The journey of becoming a sailor began when Simon Turvey was four years old, but his role as a farmer only began five years ago.
Skippering a Sydney 32 called Born to Mentor, Simon has been a leader in local businessman Peter Teakle’s sailing program for 10 years while competing in a range of Australian races including Hamilton Island Yacht Week, and closer to home, the Adelaide to Lincoln Yacht Race.
Mr Teakle owns two 9.7-metre yachts and his sailing program, based in Port Lincoln, aims to encourage and teach the younger generation or those interested is keel-boat sailing to get involved in racing.
“Some people that haven’t sailed at all come along and learn, and then we have people that do know how to sail but want to be a part of a team and want to learn a bit more,” Simon said.
Simon is responsible for getting a team together each summer and said he enjoys his role as a mentor as it was about being a part of a team, meeting new people and hearing their stories.
“With the sailing, it’s about getting young people to think for themselves, I just guide them into sailing to get the best out of their ability and hopefully we all do well,” Simon said.
He said competitive sailing was an ideal sport for farmers like himself because it gave him a break off the land.
And while Simon has been a sailing mentor for the past 10 years, he believes the role has been reversed in his farming career, seeing himself as a mentee in the industry.
“Similar to what people do with the sailing program, but I’m the other way around because I've only been doing it for five years,” he said.
“It’s about listening and learning.”
The Turvey family have had their hands in a wide range of industries in Port Lincoln including building, abalone, fishing, tuna farming, oyster farming, viticulture, tourism and more recently agricultural farming.
Simon has been involved in most of the family’s industry ventures and became an abalone diver for 17 years following high school before deciding to take on the family farm.
“Only five years ago the parents sold out of the abalone and moved out onto the farm,” he said.
Simon’s parents Brian and Deidre purchased a vineyard property in 1997 and always wanted to expand the property to farming land, then the opportunity came up five years ago to purchase a 280-hectare property for cropping and livestock.
“One of our friends leased it and we learnt a bit about farming from them and that helped us do our program,” Simon said.
With Simon managing the farm as a relatively new family venture, he said they were always open to learning from those close to them.
“I’ve got myself a good agronomist to help make the right decisions,” he said.
“We’re still listening to people and sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn’t, but over time we’ll work it out.”
Much like the challenges of sailing, Simon says he enjoys the everyday challenges that farming throws at him, as one day is never the same as the next.
TURVEY TEAM EFFORT TAKES ON MIXED ENTERPRISE
While Simon Turvey’s family has experienced working in a wide range of industries from building to fishing, abalone and tuna, the enterprise today mainly consists of farming, tourism and viticulture.
The 280-hectare farm, 15 minutes from Port Lincoln, is run by Simon comprising of cropping and sheep, and works along side the tourism business Glen Forest Tourist Park and the vineyards under the branding Lincoln Estate.
“My brother (Kym) runs the vineyard and the animal park with my father and I do the cropping and sheep side, but it’s a big team effort,” Simon said.
“Like most farms, everyone's part of the parcel.”
The farm crops mostly wheat, at about 3 tonnes a hectare, and canola, at 1.5-2.5t/ha, but Simon is looking at utilising legumes in the cropping rotation with lupins.
“We need to find a legume to break the soil up a bit and put that nitrogen back in,” he said.
The property also runs 600 Merinos and Dohne cross sheep with 300 ewes and Simon has recently retained 300 lambs.
“We’re slowly building our numbers up because the price of sheep with wool and lamb is quite good,” he said.
When not on the farm, Simon is running tours on Segways at the tourist park and helps with harvest time on the 35-hectare vineyard, which the sheep graze in the winter months, where the majority of the grapes are contracted to Penfolds.
Simon says his goal for the farm is to continue improving crop yields and to potentially sow some maize next year as extra feed.