Amongst the hundreds of Rural Youth volunteers manning ticket booths, directing traffic and finding lost children, Agfest has four extra volunteers from Europe.
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These women have come from the Northern Hemisphere on exchange and their first taste of Australian agriculture is at Tasmania’s Agfest.
They will also stay at farms within Tasmania after Afgest.
Helen Denton from Cornwall, England, applied via the Young Farmers’ Clubs travel program, with her fellow volunteers doing the same.
“I arrived on Friday night and this is my first week,” Ms Denton said.
Elaine Crozier travelled from Armagh in Northern Ireland for the exchange and will stay on afterwards to travel.
“I’ve been here three weeks and then I’m staying on after until August, with eight weeks in Tasmania and the rest in mainland Australia,” Ms Crozier said.
Scottish native Shona Graham came from Fife, leaving on Thursday and arriving in Tasmania on Saturday, and was put to work straight away.
“We’ve been moving logs around for [Rural Youth], doing a bit of cleaning and finding our way around,” Ms Graham said.
Natasha Losso applied through National Farm Youth Exchange in Switzerland to experience something new.
“I wanted to be in contact with nature and do something that was different,” Ms Losso said.
Starting with Agfest has been an opportunity for the group to make contacts fast.
“Everybody has been really good. If you didn’t do [Agfest], you wouldn’t have met as many people from the organisation itself, whereas if we had gone on exchange to families first you probably wouldn’t meet as many people until the end,” Ms Crozier said.