KEY POINTS:
Most women would find running a 4860ha station challenge enough. Pip Wilkie also teaches part-time, runs a bed and breakfast, helps out at bicycle repair and sales store and has been renovating the original station homestead and cottages.
And as if that's not enough, the 28-year-old is not
a bad hand in the kitchen either.
When a reporter arrived to find out how one person packed so much activity into her life, tea and a tray of homemade cakes were waiting on the veranda while the dining room table was set and waiting for lunch, which was finishing off in the oven.
In fact, visiting Gladbrook Station, at the base of the Rock and Pillar Range, near Middlemarch, is like stepping on to the set of the popular Australian television drama McLeod's Daughters.
Mother Elizabeth helps out, looking after the 2700 sheep with the "few head of cattle", and with younger sister Emma, 24, home for Christmas from Melbourne, an all-girl crew is on weaning this summer.
While the McLeod's Daughters comparison is one Pip has heard many times before, she is is dismissive of her famous farming counterparts.
Drenching, tailing, making silage and driving tractors are all in a day's work for this single southern girl, as she runs the station, which has been in her family for 135 years.
"I love it. I like working outside. I like being busy and because it is a family property and been in the family for such a long time, you feel proud of it and want to do the best you can. I've been lucky. Lots of friends and family help out."
She has loved living and working on the farm since she was little, and when she was packed off to boarding school at 12 she hated it.
Running the bed and breakfast supplements the farm income and when Pip left a three-year teaching career to come home, she sank her savings into recarpeting the 90-year-old homestead instead of buying a new horse.
She is gradually working her way around the original station cottages and single men's quarters with a sander and her paintbrushes, refurbishing the buildings for tourist accommodation.
The baby of the family, Emma, is considering leaving the big city to help develop the tourism side of the farm.
While the workload varies hugely - sometimes Pip is up at 4am to feed out, before heading to Strath Taieri Primary School for a stint of relief teaching - she says she does have time for a little social life.
"Occasionally I go down to the local pub for a few beers."
- OTAGO DAILY TIMES
