“Don’t Let the Looks Fool You”

Sharelle’s story starts on a farm near Benalla in country Victoria. Her dad kept racehorses, and the roos coming through terrified them — horses bolting into fences is how animals get hurt. So as a kid, she went out with her father clearing roos off the farm, ferreting for rabbits, and dealing with foxes. Cattle, chooks, a veggie garden, meat they processed themselves — everything on the table came off the place.

“I’ve always been that country girl, no matter what. Don’t get me wrong — I can put on a dress and be a lady. But I’ve always got that country instinct.”

— Sharelle

It’s something she’s passionate about to this day: that kids, especially in city schools, should learn where food actually comes from. Not everything arrives packed and wrapped — and the food you’ve raised or harvested yourself, where you know exactly where it’s been, beats the supermarket every time.

Here’s a story that tells you everything about Sharelle. Years ago, having already worked in the slaughter yards around Benalla, she relocated and walked into the local abattoir looking for work. The bloke — Robert — looked at her like she had two heads. No women here. She was quite possibly the first woman who’d ever fronted up and asked.

But Robert was polite about it, and pointed her to his brother Alan’s butcher shop instead. Alan trained her up, and Sharelle became a fully qualified butcher — working out the back breaking down beef on her own, exactly where she asked to be. Blokes would come into the shop, clock her, and go, you’re a butcher? Back then there were hardly any women in the trade. She helped change that — Alan took on another woman, Tracy, after her.

“I said to Alan — I’m not serving anyone. Just put me out the back where I’m breaking up the beef, on my own.”

— Sharelle, on her butchering days

Those skills never left. These days the knife work goes straight into the venison — legs shared around with workmates from her aged care job, and the family favourite: venison schnitzels done the Italian way by her girls, with venison swapped in for the round steak. Her son’s chasing the perfect venison salami too (the trick, as any salami maker will tell you, is the added fat — venison has none of its own), and he’s flat out smoking and drying everything he can get his hands on.

Hunting runs right through the Galea family. Sharelle has six kids and grandchildren who go out with their dad — her eldest son. She and her son have a running rivalry: neither gives away their spots, both occasionally sit on a good result before telling the other, and every decent animal earns a photo message. Her daughter is just starting to come out now, and there’s a mother-daughter hunt in the works — a first, after plenty of hunts with the boys.

And then there’s the daycare story. When her son was four or five, he took Sharelle’s hunting magazines to kindy. Sharelle got called in: parents had complained, staff were concerned — a little boy talking about hunting, knives and guns. Where was he getting it from?

“I said — it’s come from his mother. I’m the one that goes out and hunts. And they just went… sorry? I said, this is what I’m teaching my boy. It’s living off the land. And if any of those parents have a complaint, tell them to come and see me.”

— Sharelle

Not one parent ever did. (She never got the magazines back, either — make of that what you will.) Her point stands today: taught properly, kids learn gun safety, ethics, and respect from the very beginning. It’s never about the gun — it’s about the person handling it.

Sharelle has always been a solo hunter at heart. Taught by her dad, then self-taught from there, she’ll happily walk all day on her own — and when she’s out there, she is in the zone. Ask her husband Wayne. Ask the kids. Dragging feet, chatting, giggling — she gets the shits, and she’s not sorry about it. There’s even a treasured video of young Declan, bored on a glassing session, drawing in the dirt with a stick while Sharelle silently delivers The Look.

Wayne came into the picture five or six years ago — and the story of how is a ripper. Sharelle applied for Farmer Wants a Wife, pitching to be the show’s first female farmer, hunting front and centre in her profile. She got the callback for an interview… and then met Wayne, and the TV career was over before it began. The Instagram she’d built for the application kept going, and Huntress Galea grew from there. (She still holds the missed stardom over Wayne’s head when they watch the show.)

Wayne’s an old duck hunter just getting into deer now — chief bag carrier, occasional shooter, and the man behind their upcoming anniversary hunt: a weekend away chasing sambar, with proper accommodation instead of swags. “It has to be mine,” she says of the first stag. But she might let him have a shot. God help him if he gets something.

On the wall behind Sharelle sits her benchmark: a 28-inch sambar stag, taken about seven years back up near Dinner Plain in the snow country. It’s a masterclass in patience. They’d been running trail cameras on the area and watching the pattern — roos out first, then the brumbies grazing through, then the deer stepping out last. She picked her morning, waited out the sequence, and when the big boy stepped into the open at just over a hundred metres, she shuffled quietly along the ground to a log, settled over it, and waited for the side-on shot.

“He dropped, went back into the bush a couple of metres, and I found him wrapped around a tree. You’re trying to guess the size when they’re standing there — and then you walk up and go, no. He’s bigger.”

— Sharelle, on her Dinner Plain stag

The rule in the Galea house now: nothing goes on the wall smaller than 28 inches. She’s after a 32 or a 35. And the luck runs alongside the skill — like the hunt where they walked all day for nothing, trudged back to camp, and found a deer standing right at the campsite waiting for them. No carry-out required.

When she does earn the carry-out, nothing gets left behind. Wayne is strict on it and so is she: the meat comes back, every bit of it. Knife, binos, meat bags — that’s the non-negotiable core of the pack. Her rifle of choice is a Tikka T3 Lite, and she’ll tell any woman starting out the same thing: if you’re walking all day, weight matters. Go light.

Today Sharelle and Wayne are at Taggerty in Victoria, where they’ve built the best of both worlds: Galea Ranch. There’s a glamping tent set back in the bush, campsites, an outdoor kitchen and shower, hand-fed Highland cows that steal the show for every city visitor, and a hand-raised baby possum doing the rounds for pats.

And straight across the road? State forest. Full of sambar — so many that Sharelle can count five dead on the roadside just driving into town. Hunters camp on the property and walk out the front door into public land. Wayne bought the place with exactly that in mind: you’ve got state right across the road — you’ve got no excuse.

“How you walk in on that land is how you should walk out. Clean up your rubbish. Respect the farmer, their stock, their property. You do the right thing by them, they start trusting you — and that’s how you get invited back.”

— Sharelle, on earning private land access

As a farmer herself, she’s blunt about private land access: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and trust is everything. Rubbish is her number one pet hate — she picks up other people’s wherever she finds it — and her safety rule is just as firm: firearms and drinking don’t mix, full stop. Plan your trip so they’re never in the same session.

Here’s the twist Sharelle never saw coming. A couple of years back, after a lifetime of never being allergic to anything, a bull ant bite on the farm turned into full anaphylaxis — tingling hands, numb tongue, closing airways, and Wayne flooring it to the hospital. The verdict: after being bitten so many times over the years, her body had turned on bull ants and jumping jacks completely.

Last summer meant five to eight hospital trips, EpiPens in every bag (she even talked one through Bali customs), and a constant scan of the ground before she sits down anywhere in the bush. Desensitisation treatment is on the cards before next summer. Her friends reckon she should move to the city.

“I don’t care. It’s either me or them — and they’re the ones going. I’ll still get out there.”

— Sharelle, declaring war on the bull ants

It’s classic Sharelle: acknowledge the problem, pack the EpiPens, spray the nests, and keep hunting. Slowing down was never on the table.

For all the stags and schnitzels, some of Sharelle’s favourite time in the bush involves no rifle at all. She’ll head out just to see how close she can get to an animal before it knows she’s there — that quiet thrill of sharing space with something wild. It’s the heart of her message to women who are curious but nervous.

“Don’t think you can’t do it. And you don’t have to hold a gun — go out with someone who does, or just get out there and enjoy nature. You’re not too old to learn or start. I’m 53 and I’m still going.”

— Sharelle

She knows the double-take better than anyone. New people meet her dressed up and assume princess — then find out she’s a butcher-trained solo deer hunter and it blows them away. Wayne loves it too: look what my missus just brought home. Asked what she hopes people see in her, her answer came fast — a strong woman with a good heart. (Wayne, walking in the door on cue, voted “best husband ever.”)

Sharelle — thank you for going first. For fronting up to the abattoir door, for raising six kids who know exactly where their food comes from, and for two decades of showing Australian women what it looks like to be capable, independent and completely yourself. You inspired the woman behind this podcast before it ever existed — and now you’re inspiring the whole Women Who Hunt family. 🦌