Bush legends: When hard times hit, yabbies proved unlikely saviour for Wheatbelt family

Living with a big family on a Wheatbelt farm filled with feisty yabbies is not exactly where Mary Nenke thought she would be when she was growing up. “I was brought up never to marry a farmer, definitely never to marry a Catholic and I certainly wasn’t having six children,” she laughs. “But here I am and it’s been a fabulous life.” Mrs Nenke and her Catholic farmer husband Michael, whose family settled in Kukerin when the town was gazetted in 1912, have taken their taste of the Wheatbelt to the world since starting their Cambinata Yabbies business. Mr Nenke, whose father Clem was one of Kukerin’s first school students, can barely believe how far the business has stretched, and has particularly vivid memories of being part of a 1999 WA delegation to Britain led by then premier Richard Court. “I never thought a bloke who was sticking grain in the ground in the Wheatbelt would be cooking yabbies in Selfridges in London,” Mr Nenke said. “It was like a honeymoon every day really and the yabbies were our ticket to the world.” Mrs Nenke grew up in Floreat and was a Perth College student before her parents moved to Mandurah when she was in Year 12. But a later decision to join WA’s Junior Farmers’ Movement, unwittingly set her life course when her family billeted Michael on a stay away from the farm in 1967. Some letter swapping and phone-calling developed the connection, and nine months later they were engaged for a marriage that has now endured 52 years. They have lived in Kukerin since 1969. “I didn’t initially feel accepted because I was from outside ... and I’m probably still not in some ways, but there are no regrets,” Mrs Nenke said. “When I got here, I remember the two churches were full, and in fact overflowing at Christmas and Easter, and we had a lot of fun with the friends we made together. It’s a fabulous place to live.” Mrs Nenke’s can-do attitude stems back to her Mingenew-raised mother Margaret Gladstone, who drove a three-tonne truck before starting dress-making and florist shops in Perth’s Hay Street. And when it came time to become a parent herself, it was serious business. “When we got married, the headlines were reading, ‘Pope bans pill’, so we had to think about it,” Mrs Nenke said. The result was she became such an expert in natural family planning that she trained to become a teacher of the Billings ovulation method. “I taught many people and the interesting thing was that I taught more people who weren’t Catholic,” she said. “The Catholics didn’t want to embrace it because they felt they were being told what to do. My friends would ask me what I did with my time, but I didn’t have any time. “I was involved in everything and we had our first four kids in six years. And when we’d had numbers five and six by 1984, things were really rosy in farming and we thought we’d be taking them all to Disneyland. “We had everything we needed ... then we had the recession we had to have.” That is when the yabbies which had lived in dams on the farm for decades — and been the centrepiece of many parties — emerged as surprise financial saviours. The Nenkes’ eldest son, Paul, hauled in 50kg of the tasty freshwater crustaceans to sell to wholesalers, but they went unwanted and were tipped back into the dam. Strangely, within an hour, a random call then came from Kukerin neighbours to say they wanted 20kg a week for their family restaurant in Northbridge. “I always say, ‘God opens the doors, you just have to choose to go through them’, and this was an open door,” Mrs Nenke recalls of the 1991 business opportunity. “But I’d always said to Michael that they should be sold and necessity is a great thing.” The Nenkes have also made regular “yabby runs” to source extra product from 1200 other farmers to help build their business and by 1993, they were already sending them overseas to Singapore. In the ensuing years, things have gone so well that they once sold up to 10.6 tonnes during one record month. Mrs Nenke said past WA governors John Sanderson, Ken Michael and Kerry Sanderson were all fans of their yabbies, which she argues are most perfectly cooked by steaming them chilled for four minutes after a 48-hour purging period, instead of using the traditional boiling method. And though Mr Sanderson’s wife Lorraine got a little too close to the nippers and required a visit to the Dumbleyung Hospital to treat a wound, the creatures have a distinct charm. “I love them, they’re sweet, tender and just delicious,” Mrs Nenke said. “They’re like Michael and I and have lots of babies, but they eat each other and, fortunately, we don’t. They are quite attractive and can also be fun to have in the tank, but I just love eating them.” However, one look at the property’s once flourishing and now near-dry main dam illustrates the challenges of farming in a changing climate. It has added further pressure on an essential bush vocation already struggling with population decline. “Climate change is feeling far too real and the biggest thing is that we’re not getting run-offs,” said Mrs Nenke, who in 2012 started WA’s Farming Champions in a bid to ensure a positive farming future. “We need big rains to fill the dams. There are a lot of things that affect us in the bush, but people don’t necessarily understand that. Sadly, until we get rain or a reliable source of water our yabby business of 30 years is a huge challenge and the margins in farming continue to narrow.” The Nenkes have also branched out to be local leaders in agritourism to add diversity to their farming fortunes. The quaint Mary’s Farm Cottages were the first purpose-built new accommodation in the area for decades and it is the only eco-friendly farm village in the Golden Outback. Shire of Dumbleyung councillor Catherine Watkins, who represents the Kukerin ward, said her town was filled with proud and connected people defying modern challenges to keep it filled with life. She and her husband Jeff are also typical of the new breed of farmers with their natural skin-care products business, Emu Essence. She said the widespread diversification made Kukerin the perfect WA town to visit for city tourists. “Like everywhere, we’ve had our ups and downs with people leaving the district, but we’ve tried to stay positive,” said Mrs Watkins, whose parents moved to Kukerin from Victoria when she was just six months old in 1964. “People are looking outside the box and we’re getting new blood into the town, who are bringing in a new look. But until you come here, you don’t get the feel of the fresh air and the silence. Just come and feel the country spirit.”