The drought hit rural Australia the hardest, and money quickly dried up in farming communities. So in a bid to increase cashflow and urge citysiders to support those doing it tough, a farmer’s wife in the small town of Warren in NSW’s Central West started the Instagram account @buyfromthebush to advertise local shops and producers. Seemingly overnight, Grace Brennan’s simple social media page took off and, thanks to the Christmas rush, generated more than $2 million for struggling country towns.
“I really just wanted to be productive and help in a pretty helpless situation with the drought,” Brennan tells WHO. “When my sisters come out from the city, they often want to pop into the local boutique and shop. So I had this idea that if we could just broadcast all the beautiful things that are here to the masses, I knew there’d be a market for them.”
To her, the success of Buy From the Bush was almost too good to be true. After just five months, the page now has more than 200,000 followers, and has increased some businesses’ revenue by as much as 300 per cent, created jobs and put ‘locally made’ back on the market.
This story is from the March 16, 2020 edition of WHO.
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This story is from the March 16, 2020 edition of WHO.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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