Jack Simkin named 2023 Northampton District Agricultural Society Rural Ambassador

Thank you for selecting me to be the 2023 Northampton District Agricultural Society Rural Ambassador. It’s a really great honour.

Binnu’s home for me, I grew up on the farm at Brimvale, and am proud to have been there my whole life. I attended Binnu Primary School and didn’t stray too far when I went to Geraldton to go board at Nagle for high school.

As well as working on the farm, I have a small 3D printing side business making model farm toys. It was something I started playing around with and then I found that there were entire groups of people online that were keen to buy what I was making. Now I’m shipping stuff everywhere, they end up all over the country.

In my spare time, I enjoy fishing and motocross, and I love having weekends in Kalbarri. I think between all our different groups in Northampton, Binnu, Kalbarri, down near the Bowes, Horrocks, and everywhere else, we’ve been lucky enough to land in the best community going.

There’s something special about growing up here that is kind of hard to explain – you just kind of know it. We have a great community spirit here that goes into everything we do – all the sports clubs, all the volunteer groups, our local businesses and even things like the Northampton News and the show committee, all this stuff you just can’t get in the city.
I think that our community and society in general is held up by discussion and democracy. I like to keep on top of things that affect us, and I think about and talk a lot with people about issues that are affecting the local community and even WA as a whole. If you have an opinion, you have to be able to reasonably justify it and discuss it. Decisions that have been made in the past few years have, I think, been made on the basis of this reason or that, which seems fine at first, but there’s consequences down the track and we have to get into it and be able to talk about it.

There’s so many of us that care about our rural communities, but I think our points of view aren’t really being put forward, especially lately. For me, being a Rural Ambassador is an opportunity for those bigger things to be talked about.

I’m really proud to be representing us as this year’s Rural Ambassador, and I look forward to getting to know you all better through the course of the year.

Thanks again!

Jack Simkin
2023 Northampton District Agricultural Society Rural Ambassador