'Rural rebellion': The Tasmanian author prompting change through stories

While she has worn many hats - a former jillaroo in Queensland, a rural journalist for the ABC rural radio, Tasmanian Country and Stock and Land - perhaps most integral to her writing is her journey as a woman working in agriculture.

"As I've stepped into the world of repairing landscapes, using regenerative principles - which is something I do - I've written about it more and more," Treasure said.

"It's embedded into every single one of my stories."

If her novels had to fit a genre, they would most likely fall under rural literature. However, Treasure isn't one to be fenced in.

"People think I write rural romance," she said.

"But I actually write rural rebellion novels.

"I'm suggesting that we rebel against the status quo and start really having a think about what's important for ourselves and our children to come."

Treasure said her love for the land had been there since childhood and credited her aunt and uncle's dairy farm in St Marys as being "foundational".

"They were dairy farmers ... I remember as a child, they were suddenly cut out of the milk tanker collection run," she said.

"I just remembered that ripple effect of devastation of 'how do we pivot?' You've got cows that are producing milk, and suddenly, there's nowhere to send that milk."

She said watching her uncle accommodate this and change to an "integrated farm where the milk went to the pigs, and there was sheep and wool and bees" inspired her.

"Since that time, after learning about the impacts of antibiotics, chemicals, and high nitrate application in food systems, it led me to write Milking Time," Treasure said.

"It unpacks what ... some of our options [are] moving forward and where we can make not just the dairy industry healthier, but also all of our food systems healthier.

"That's what Milking Time is about: healthier local communities."

Treasure's first novel, Jillaroo, was published in 2002. Since then she has released fiction and non-fiction books - and witnessed a paradigm shift in regards to women in agriculture.

"[My novels] certainly prompt change," she said.

"I've now seen so many farmers who are male leaving the farm in the hands of their daughters.

"That wasn't a thing so much when I was a young woman, so I've seen that change."

Many of the agricultural issues that Treasure is passionate about are complex - such as regenerative agriculture, holistic and natural sequence farming - and she learned long ago using fiction "as a vehicle" made such topics digestible.

"I've painted all of this with words in Milking Time," she said.

"I just think that storytelling is a great way to spark creativity in people's minds.

"Storytelling drops you into your emotions ... and that's when you're able to feel your way into a different form of thinking.

"When humans are creative, they come up with some astounding solutions to problems that we've created ourselves in the first place."

It was through Treasure's feminine connection to land that inspired the title of her latest novel.

"Everything is centralised; we're marching along on supermarket timelines, and Mother Nature just does not work that way - and nor do women," she said.

Treasure recently travelled around Tasmania for the release of her eighth novel, Milking Time, at the start of May.

Petrarch's Bookshop hosted a launch for her latest novel at the Launceston Library, May 9.

Milking Time by Rachael Treasure is available in Petrarch's Bookshop or via her website.