Hopetoun's Devon is one of the six looking for love on Farmer Wants a Wife

Farmer Wants a Wife contestants. Farmers Jamie, Shaun, Becky, host Natalie Gruzlewski, Charlie, Nathan and Devon. Picture: Channel 9 Source: HWT Image Library

FARMER Wants a Wife is back on our screens tonight. For Victorian Devon, one of the TV bumpkins looking for love, it proved to be an educational experience.

As a third-generation farmer from Hopetoun, an hour's drive from Horsham, farmer Devon can count the all the village's inhabitants as his closest friends. But alas, three hundred buddies does not a marriage make, until his best friend's wife took matters into her own hands and set him up for the rural romance TV show.

"She said in her letter, 'All our friends have got partners and he's by himself'," Devon remembers.

"I didn’t really want to do it, but everyone said it’d be good for Hopetoun, so then I jumped in. As I got into it, I realised it was a good opportunity to go out and meet people."

Is Devon, all of 26, really prepared for a wife to come his way? He says so.

"Everyone says 26 is too early to be settling down, but I think in the country you grow up a lot quicker. My best friend’s already got two kids, and I’m ready."

Despite his determination, Devon found himself beset by nerves when he walked up to house where he was to meet the girls, and someone else even more intimidating apparently.

"Meeting Nat was the biggest thing, she’s so beautiful, I didn’t know what I’d do. But once she appeared, she was really nice, so the rest was easy.

"I’d never done speed-dating before. It was all new to me, so I wrote down about 50 questions, but we only got through about two of them with each girl."

Picking the girls was more straightforward: “It wasn’t easy, they were all lovely girls, but I was happy with the ones I chose.”

"If I see someone, I know straight away if I like them. It’s hard to describe, but I just know."

Soon after this baptism of fire, it was time for Devon to spruce up his farm, and invite his chosen trio back for the homestay. This is traditionally when the sparks begin to fly on the program, and this season has been no exception.

Devon remembers: "They all fitted in, oh, except one. But everything’s really dramatic because the cameras are there, so it can’t be boring. Saying that, you soon forget the cameras are there. And the girls definitely did."

This last statement is  said with a big grin, so we can only wonder exactly what that means.

But for two of the three girls, eviction was always on the cards, and that's when the going got tough, even for laid-back Devon.

"I hated it, that was the hardest thing about the whole process, choosing them and telling them they had to go home."

As for the lucky lady who stayed, you’ll just have to wait and see. All Devon will say is that, when it comes to driving to town to meet his prospective in-laws, TV show or not, it feels like any other romance.

So, come what may, would he recommend going on national TV as a way of finding love?

"It’s definitely an opportunity. I’d recommend it to someone who is reasonably headstrong, and not worried about people around you. It’s not for the fragile because everything you’re feeling is highlighted and it’s pretty hard. But it’s a great way of meeting people.

"And I’d definitely do it again. Mind you, I think I was the only one of the farmers who said that.”

Town splashes out after a long, dry decade

DARREN GRAY, HOPETOUN

Hopetoun's Lake Lascelles is full for the first time in 10 years. Photo: Jason South
March 20, 2010

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/town-splashes-out-after-a-long-dry-decade-20100319-qm8p.html

THE black Maserati slowly rumbles along the water's edge and comes to a stop. A well-dressed young driver behind dark sunglasses leans out and inquires about accommodation for a school work crew.

On the grass in the background nearby, half a dozen young Muslim men who alighted from a large white people mover kneel beside the lake for a prayer ritual.

A few hours later, the steady procession of people passing this lake in the Mallee morphs into a preliminary bridal procession as bride-to-be Melanie Moyle wanders along the grass on the water's edge. She carries a yellow tape measure and an intent look. She is here to measure up a location for the red carpet she will walk down on the big day, and decisions have to be made about where the carpet goes and how long it is.

Her husband-to-be, Nick Seipolt, has spent most of the day crutching 550 sheep but is now at the water's edge after a few brisk laps of the lake in his sleek white speedboat.

Dotted around the lake are several motor homes and caravans, some from as far as Queensland, others from as close as Mildura.

Mr Seipolt and Ms Moyle, the young Muslim men passing through the town of Hopetoun on their way to South Australia, the cool-looking young blokes in the flash Maserati and the occupants of the motor homes are all seeing something unseen for 10 years.

After a decade as nothing more than a hole in the ground, Lake Lascelles is back, brimming with water, people and activity.

Mr Seipolt, president of the Hopetoun Ski Club, says he and his fiancee chose this location for their wedding vows shortly after the water started flowing back into the lake last September, an occasion witnessed by about 150 people, or a quarter of Hopetoun's 583 residents.

Mr Seipolt, 26, says the ski club has bounced back strongly after going into an enforced hibernation when the lake dried up in 2000.

About 20 boats have signed up to use the lake, he says. About 100 people are using them for skiing, knee-boarding or other activities.

''It's made a huge difference to the town, not just to us,'' Mr Seipolt says. ''On a nice weekend down here (recently) we had 18 boats on the water, so there could be more than 100 people down at the lake on a weekend. Some people just come and sit and talk.''

The water has brought extra trade to the town's two pubs, the popular BonBon Cafe, the supermarket and other businesses.

The award-winning sausages of local butcher Joe Wellington have been a hit with skiers, selling out on some days at the height of summer. ''We used to make sausages twice a week, now we are making them four or five times a week,'' Mr Wellington says.

Bookings are strong for the Mallee Bush Retreat cabins by the lake.

The chairman of the Lake Lascelles-Corrong committee of management, Bert Hallam, has been praised for his long-term lobbying that helped get the water back.

The grain and sheep farmer says the lake - a visible, tangible and usable body of water - has lifted spirits.

''The channel system has been made redundant and virtually all of the dams have dried up, so this is the only surface water in the district that we can get to now,'' he says. ''Hopefully the fish will come along, yabbies will come along. And of course there's also water-skiing and swimming.

''This is a rural community. We've had a series of hard years. Grain prices are nothing spectacular. Now we are kind of whinging with a smile on our faces, rather than being gloomy all the time. At least we can come down here and smile a bit about it.''

The lake - which has been deemed a ''recreational lake'' entitled to water from the Wimmera Mallee pipeline - is full after the regional water corporation, GWMWater, sent 520 megalitres from the pipeline.

The rapid progress of the pipeline and the much better inflows recorded in Grampians catchments last year than in previous years ensured Lake Lascelles received water earlier than expected.

At the current price of $40 a megalitre, the Lake Lascelles refill will cost the local council $20,800.

Up to 3000 megalitres a year from the pipeline will be shared among nine recreational lakes in the region.