Cuddling cows, bottle-feeding calves, and meeting Elvis the steer. A Murraylands dairy farmer has turned her working farm into one of SA’s most unusual tourism experiences – and won an award for it.
A third of Australian kids don’t know yoghurt comes from a cow. Narelle Zanker is trying to fix that – one calf bottle, one farm tour, and one steer called Elvis at a time.
Now, the 30-year-old dairy farmer and educator has been named South Australia’s winner of the 2026 AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award, recognising her work turning a family farm near Mannum into one of the state’s most hands-on agritourism experiences.
Less than two years after launching Dairy Adventures, she’s also been named SA Young Dairy Farmer of the Year and a finalist in the SA Tourism Awards.
Not bad for someone who says she “didn’t really know what agritourism meant” when she started.
From classroom to calf shed
Narelle grew up on her parents Geoff and Heather Simons’ dairy farm in the Murraylands – 650 cows including a milking herd of 300, 1600 hectares of crops, and a childhood spent milking and feeding calves before and after school.
“I genuinely loved growing up on the farm,” she says. “Plenty of land, plenty of space to run around. I’ve never really enjoyed being inside.”
But as a teenager, teaching was the dream. She studied education at uni, then spent four years in regional classrooms. During that time, she helped set up agriculture programs at two schools and started bringing students out to the family farm. Something clicked.
“It brought me to life,” she says. “Seeing how excited the kids got being on the farm – I put that in the back of my mind.”
By her fourth year, Narelle was being put forward for promotion. Instead, she decided to resign.
“I just resigned. I went back to the farm with the idea that I could start an agritourism business. No idea what that meant – but all I wanted to do was bring people on the farm and educate them.”
The push she needed
Back home, Narelle planned to focus on farm work and absolutely not look for a relationship. That lasted about a month.
Joel, from a sheep and cropping farm near Laura in the Mid North, moved to the river town after they married. He swapped sheep for dairy cows – “which wasn’t on his cards” – and then gave Narelle the nudge she needed.
“Joel said, ‘You’ve been talking about starting an agritourism business – what are you doing? Get started.’”
They launched a social media page in May 2024 to test the waters. People immediately started asking to book tours. By September, Dairy Adventures was open to the public.
More than a kids’ thing
Dairy Adventures runs hands-on experiences six days a week at the family farm near Mannum, a little over an hour from Adelaide.
Feeding Frenzy is the crowd favourite: families bottle-feed calves, fill buckets with grain from the silos and watch 40-odd calves drink from a 50-teat mega feeder. Then they walk through the herringbone dairy Narelle’s dad built almost 40 years ago and feel the suction cups on their hands. Outside, there’s a tractor to climb on – and good luck getting the boys off it.
Everyone meets Elvis, a cuddly Speckle Park steer and the farm’s social media star. As they move around the yards, Narelle throws out fun facts: cows only have a full row of teeth on the bottom, not only bulls get horns, and a single cow produces around 25 litres of milk a day. She uses a milk crate full of bottles to show the volume. Kids usually guess two or four litres.
“When I explain that and they see the visual, their faces just can’t wrap around it,” she says. “And then I say, ‘Some cows give 40 plus litres a day,’ and they’re gone.”
Plenty of adults come for the cows too.
The afternoon Milking Memories session lets teens and adults milk a cow themselves. Graze & Gaze is a sunset picnic overlooking the herd. Couples book it as a date day, and groups of mates come out for something different on a Saturday. Then there’s the Elvis Encounter – time out with the farm’s gentle giant. It’s cow cuddles, scratches and treats – basically therapy with hooves.
Why your latte depends on people like Narelle
When Narelle started running tours, she didn’t realise how big the disconnect between city people and their food had become. Over a quarter of Australian kids don’t know butter comes from a cow’s milk – let alone yoghurt and other dairy products.
Almost four in five South Australians live in or very near Adelaide, and the gap between the city and the farms that feed it is wide. Farming communities have been through droughts, floods and bushfires in recent years – and when city people lose touch with where their food comes from, those communities lose the support they need most.
It’s easy to take your supermarket’s dairy aisle for granted, but, as Narelle points out, there are country people doing a whole lot of work to stock it for you.
“If all our dairy farmers disappeared tomorrow – where are you getting your milk for your morning coffee?”
She’s noticed a shift, though – more people wanting to buy local and support SA producers, even if it sometimes costs a bit more. “I think there’s a bit of a culture shift. People actually wanting to do that. It’s cool to see.”
What comes next
Winning the state title comes with a $15,000 grant from Westpac, which Narelle plans to use to upgrade facilities at Dairy Adventures, improve accessibility and expand the visitor experience.
“For me, this is about education, transparency, and building trust in agriculture,” she says.
“Looking ahead, I see a real opportunity to continue growing this impact – to reach more people, more communities, and help strengthen the connection between Australians and the farmers who produce their food.”
Dairy Adventures is the only fully operating dairy farm in South Australia running public tours – and Narelle’s the only person running them who’s also a qualified teacher.
That means she’s perfectly placed to fill the knowledge gap about where our food comes from. This year she’s partnering with Dairy Australia as an ambassador, running virtual classrooms for students across the country from the farm, as well as in-person school group tours.
“You want to connect the teacher with the farmer – I’m both,” she says. “I can fit both boxes.”
Narelle will now represent South Australia at the national AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award in Canberra this September.
Her future plans for Dairy Adventures have grown with it. “If you’d asked me 12 months ago what success looked like, I would have given you a completely small picture answer,” she says. “Everything that’s happened has been mind-blowing.”
She’s planning to raise a family on the farm too – giving her kids the same country childhood she had.
“Hopefully they’ll love cows,” she says. “Actually – they will love cows!”
The other finalists
Narelle was selected from a strong field of finalists in the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award – supported locally by the Department of Primary Industries and Regions (PIRSA) – which recognises leadership and innovation in rural and regional communities.
Narelle was one of three 2026 SA finalists – and one of the others was also from the Murraylands. Narelle says Kelly Kuhn is “a bit of a mentor” with building Dairy Adventures.
Kelly has built two award-winning tourism ventures on the Murray – Juggle House Experiences, a luxury tour business, and River Murray Dark Sky Tours, which takes visitors stargazing in Australia’s first International Dark Sky Reserve between Mannum and Blanchetown.
The third finalist, Hayley Hancock, from McLaren Vale, co-founded Insurable – a new approach to farm insurance that uses weather data to trigger automatic payouts when conditions like extreme heat or low rainfall hit, getting money to farmers in days rather than months.
Read more about the 2026 AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award finalists and winner here.
