Book about cane farming creates joy in Queensland and war-torn Ukraine

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

An artist living in war-torn Ukraine has helped bring to life a new Australian children's book about sugar cane farming in north Queensland.
Stay-at-home mum Nikki Townley has written about how her family grows and harvests sugar cane on their farm in Mackay, about 1,000 kilometres north of Brisbane, in her book No Drama Cane Farmer.
She said the response since the book's April release had been overwhelming, with families and schools from Australia and overseas ordering about 100 copies per week.
"Everyone is just so impressed with how informative it is.
"It is 100 per cent based off our life."
The book is the product of an unlikely partnership with Ukrainian illustrator Victoria Mikki, who helped create the images from 14,000km away.
Townley asked her agency to reach out to Mikki after falling in love with her illustrations.
"I chose her because I loved her illustrations," Townley said.
"She's obviously a part of something really traumatic and difficult at the moment, and she only had electricity for a certain amount of hours a day [to work on the book].
"She was so efficient and incredible under the circumstances."
For Mikki, the project also became a way to feel connected to the outside world, as deadly attacks continued on her home country.
"It was a hard period, but I tried to be focused on my work," she said, from her home in Rokyni, western Ukraine.
"It's my way to escape, like mentally escape.
The illustrator said the experience helped her better understand a place she once considered a mysterious, foreign land.
"I was surprised that you have a part of the continent that's really warm, but you can plant cane," she said.
"I imagined it like a desert with koalas and crocodiles walking on your porch."
Mikki said she did not know much about sugar cane before working on the book, but drew on childhood memories of helping harvest sugar beets.
"I remember when I was a child, like 10 to 12 years old, people used to have fields and they grew potatoes and of course sugar beets," she said.
"We were on a field and I remember our teachers and parents would give us huge knives.
"We chopped the top of the green part of the beet and put it on piles and then helped our parents to throw it to a machine."
Townley said for her, watching how her sons learnt helped inspire the story.
"So I wanted to write a book that my boys could relate to and that they were interested in."
Townley said despite being from different countries and cultures, she and Mikki had connected over the project.
"I obviously put my heart and soul into writing the book," Townley said.
"It's really special to know that she's put her heart and soul into the illustrations, and it's been an escape for her from what her reality is.
"It would have been very different for her to illustrate a book with components in it that are so foreign to her."
Mikki said she was now curious to compare the taste of sugar produced from Ukrainian sugar beets to sugar made from Australian sugar cane.
"I want to try to find it in our local shops and to see if it [tastes] the same or if there is some difference," she said.
Townley said she hoped her new Ukrainian collaborator would eventually be able to taste Queensland-grown cane sugar fresh from the source.