Growing happiness

Through drought flood and heartbreak, Jenny Jennr's sunflowers bloom with hope, sunshine and joy

- SUSAN CHENERY

The sea of yellow stretches as far as the eye can see. Sunflowers swaying on their tall stems. Row after row across the rolling landscape. The colour of optimism, warmth and sunshine in a flower.

“They just make you happy,” says Jenny Jenner, running her hands over the petals of one. Behind her, Queensland’s Scenic Rim seems to vibrate with fertility – alive, growing, ready for the harvest.

But four years ago this was a scene of despair. The land was brown, bare dirt: Dead. It was the seventh year of drought. Times were hard, with no end in sight. “The Moogerah Dam was down to 12 per cent and our allocation was being cut off. We couldn’t irrigate – you can’t grow anything without water,” Jenny says.

It seemed – after 16 years on this farm growing lucerne – like the end of days. The district was depressed. When farming comes to a halt it affects everybody. There was no money to spend on businesses in town. People were worn down.

“You forget what years of drought does to people and the stress it puts you under,” Jenny recalls.

Jenny was desperately trying to think outside the box. She and her husband, Russell, had lost their main source of income. The farm had to diversify. Jenny wondered what they could do.

It was then, in the depths of drought, that Russell made a spontaneous romantic gesture. He bought Jenny three sunflowers from the supermarket.

They looked so pretty on the kitchen bench, and Jenny noticed they lasted a long time in a vase. She had heard, on the news, of people doing dangerous things in other places to get selfies in fields of golden, yellow canola crops. They trespassed, cut barbed wire fences and brought biosecurity risks with them.