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Bush bloke is the real deal

River Cottage Australia host Paul West and Digger. Picture: Supplied

Life on the farm has prepared Paul West for fatherhood. Maybe not the sleepless nights with 12-week-old baby Otto but the nurturing that comes with a grassroots lifestyle. Milking cows. Feeding pigs. Hatching chicks. Growing vegetables. Picking fruit.

He’s the real deal as the host of River Cottage Australia, an offshoot of UK-based Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s popular back-to-basics TV series that champions sustainable, ethically produced food.

The third season goes to air on Foxtel’s LifeStyle FOOD channel next Tuesday as West launches his first cookbook which follows his journey with its many challenges on a disused dairy with weatherboard cottage in picturesque Central Tilba, on the New South Wales south coast.

From pumpkin scones, to baked salmon, warm curd cake and honey rhubarb, West has it covered with recipes he’s done on the show. There also roast pig’s head, blood pudding and barbecued chicken feet in a nod to nose-to- tail eating because every scrap counts when you’ve reared an animal from birth.

“You really have to look beyond yourself to look after another being so, yes, all this work here has put me in good stead,” he said. “Otto’s not sleeping through — he was four weeks early — and all I can say is that pregnancy is a walk-through compared with the first few weeks.”

West and partner Alicia Cordia, who he met during his two-year stint as an apprentice at Melbourne’s iconic Vue de Monde, live on a rented property five minutes down the road from the 8ha farm owned by Fearnley- Whittingstall’s production company KEO Films.

West, 31, set it up from scratch and puts in the hard yards with his faithful companion, a short-haired collie called Digger that’s not quite a working dog but has grown up in front of the cameras and likes to sneak into bed at home.

“Hugh is such a lovely, genuine bloke,” he said. “We share a lot of the same passions but we’ve arrived at them through uniquely different paths. It’s about getting connected with where your food comes from, caring about the manner in which it’s raised or grown and using it to enhance your family and community relationships.”

West never planned a career in TV but pipped 1300 applicants to get the job when the casting call went out. He was already working as a chef and living the life on a 500sqm suburban block he’d converted into a productive food garden with fruit trees, vegies and chooks in Tasmania.

“The plan was to be doing this on a large scale on a large property by the time I turned 35,” he said. “Never, in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d be given the role.”

Drifter, university dropout, kid growing up in the Hunter Valley where his parents had a Harley-Davidson motorcyle shop which they sold because it was “a bit heavy” to get into guns, chainsaws and other “toys” for farmers at the Murrurundi Trading Post, West’s life path was set working as a “wwoofer” (willing worker on organic farm) on a farm called Paradise in northern Tasmania 10 years ago.

“It was one of those light-bulb moments,” he said. “I was just floating around; didn’t have a trade and doing every manner of odd jobs imaginable. The experiences I had at this farm, which produced so much of its own food, got me hooked. But I realised I had none of the skills needed to make it a reality for me so, I guess from 21 till now, I have been equipping myself to do what I believe in.

“Some people think I’m bunging on the Australian accent on TV. I’m not. I didn’t come out of a leafy suburb. I grew up in the bush. So it’s real.”