Where are they now? Edwina Beveridge (Walker, 1993)

I have a long Pymble pedigree; not only was I the third sister in my family at Pymble, but my mother Jean Walker (Low, 1962) and her four sisters all boarded at Pymble, as did my grandmother Katie Low (Hammond, 1935) and her sisters.

Fortunately, I found arriving as a boarder at Pymble in 1988 a breeze. I had finished primary school at a little village called Murringo with a total enrolment of 30 and moving to Pymble with an attendance of 2000. I was homesick for a total of 15 minutes over six years.

I was a middle-distance runner and was fortunate the 400m was introduced as a new event in my time. I was a record holder…. for one year only! I can still recall the thrill of our athletics team winning the All Schools in my final two years. Jacqui Soutar was our coach with so much energy. Boarding was fabulous! I was a Goodlet girl and we spent most years sleeping on the balcony with plenty of time running the length of the veranda to evade a house matron. I may not have been a favourite with house matrons (sorry Mossy).

I had lovely day girl-friends who often had me to stay, fed me up on weekends and drove me all over Sydney to athletics carnivals or hockey matches. I had some great teachers at Pymble who made sure we were so well prepared and subsequently I did beautifully in the HSC in which Pymble deserves a lot of the credit for this.

I was in year 12 when the terrible plane accident at Young happened, Alanda, Jane and Prue all came from farms near me. It was tough for young girls to deal with this however boarding in itself was great therapy. I still think of them often and enjoy catching up with their families occasionally.

After school I did a gap year working at Fettes College in Edinburgh. I then backpacked around Europe and must have tried every beer in Europe twice. Eventually I grew up, completed a B Comm at Sydney University and after residing at Women’s College I went on to be a Chartered Accountant and worked at Deloitte’s and its antecedent firm Greenwood Challoner in the insolvency field. Eventually I started wondering about moving back to the country and getting involved in my parents mixed farming business. I returned to Young in 2000 and I married a farmer from the next town over. We took over part of my parents business in 2007.

On our farm we grow crops, sheep and cattle but the main business is pigs. We have 2,000 sows, which means about 22,000 pigs on hand any day of the week. We predominantly use food waste to feed our pigs and have installed a methane digestor, which captures the methane gas from our pig manure and generates renewable electricity. This means the pork we produce has a carbon footprint similar to tofu! We have had some lovely accolades; in 2017 we were the Woolworths Sustainable Supplier of the Year and in 2018 were awarded an EPA Green Globe Award for Resource Efficiency. I am also involved in the pig industry and am on various committees and boards.

Amazingly I did not study agriculture at school or Uni, but now I cannot think of a better career to have.