If the Farmer loves the Land and the prospective wife doesn't, does Love trump the Land?
The farmer is becoming the Prince Charming of our era, complete with trusty steed. He represents a dying breed of gents and the last of our landed gentry. He is the rugged, humble manly man in a sea of side-fringed, skinny-jeaned freaks in Sydney and other capital cities across our fair, brown land.
He is today's ideal partner for some and part of the modern fairytale for many a forlorn city-based receptionist with brilliant yellow hair, a smile to rival the Luna Park entrance and the pigmentation of a tangelo.
These are the character archetypes of Farmer Wants a Wife.
The partnership of said characters must encounter a significant hurdle. Prince Charming's life incorporates none of those things we female city-dwellers come to appreciate as the pillars of daily existence: hustle to work, bustle out, pretentious small bars, expensive social outings, be seen, wear the right things... So on and so forth.* The centrifugal forces for a girl who lives in a city appears trivial and fruitless to a farmer. We are the faces of hedonism. Fun, isn't it?
Conversely, a farmers' day, simple and cyclical, long and labourious resembles something archaic to coast-dwellers on our populated island fringe.
The farmer contestants on Farmer Wants a Wife have chosen Land over all else in their lives. They've chosen its prosperity alongside its poverty, its beauty alongside its drudgery, its relentlessness alongside its rewards. They have chosen a life path that is dramatically different to the masses in much the same way that a member of the Exclusive Brethren chooses that life.
If Exclusive Brethren were perhaps a better marketed bunch and Channel 9 ran Honorable Brethren wants a Wife, would women line up for the prospect of such a dramatic, unfamiliar change in circumstance? Unlikely. It means giving up technology and society like farming does apple martinis and weekends off work.
The city-country divide in Australia is such that few in the paddock have connections to the those in skyscrapers. I'd like to see arranged city-country marriages. You know, really bridge the city-country divide.
I just spent a weekend in the hunter but I would kill myself If I had to live on a farm.....good read!!
ReplyDeleteNice country bloke meets city slicker glamazon???? WHAT THE HELL FOR? By the time he's extracted 3 years dust out of his 1981 red EH holden ute so she doesn't ruin her brand new camel *RM Williams look* Prada jodphurs, she will have sold TEN head of cattle to purchase ONE Louis Vuitton clutch, balled her eyes out when told the lovely organic chicken they are eating on their secluded picnic overlooking the romantic stream was actually the darling OMG I love country life little chick that she pretended to raise for 6 minutes, just enough time to get some photos on facebook. There is a reason city chicks hang in the trendy bars with men that try to look like unclean boys with half their grundies showing. I, however just dont know what it is. Country boys, you belong to us - Country Chicks. Back off city 6inch heel dwellers, just because there is a man shortage in your fair gay as gay city there is no need to flash your false eyelashes at our fair dunkum I'll protect you forever and never show my grundies unless Im bolting into a 3/4 filled damn because its 40deg and Im bloody hot.
ReplyDelete*Note: I, too am a born n bred country chick imposting in a city life. Time for a roadtrip me thinks