Educating Alice

Educating Alice

Alice Greenup happily admits that when she first set foot on a cattle station, she didn't know the difference between a cow and a bull. The footloose city girl was hardly the ideal candidate for a governess on a Mackay property, having grown up in the bayside suburb of Brighton in Melbourne, where there's not a cow to be seen.

But Alice has come a long way since those early days in Mackay, greener than the pastures. She is now a cattle producer at Kumbia, west of Kingaroy in South East QLD. She met and married a cattleman: -He smiled, tipped his hat and my knees went weak' and left the comforts of an urban life for a life on the land. She endured hard knock locals and familial disapproval for the love her and man, and a growing love of the land. But one morning they almost lost it all... When Alice's horse bucked her out of the saddle in remote bushland, she was horribly injured. Her husband found her unconscious with ants crawling over her face and thought she was dead. Flown by emergency helicopter to Brisbane, Alice had serious liver and brain damage. What followed would test their love to the limit.

This is a love story, but it's also a fascinating woman's journey, not only of how as a fish out of water she adapted and thrived to an completely alien way of life, how she survived a near-death experience and the long and painful road back to health, but how a woman struggles to find a little bit of space to be herself in the midst of the demands of a family, a business and what obstacles life manages to throw in your path.

Today Alice Greenup and her husband, Rick, run one of Australia's largest seedstock operations, Greenup Eidsvold Station Santa Gertrudis, near Kumbia, Queensland. They have three children.


When Alice Greenup left Melbourne on the back of a motorbike to explore Australia, she couldn't tell a cow from a bull. But she had to learn fast after talking her way into a job as a governess on an outback property and falling hard for a jackeroo. Today Alice and her husband, Rick, run one of Australia's largest seedstock operations, Greenup Eidsvold Station Santa Gertrudis, near Kumbia, Queensland. They have three children.


Educating Alice

HarperCollins Australia
Author: Alice Greenup
ISBN: 9780732288105
Price: $29.99