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Amanda Ferrari grew up in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, but when she was just a few years out of high school, she bravely decided to trade the city for the country. Joining host Tiffany Dunk on The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast with her husband Ross Ferrari, she tells us why she made the move out west.
Choosing country life
Following high school, Amanda enrolled in a journalism and communications degree at the university, but she failed her first year and dropped out. After trying a few jobs in Sydney and not finding the right fit, Amanda reconsidered whether a career in Sydney was right for her.
“I had met country people, and I really loved them,” she tells Tiffany on the Love Stories podcast, recalling feeling a strong connection to the country girls who boarded at her Sydney high school. “There’s such an authenticity to them.”
Instead of trying to find a cadetship in Sydney, Amanda decided to try to break into journalism in rural Australia. So, with no country background, but a strong sense of belonging, she joined an agricultural college in Orange, NSW. An experience that Amanda feels set her up for life.
From there, Amanda moved out to the Central Western Plains of NSW, where she would eventually collide with farmer Ross Ferrari.
Finding her community
Coming from fast-paced city life, Amanda shares on the Love Stories podcast that her move out west wasn’t without an adjustment period.
“I got a lot of pushback at first,” Amanda says of rushing into things and trying to change them before she understood them. An old habit that she’s glad to have shaken.
“Country life has forced me to take pause and actually realise the impact you can have on people. Good or bad.“
After moving out and making a career for herself in Warren, Amanda eventually found her way to Trangie. As she tells Tiffany on the podcast, this is where, in her own words, she “bumped into old mate here”, indicating husband Ross Ferrari sitting next to her, and started a family.
“I was looking for that sense of belonging and that steadiness, and Ross, his friends, his community, and his family, gave me that.”
The Boarding School Collective
Amanda is a proud voice not just for her community in Trangie, but wider rural Australia, through her work with The Boarding School Collective.
As she and Ross were beginning to start their own family, she looked to the schooling options around her and realised they were limited. Coming from the city where schooling options were endless, to now only having one school in town. Amanda speaks passionately on the Love Stories podcast about realising something needed to change.
“For many of us, you don’t have a choice for where your kids go,” Amanda says of families living outside of city centres. “It’s important to have choices.”
This is how The Boarding School Collective came to fruition. In Amanda’s words, “we exist to connect rural, regional and remote families to boarding schools.”
Amanda says people will travel huge distances to scope out boarding schools in person through the collective’s nationwide expos. Even in a digital age, she says, “that face-to-face connection just hasn’t gone, it’s still what people want.”
Since its foundation, The Boarding School Collective has reached 7,500 families. Supporting families’ research into the right boarding school for their children, as well as being a listening ear all the way up to and after their transition.
Holding her hand over her heart, Amanda says, “I could not love what I do more if I tried. I love it.” Now that’s a real love story.
From Sydney to Trangie, hear Amanda and Ross Ferrari’s love story on The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Check out The Boarding School Collective, opening opportunities for regional, remote and rural families nationwide.
The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast is brought to you by Vixin Beauty.
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