THE ROLLING PASTURES OF Tasmania’s only sheep dairy are bounded by coastal heathland and overlook the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and the forests of Bruny Island. The farm, located 40 minutes south of Hobart at Birchs Bay, is so picture-perfect that owner Diane Rae and her children, Nicole Gilliver and Ryan Hartshorn, never tire of it. Visitors to the 16-hectare farm – home to the family’s three businesses: Grandvewe Cheeses; Hartshorn Distillery; and Ewe Care – are equally enchanted.
Diane fell in love with the area more than 20 years ago during a visit to Tasmania and decided to move there from her home in Maleny, Queensland. “I was six years into a midlife crisis. I used to be a financial planner and psychologist. I left financial planning because everything I was doing was based on greed or fear,” she recalls.
“We decided to look at dairy sheep and cheesemaking, so I started to do some market research. It’s the
