being a mother has helped me end up where I am now. For a while before I started Galah, I was starting to get a lot of work as a florist, but that would always require traveling and weekends away. So I feel really lucky that lots of my work can be done from a computer.

I want to talk about issue two of Galah, which is available now. How do you start pulling an issue together?

I have these overarching themes for the issues to help me focus. So the theme of issue two is domestic life , which I find so hard and I'm fascinated by people who can do it well. I'm really lucky, actually. I've married into a family that's full of women who play these traditional female roles of doing all the kin work, but in this very feminist way where they absolutely insist on having an amazing time themselves. So basically issue two is just full of these kind of inspiring stories. 

Can you talk to me about some of your favourite stories in this issue?

There are so many! Are you familiar with Belinda Jeffery? She's this amazing cook and she used to be on Better Homes and Gardens, and then she ran a cafe. But she got sick so she and her husband decided to up end their city life and moved to Murwillumbah, just north of Byron. Together they host this pop-up cooking school in a beautiful old hall and she serves pots of tea with tea cosies, Just everything Belinda does, she does it with such care and love. I found it really, really incredible to step into her world and to see how all those lovely, gentle arts mean so much to her and how she's been able to create a life and a career around all of that. I just loved that story.

I think it's just so wonderful that you can move to regional Australia and social media has enabled so many people to work from wherever they want and to launch companies from anywhere in the world...

That's it. To me, the most incredible thing about social media is being able to access customers or an audience or a community directly. To be able to take out that middle man creates huge business opportunities. I mean, that's really how I've got Galah to work. Really. I've kind of, I guess, disrupted that traditional magazine model. I'm not predominantly relying on a news agency distribution. So it just changes the margins and it changes what's possible. To be able to access people directly is incredibly powerful, and whether that's through email or social media or whatever. Whatever tool you can use to be able to do that, that to me is where you can create a lot of value.

It is such an exciting time. Your work is so multifaceted and comprised of so many moving parts, and obviously,​ you've got a farm to look after and three children. So what are your time-management secrets?

I get up early. After seven o'clock at night, I have a glass of wine and then I can't do anything else. So I when I've got things to do, I wake up really early. I love those quiet hours in the morning when no-one is awake and no-one is emailing or calling. I think when you can really focus, it can be almost frightening what you can achieve. If I have to wake up at three o'clock in the morning, I will. That's when I get things done. But I've got to say, I don't do any farm work at all. Ed covers all that, thank God for him. 

What do you think about the pressure we put on ourselves to do it all? How do you grapple with that?

I love this saying from David Sedaris, a really funny American writer, when he talks about life being made up of four gas burners. One gas burner is work, one is family, one is friends and one is your health. So he said, "If you want to do really well in one of those departments, you've got to switch off another gas burner. If you want to do really, really well, you switch off two." So I mean, obviously this is the opposite of everyone who advocates for balance, which I do think should be the goal. But I’ve found that I can't do it all and if I really want to get things done, I have to shut off other things. Like I said before, often I shut off looking after my friendship, which isn’t a very healthy decision. And I always shut off health. I guess I've had this startup mentality where I'm just throwing everything into Galah and now I'm starting to reassess and think, "Okay, how can I do this in a sustainable way, where I still have friends and still have my health?" I guess my goal for the next stage is maybe to have a bit more balance in the gas burners.

If you could describe what rural life has brought to your life and how it has changed you, how would you describe that?

It has given me confidence, because you have to work things out a bit for yourself. You can't really outsource things as much because there isn't anyone to outsource them to. So I found myself doing things that I otherwise might not have even tried to do. And more often than not it, it works out. I think that's really empowering. I guess it's given me this practice to trust myself a bit more. I see it in kids who grow up in the bush. They trust themselves. They do so much when there's not a single adult around. They ride their motorbikes. They go off into the forest with an ax. They can do these things and test themselves and learn and therefore trust themselves. It's the greatest gift.

Purchase Galah magazine here