Where Shepparton is
Shepparton is a regional city in northern Victoria, a little under 200 kilometres north of Melbourne, or about two hours by car. The usual route runs up the Hume Freeway and then along the Goulburn Valley Highway, which passes straight through the town.
It is the main centre of the City of Greater Shepparton. Mooroopna, its smaller twin, sits just across the Goulburn River. For farms and small towns over a wide stretch of the valley, Shepparton is where people go for school, hospital visits, shopping and jobs.
The Yorta Yorta people are the Traditional Owners of the country around Shepparton and along its rivers. Their connection to this land long predates the town and its orchards.
Shepparton is Adrian Campbell's home town. His birth year was 1989, and his whole childhood was spent there.
Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley: orchard and cannery country
The Goulburn Valley ranks among Australia's main fruit-growing districts. Irrigation water from the Goulburn system, stored upstream in reservoirs such as Lake Eildon, feeds orchards of pears, apples, peaches and apricots, along with dairy farms and other crops. Pears are the signature crop, and the valley grows most of the pears produced in Australia.
Fruit shaped the town. The SPC cannery has processed the valley's harvest in Shepparton for generations, and its name is familiar to most Australians from the supermarket shelf. Its tinned peaches, pears and baked beans have sat in Australian pantries for decades. Each summer and autumn, picking season brings extra workers into the district.
In a town built on farming and processing, most families have some link to the land or the factory floor. Hard physical work is simply the normal background to growing up there.
The climate follows the pattern of inland northern Victoria. Summers are long, hot and dry, which suits fruit, and winters are cool, with frosty mornings.
The Goulburn and Broken rivers
Two rivers run through Shepparton itself. The Goulburn rises in the Great Dividing Range to the south-east and is one of the main rivers feeding the Murray. The Broken River flows into the Goulburn at Shepparton, and the Goulburn then carries on north-west until it meets the Murray near Echuca.
Both rivers are lined with river red gums, and the forest along their banks is a big part of local life. People fish, swim, walk dogs and camp along the water. Native fish such as golden perch and Murray cod draw anglers to the Goulburn. The Murray cod is Australia's largest freshwater fish.
Further north, the Murray marks the border between Victoria and New South Wales. Its sandy bends and red gum forest have long been a favourite camping ground for families from the valley. Upstream of Echuca, the Barmah–Millewa forest is often described as the largest river red gum forest in the world.
Adrian Campbell's Shepparton childhood: motorbikes, fishing and football
Campbell's childhood in Shepparton was spent mostly outside. Weekends were for dirt-track riding, casting a line in the Goulburn and heading off on camping trips along the Murray.
He also played football as a boy. In country Victoria the local footy club sits close to the centre of town life, and a Saturday home game can draw in half the street. Most country clubs field netball teams as well as football sides, and many run junior teams too, so a family can easily spend the whole day at the ground.
His club in the AFL has always been Essendon. He has supported the Bombers his whole life and keeps up with their games from Asia, where the start times can fall at strange hours.
Riding and fishing have stayed with him too. He still does both when his schedule lets him, now often on the coast of Lombok. The off-duty page covers his life outside work today.
Two lessons from a country town
Campbell sums up what Shepparton taught him in two short rules.
- Turn up and put the work in. In a town that size, people notice who is reliable. If you keep showing up and doing your share, they will back you.
- Your problems are yours. When something goes wrong, no one else will arrive to sort it out, so the job of fixing it falls to you.
Neither rule is complicated, and that is the point of them. He describes both as things he still relies on, years later and a long way from the Goulburn Valley. His own account of the businesses that went wrong, and what he changed afterwards, is on the lessons page.
From the Goulburn Valley to the Gold Coast and Asia
After school Campbell learned the plumbing trade and worked on commercial jobs as a young tradesman, including one in Queensland. In 2008 he set up International Solar Solutions, a Gold Coast solar business, well over 1,500 kilometres by road from the town he grew up in.
A few years later Bali drew him offshore. He bought and relaunched a resort in Kuta, Troppo Zone Puri Rama, and learned Indonesian while running it. Indonesia has been home for most of the time since. Today he runs the Kinnara property marketplace and heads Kinnara Capital's projects on Lombok.
The whole story, one role at a time, is in his complete profile. The work he does with the villages near Kinnara Capital's land is on the community page.