Farmer Joe Bobbin instantly won hearts the moment he was first introduced as one of the farmers looking for love on this season of Farmer Wants A Wife.
The 33-year-old runs his family’s cattle and sheep farm near Bombala in the Snowy Mountains region of NSW. He applied for the show hoping to find someone he could genuinely connect with and build a life with on his family farm.
Just a few short years ago, Joe’s life looked a little different. He was living in Newcastle and working in a completely different field. Then his mother Dinah was diagnosed with breast cancer, and he made the decision to move back to the family farm so he could be her support person and help her heal in the place she loves more than anywhere else in the world.
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“It was sort of a no-brainer for me,” Joe tells Refinery29 Australia over the phone. “I could just tell that she really wanted to get back to the farm and it was obviously going to be impossible for her to do that on her own.”
During this time, his mother would travel the two hours to Canberra for treatment and then return to the farm to rest and recuperate. “Some days, she was good and would be outdoors and some days she was just flat out, really sick from the treatments,” Joe explains.
On the bad days, Joe made sure his mother was comfortable, well-fed, and had everything else she needed to heal. “For me, it was just about being there for her — making sure all the fires were lit, making sure she had dinner and was eating properly, and just generally preparing the environment, which I think went a long way for her to heal,” he says.
While the pair have always been close, Joe says this period made their bond even tighter, and he was glad he got the opportunity to be there for his mum.
“My mum’s looked after me all my life, so to be able to give back to her in that situation was something that definitely brought us closer together,” he explains.
While the pair are super close, Joe didn’t initially tell his mother that he was applying for Farmer Wants A Wife. “I didn’t actually tell Mum anything about it," he explains. "I didn’t tell her I was going through the application process."
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"I just kept it a big secret until literally they said ‘We’re going to go with you on the show,' and they started promoting my application page twenty four hours later.”
“So I had twenty-four hours to tell everyone,” he laughs. “I told Mum and she was like ‘What do you mean? Should we talk about this?’ and I was like ‘It’s already done, Mum’.”
Once she had time to get used to the idea, Dinah was just happy her son was doing something that could potentially bring him a lot of happiness.
“She was probably surprised that I put myself out there like that, but she’s just happy for me. My mum — she’s a pure angel and she just wants me to be happy,” he says.
At the moment, Joe is preparing to compete in the Monaro Committee for Cancer Research’s (MCCR) ‘Hot City Disco’ competition to raise much-needed funds for cancer research.
“The MCCR were really good to Mum while she was going through her breast cancer treatment," he says. "They provided funds and nurses came out to the farm to look after her."
“Every year, I do Dry July and donate to the Jane McGrath Foundation — the Jane McGrath nurses were great to us too. It’s just great to be able to give back and really help support the people who helped to support us.”
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