G’day everyone,

I can think of no man or woman who has achieved something truly extraordinary without, somewhere deep inside, wanting to be seen as extraordinary themselves. After all, what greater satisfaction could there be than to have lived a life worthy of retelling—a story that others read in books, watch on morning television, or see immortalised in film? To be remembered. To be admired. To feel that one’s name echoes long after the noise of ordinary life has faded.

But beneath that noble dream lies something universal. From the moment we’re children, sat before glowing screens or tucked in with bedtime stories, we are fed the same ideal: be the hero. Be the knight in shining armor. Be the one who slays the dragon. What does that mean—and why are we so enchanted by it? Why do we pass this dream to our children as if it were sacred truth?

Yes, it brings excitement, joy, and a sense of purpose. But when we fail to become the hero of our own story, the same ideal turns cruel. It leaves us hollow—worthless, defeated, sometimes even suicidal. Some, in their darkest confusion, have rewritten the story entirely—casting themselves as heroes who avenge the wrongs of their world through acts of horror. Think of some, like Hitler, who made themselves into “heroes” in their own delusion, believing their cruelty served a higher good.

Here we see it clearly: our heroic fantasies are a double-edged sword. We are raised not to be content with being ordinary—not to blend into the background—but to stand in the spotlight. To be the star. And it is in reaching for that stardom that humanity creates both its greatest good and its greatest suffering.

So, I ask you—the reader—should we worship heroes? Is it necessary to follow this instinct, this hunger for greatness? Is it natural? Is it needed? Or can we imagine a world that doesn’t require heroes at all? Can we imagine a life in which we feel fulfilled without aiming for gold, without sacrificing ourselves for the applause of others?

Think of those you idolise—those you look up to, perhaps even worship. How do you feel when you fail to measure up to them? Could you live with the same joy and excitement if no one ever knew your name—if you died having lived fully, quietly, without recognition? Could you feel at peace knowing your life was full of meaning known only to you?

How do you measure your life when you look back upon it? What ruler do you use to determine its worth? Watch your words when you speak of your past. Watch your thoughts even more closely. You’ll begin to see that your self-worth is tied to a kind of internal measurement—a story you tell yourself about what counts as success.

For some, happiness comes from simple acts: a tidy backyard, a kind word, a call to a loved one. For others, it comes from progress—working hard today for something longed for in the future. And for others still, it comes from serving others, from being useful. But what fascinates me is this: our happiness or misery rarely comes from the acts themselves, but from how we measure them. The very act of measuring seems to determine our emotional state.

In truth, happiness doesn’t exist in the present moment. The present offers only immediacy—fear, curiosity, joy, wonder—emotions that move, that act. Happiness, however, is reflective. It arrives only when we look backward or forward: pride in what we’ve done, or hope for what’s to come. We live as storytellers, narrating our futures to give ourselves hope and retelling our pasts to feel content.

Watch your conversations again. You’ll notice it: the constant measuring. The constant storytelling. And if you look closely, you’ll see your own ruler—your private unit of measurement for self-worth. Where does it come from? Why must we measure at all?

We like to say a life is not measured in years but in how it was lived—but even that is a kind of measurement. We can’t help ourselves. Some aim to cure disease, end hunger, or win Olympic gold. Others aim for a quieter triumph—to raise kind children, to love well, to remain honest.

Is time itself the root of this compulsion?

A world without time would dissolve the pressure to achieve. If there were no beginning and no end, there would be no rush. But here, with clocks ticking, we race: through school, through careers, through marriage and kids, through retirement, through the bucket lists we hope will make us feel complete before death arrives. The tragedy is that what we chase always seems to lie just beyond the next hill. Those trusty two words we repeat too often, “Once I…”—once I get that job, once I buy that car, once I build that house, once I finish that renovation, once the kids finish school. Once I, once I, once I—ONCE I!!!

Perhaps, then, time is the root of our mental anguish—and achievement its sturdy trunk—both growing from the same soil: our need to belong, to matter, to know we were here and that it counted for something. We will all lay on our deathbeds scrolling through our memories, asking whether or not we have lived a good life, and we will invariably determine whether we have or have not by an arbitrary measurement rarely of our own making.

I hate the measuring stick I somehow inherited. I can’t just ‘Be’ without the insidious feeling of guilt crawling around my mind like a perennial menace: “You’re wasting time, James. Get off your ass and do something.” “What a waste of a life. Are you going to spend every day being unproductive?” “With so much suffering going on in the world, how dare you sit there and enjoy your life, you selfish fool.”

I won’t pretend I’ve found the solution. I wrestle with this every day. When I throw away the measuring stick, there’s only silence—a silence as unbearable as a mosquito’s high-pitched drone after you’ve just turned the lights out. To abandon the world’s standards is to lose all sense of direction.

Our measurements are tied to shared beliefs; without them, there is no north, south, east, or west—only darkness and disorientation. And yet, even there, something remains. You still have your senses. Your raw experience. I imagine being the first human on earth—before words, before stories, before names. Feeling the world directly: the mountain’s harshness, the cold, the body’s pulse. No words to explain any of it, just my senses feeding back.

What do my emotions do when words don’t yet exist to describe the world? Could you write poetry then? Could you even feel awe without the stories that taught you what awe is? Perhaps not. Perhaps what we call “beauty” and “wonder” are borrowed feelings—handed down through the stories of others. It’s as if humanity, finding the world too raw and merciless, forged a new one out of imagination—a softer, more meaningful one, filled with purpose and grandeur.

We give names, tell stories, and in doing so, make the world bearable. That is our gift. Even in ruin—even in deserts of despair—we imagine beauty, love, sacrifice, and meaning. We can write ourselves into any story and, through that story, continue to live. Viktor Frankl once observed that in Auschwitz, it was rarely the body that gave up first—it was almost always the mind. When the story ends, life ends with it. As long as we can keep conjuring meaning into our suffering, we can endure almost anything.

This realisation is both liberating and terrifying: We are the authors. We hold the power to change the units of our own measuring sticks. We can choose meanings that make life feel whole without demanding impossible achievements or needing congratulations.

But here lies the paradox—Once we see that it’s all a story, it loses some of its power. Knowing it’s fiction dulls the thrill; a movie “based on a true story” somehow always moves us more.

Bloody hell, I wish I had the answer—I desperately wish I had the answer.

Every once in a while, I like to look back at how certain things came to shape the world we live in—especially the quiet, invisible ones. Few are as silent and powerful as glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide on Earth. But before it was soaking into our soils and rivers, before it became a household name whispered with worry, it was just another chemical sitting on a lab shelf. By now you know its retail name well ‘Round-Up’, in 2018 it was reported this wonderful product earned Bayer (the company who sells it) over $4billion in a single year.

Then one day, at age 28, a man comes along. He’d be considered overweight if his towering height didn’t hide most of it, covered in tattoos, his head shaved, grey stubble on his face, and deep lines that each have their own story. We strike up a conversation over dinner at a mine camp. He starts to explain who he is, his voice deeper but wiser than Vin Diesel. “I am the new HR manager,” he reveals without much expression. “How is your project going?” he asks without much interest. I'm not sure who he met that day or what I said in return, it seems so long ago, but it was the beginning of a friendship. He gave me a journal and told me to write in it. At first I laughed and told him only my sisters kept a diary. He didn't laugh or respond in any way, he just sat there completely unamused and stared straight through me. After a humiliated silence, I asked him what to write about and he replied, “Sorry, can’t give you any directions on that, it's your book, your life.” “But what if nothing comes to me?” I impatiently retorted. “Eventually something will come,” he said, with eyebrows lifting, showing the first sign of emotion. For weeks I looked at blank pages...

Since leaving the city for farming, I’ve mostly shared the outer journey — the visible changes, the easy stories fit for newsletters and social media. Only fragments of the inner journey have slipped through. The truth is, the outer journey is only the tip of the iceberg piercing the ocean’s skin. Beneath lies the real odyssey: a wilderness, a labyrinth, where world-swallowing fear and boundless love wait side by side. It begins like this: a boy grows up without asking much. Life is a stream of small pleasures, never looking back, following appetite and impulse. One day he looks up and finds himself a man in his mid-twenties, finally in a position that lets him breathe. He’s rubbing shoulders with someone who teaches him to journal. He reads books for the first time and, like Alice, falls down a rabbit hole. When he surfaces, the world he returns to has shifted. He no longer belongs to it. He peers down on his conversations as though they belonged to someone else, a play performed below his balcony. For the first time, he catches sight of himself and voices that timeless question.

This week I wanted to share with you some important information that often gets overlooked in the age old argument between Organic vs Non-Organic. I often tell people that Organic is so much more than just being chemical free, that part is really just the tip of the iceberg. Science is unveiling incredible findings for our health when they start to compare food grown in healthy rich soil vs food grown mostly with fertilisers. When people hear “organic,” they often think of food that’s cleaner—grown without pesticides, antibiotics, or synthetic fertilisers. And that’s true. But there’s another layer that doesn’t always get talked about: the actual nutrient and compound profile inside the food itself.

Blueberries and raspberries have become everyday favourites in Aussie kitchens. They look so fresh and healthy, but new testing has revealed something concerning. A scientist in NSW bought a few supermarket punnets and had them tested. The results showed traces of a pesticide that’s been banned here for years, along with high levels of another one called dimethoate. Now, dimethoate is still legal in Australia, but it’s banned in Europe because of its potential impact on the nervous system. The tests even suggested that a small handful of berries could push kids close to their daily safety limit.

Have you been out in your backyard over the weekend? Have you wandered through your own little veggie patch? If you have, you may have noticed the same thing I did this week—fresh shoots signaling spring’s arrival. The buzz and hum of insects is already beginning to build. You can feel it in the air, that subtle change. Yes, spring is letting us know she is near. The sunshine that soaked our farm these past few days lifted our spirits. It was badly needed after what has been one of the wettest autumns and winters on record. They say we could be in for a wet spring as well, so we’ll make sure to let the sun’s rays soak through to our bones and our spirit—and enjoy it while we can. In other news, we had a wonderful weekend with family. So the phone was put down and my writing stopped, so I could enjoy and cherish those memorable moments with the people I love most. It’s now Tuesday morning and I’m sitting on the deck with a cup of coffee as the stars fade from the sky and the sun begins to illuminate the eastern horizon with vivid hues of saffron and crimson. The birds all around me are singing—perhaps to wake their neighbors, or maybe just rejoicing in the fact that we have another sunny day ahead. The bush turkeys have formed a congo line as they leave the safety of the thick forest and begin their morning ritual (I counted 23 this morning).

What sort of life would it be without hopes and dreams? Can we survive without them? And where do they come from? I decided to take a walk through a part of the farm I seldom visit—a bamboo forest so dense towards the center it becomes dark and magical. The towering green columns lace together, forming a cathedral-like ceiling. They bend towards each other from parallel rows, making the shape of a grand archway. I can only imagine what it would feel like to be a small child wandering through this forest. As I approach its deepest regions, I see a pile of logs, cut bamboo poles, sheets of corrugated iron, piles of rocks from the nearby stream, and shallow trenches filled with leaf litter that seem to mark out some sort of floor plan. It looks like an abandoned shelter from some wandering homeless person. A couple of years ago, I remember hearing the faint sounds of a child shouting as I slowly passed along the edge of this bamboo maze. I reached for the handbrake, raised my hand to block the sun from my eyes, and focused my gaze to try and make out the small figures deep in this forest’s center. It was more the sounds than the sights that gave clues to who and what it was that caught my attention. I turned the tractor around and motored up between the two rows of bamboo that led me to this rabble.

My eldest daughter is crying her eyes out. She sat in front of the fireplace, quietly rubbing the tears from her cheeks, and sobbed, “Why do I have to be like this? I hate being like this.” I didn’t know what to say. So I wrapped my arms around her, held her tight, and told her how deeply I loved her. As I squeezed her tight, I searched my imagination: I wanted her to understand how special she was. “The ink pad, Ava—get me the ink pad and a piece of paper,” I said. She looked at me with a puzzled frown and asked why. “Just go to the office and bring back the ink pad and a sheet of paper, and you will see,” I said with excitement. When she returned and sat back down, her sisters were already circling, drawn in by Dad’s weird request. They gathered close, suspicious and curious, as if some magic trick was about to be performed.

I hope you fared well in all that crazy weather over the weekend. This week, if you receive a weird-looking vegetable that resembles coral from the reef—well, it’s actually from a traditional Asian garden., Song Cauliflower is a unique, loose-curd variety with long, tender green stems and a naturally sweet, mild flavor. Unlike the dense white heads you’re used to, Song grows in elegant florets, perfect for quick cooking and beautiful plating. It’s delicious raw, lightly steamed, roasted, or tossed into stir-fries—no peeling, no fuss. Think cauliflower with a snap and sweetness that kids and foodies both love. I’d like to thank everyone who has emailed me in response to the recent chapters. I’ve greatly enjoyed reading them and responding. The reason I finally decided to write a book was to help process my inner journey. This farming journey has stirred up so many things I thought I had settled. I believe writing will help me render what is most faithful. 

And here I am, six years later—feeling that ancient impulse again. The same one. The one that says: Explore. Because service is more comforting than exploration. I’ve read many books that claim a life of service is the path to true inner peace. Maybe that’s true for some. But for me, that runway was too short. Or maybe I just didn’t stick the landing. I speak only from personal experience—because I know that for many, service brings fulfillment. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt the warm embrace from acts of service. I tried to embody that ethos: growing food, tending the land, caring for something beyond myself. And it does feel good. But if I’m honest—it didn’t satisfy me. Not completely.

As soon as your self-worth is tied to how others see you, you’ve built a cage, and locked it from the inside.

One of the most memorable times on the farm started with a phone call. A guy named Lochie rang me out of the blue. He’d just returned from a trip around Italy and told me he didn’t quite know what he was meant to do with his life. He said he loved food, though, and figured farming might be a good place to start—to explore that love and maybe find something that would not only pay the bills, but also bring some purpose. At first, I was reluctant. I’d already trained a few people and, honestly, I was just looking for someone who already knew what they were doing. So I told him to come for a week—just to get some experience—and that I could put him in touch with other farmers afterward. But by the end of that week, we hit it off.