SACRED GROUND

From New York’s Chelsea Hotel to Byron Bay, Angelica Arnott has called many places home during her career as a singer, model and actor. But none has changed her so much as the farm she shares with her husband and children in New South Wales.

- Kirstie Clements

The first farm I ever set foot on was ours,” Angelica Arnott says with a laugh. She’s referring to the farm her husband, Charlie Arnott, a biodynamic farmer of iconic biscuit lineage, inherited from his family in Boowora, in southern New South Wales. She’s laughing because the farm life couldn’t be further from how she lived as a model, actor and singer in the ’90s, which included calling New York’s infamous Chelsea Hotel home — “Ah, we all do it at one point in our lives,” she deadpans.

Back when she was known as Angie La Bozzetta, Angelica was a member of the glamorous all-female pop group Chantoozies, which had several hits in Australia throughout the ’80s and ’90s. In New York, she lived the bohemian artist’s dream with her former husband, who was a photographer, and their two young daughters. Then the horror of 9/11 upended it all. “Here I was with two little ones and my marriage was ending,” she recalls. “It was time to go back to Australia.”

As kismet would have it, this is where she met Charlie. The descendant of Arnott’s Biscuits founder William Arnott had taken over the family’s 2000-hectare cattle farm, fondly known as Hanaminno, where he grew up. After running it for seven years, Charlie became disenchanted with conventional farming and in 2004 attended a local workshop called Profiting from the Drought, which provided an alternative philosophy and ignited in him a passion for biodynamic, regenerative agriculture. It proved to be a game changer for his lamb, beef and pork production, while also making him the perfect match for Angelica, a Sicilian-Australian who loves to cook.