Meet Your Neighbour –Nicki Whitehead from Murrumbateman

You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

Nicki Whitehead is originally from Humpty Doo, 30 minutes outside of Darwin in the ‘rural area’, but now lives in Murrumbateman. She moved with her husband and two daughters to Canberra in 2010, but soon realised she wasn’t made for the confines of city living.

“We were already used to having a 30 minute commute to work, so Murrumbateman seemed like an obvious choice. We came out here for lunch one day, had a great chat with a few locals, and then we were sold. We definitely feel we are one of the lucky ones living here in the village”, Nicki said.

Nicki works for the Australian Public Service in Canberra and loves the APS network: “The longer I’ve been here, the more I see the APS like an extended family. People move jobs quite a bit so your family grows really quickly. But Fridays always provide a welcome relief to leave ‘town’ in the rear-view mirror.

“I love Murrumbateman, my girls went to pre-school here and I feel like we are part of the place now. And what a great launching pad! We go camping regularly down to the coast, up to the Snowys, or inland to Burrinjuck. Just last weekend we went to Sydney for Mardi Gras which was very exciting. Nowhere is more than 3 hours away, how fantastic is that?” she said.

By Nicki Whitehead & Karen Smith

• Topics:

• People