Liz Harfull was just a child when she had a chance meeting with a local historian and writer that shaped the rest of her life.

“I had always loved reading and writing, and my parents loved books and history too,” Liz said.

“When I was about seven or eight, I met a woman who had been a freelance journalist in Sydney in the 1920s, although she was by then living in a little coastal town called Robe. Kathleen Bermingham was her name. She was the local historian and had written a book about the history of Robe. She was also the town real estate agent and ended up selling my family an old cottage, which we restored.”

Liz said she and her father began to visit Kathleen to hear stories about the town whenever the family travelled from their home near Mount Gambier, South Australia to work on the cottage. One day, Kathleen asked Liz what she’d like to do when she grew up. 

“I told her that I’d like to write, and she said I should be a journalist, which I thought was a very good idea,” Liz said.

“There was no 'plan B'. I started my working life straight out of high school at the Mount Gambier newspaper. Kathleen mentored me a little bit before she died, and my first story published in the newspaper was about the launch of a little book that was put out in tribute to her, which I also had a piece in.

“I owe Kathleen a lot. She really lit the spark in a practical way about how I could earn a living from writing.”

Liz eventually moved on from newspapers to working in a communications company that specialised in getting information to farmers, before deciding to walk away from it all to focus on writing books.

It was a considered move, firmly based on her love of telling the stories of everyday people on the land, however, stepping out into the unknown was still a huge decision for Liz.

“I always wanted to write books, but my career at the time was all-consuming. I was working very long hours and on red-eye flights almost every week. I tried to juggle writing with that career, but it was just impossible,” Liz said.

“I realised if I was ever going to do it, that I would have to attempt it full time. It was a huge risk because I’d had a weekly salary since I was 16, and it’s a hard way to earn a living—but I’ve managed so far.” 

It would be fair to say Liz has well and truly succeeded with her ninth book, The Women Who Changed Country Australia: Celebrating 100 Years of The Country Women’s Association of New South Wales, released in July. 

Liz said she had been approached by the Country Women’s Association of New South Wales (CWA of NSW) to write the book after doing an author event in Bega, New South Wales. Unbeknownst to her, the newly elected CWA of NSW State President was sitting in the audience.

“I had been on their radar because I’ve been writing about rural women for a while, and I had just done a book that celebrated community cookbooks and the people who put them together to raise money for good causes. There was a whole section in that about CWA cookbooks because they have a long and wonderful heritage of publishing cookbooks and books with household tips for Australian women,” Liz said.

The question was soon posed to Liz: was she up to the task of writing the history of the CWA of NSW?

With less than 18 months to complete the project, and COVID-19 travel restrictions in full swing, Liz nevertheless stepped up and accepted the challenge. 

Months of research saw Liz travelling regularly from her home in the Adelaide Hills to the archives in Sydney, going in and out of home quarantine because of travel restrictions at the time. At one point, she was told if she went to Sydney, she wouldn’t be able to return home. Nevertheless, she remained committed to the project.

“I was very conscious that while it was a great honour to have the opportunity to write this book, there was also an enormous responsibility to get it right because the CWA is one of Australia’s most iconic organisations and has been loved by people for generations,” she said.

“Its story is also one of the most important pieces of women’s history in our country and I felt the weight of that from day one.”

Liz said her experience in writing community history made her cautious about accepting that everything that had been written before was accurate, so she spent much of her time initially going back to original sources and creating her own digital library to refer back to at home.

The book became a passion project, and saw Liz working seven-days-a-week for 15 months in order to meet the deadline.

“When you’ve got a tight deadline, you’ve got to be quite focused. You have to push through writer’s block and keep going,” she said.

“It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done—I’m not sure I’ll ever do anything harder—but it was worth doing and I wanted to do it well.”

When asked what her favourite discovery was while researching the book, Liz said without a doubt it was finding out more about the amazing women behind the organisation, and their extraordinarily ambitious sense of purpose from day one.

“They didn’t think small, these women. For example, the CWA is well known for handicrafts, but that pursuit symbolised a much bigger agenda than people might expect. The whole idea was to save the Australian wool industry.”

One of the key characters who drove the CWA interest in handicrafts was Winifred Browne from Binalong, who was appointed the first honorary organiser of a new committee in the 1930s.

“She was a wool producer in her own right. She had her own flock and her husband had his and they used to have friendly competitions against each other. She raised 10 children and at the same time threw herself into the CWA,” Liz said.

“Winifred wanted to see a new cottage industry develop in Australia, so she worked with a Sydney company to provide table-top looms so country women could work from home to weave woollen fabric.

“She also made trips to Japan and China in the 1930s to explore new markets for Australian wool and then she came back here and badgered politicians.”

With The Women Who Changed Country Australia now complete, Liz has already begun her next project, which has seen her once again head out on the road as part of her research—and she couldn’t be happier.

“At the moment I’m working on a book about rural women, so I’ve been travelling a lot these past few months, visiting these women so I can talk to them and write about their daily lives,” she said.

“It’s nice to be back on the road. I usually travel a lot and that’s where I pick up my energy and inspiration for the next book, or where I hear about the people I want to write about. It’s so wonderful to be back out there.”