When Sydney couple Rachel and Ben Quirk stopped off in Orange to feed a hungry baby on a road trip west, never did they think they would be leading three generations of their tribe to the region in an epic tree change.

Rachel confesses she was a Sydney girl through and through, but the chance stopover in Orange got the couple thinking about the opportunity of providing a better lifestyle for their young family.

“We were passing through Orange, and both thought – we love this place – it’s gorgeous,” Rachel explained. “We are procrastinators at heart, but the more we researched the area – the more we were convinced.

“We looked ahead at the education and universities available for our two sons William and Vincent. We considered the infrastructure and socially what was available to us as a family.

“I was in a pretty niche industry, so we also had to consider what employment opportunities were available to us both. Once we made the decision, everything just fell into place. We bought an investment property first and then within two weeks we both landed great jobs.”

Ben took on a newly created position as the Central West Territory Sales Manager for Position Partners a provider of positioning and machine control solutions for surveying, civil contracting, earthmoving, mining and building activities.

Rachel landed a position as the Work Health Safety Risk and Compliance Manager with Paraway Pastoral Company Limited. Paraway is one of the largest property owner/operators in Australia.

The company holds more than 4.4 million hectares which is aggregated into 23 pastoral businesses with the capacity to run more than 200,000 cattle and 240,000 sheep along with a mixture of dryland and irrigated cropping.

Paraway relocated its head office from Sydney to Orange in 2015 in a move expanding Orange’s reputation as an ideal agribusiness centre. Paraway has now incorporated all corporate services, payroll, finance, risk, human resources, and environment positions along with dedicated analytical, technical and operations teams and associated administration support in the Orange head office.

Rachel explained the business tree change for Paraway has seemingly been as successful as it has been for the Quirk family. In just four years, the Orange Paraway office has grown from 5 to 32 staff.

“Initially Paraway was part of Macquarie bank and based in the Macquarie building in Sydney,” Rachel outlined. “Being located in Sydney created some challenges for our business given all of our assets were regionally based and the high costs associated with operating an office in Sydney.

“When searching for the appropriate regional location, Orange was chosen as we thought it provided the right balance between being central to our assets, proximity to Sydney, outstanding infrastructure, a high performing workforce and cost effectiveness. 

“We were really pleased that Orange already had some high performing professionals that were able to come into our business, but also found Orange to be an easy place to attract top talent from Sydney.

“From a business perspective, Orange offers the best of all worlds - a professional and vibrant business environment with growing infrastructure and services along with the family and lifestyle benefits of living in the country.”

On the back of such a thriving move, it seems there will be no change of heart for either Paraway or the Quirk family with their regional transition.

“We gave ourselves a buffer and genuinely thought if this doesn’t work - we will go back,” Rachel spoke frankly.

“We landed in Orange on Australia Day 2018, and now there is no way we would leave. We are actively recruiting our friends and family to move out here now.

“My parents were coming out every second weekend to help and spend time with us. They fell in-love with the area and began staying a few extra days to explore and visit the wineries. Now they are moving out permanently to Orange.

“We’ve got involved with the community through school and work. There are a lot of people working at Paraway due to the expansion and they are a social bunch. We found we become very ingrained very quickly in Orange.

“I’m risk adverse so we took our time with two years in consultation working out if this would be a good move for us as a family. It took less than a year for us to start to see the absolute rewards of our tree change.

“In Sydney, we would drop our kids at care at 6:30am and not pick them up until 6:30pm. We are career driven, but we wanted to spend more time with our kids. We did want it all, but we knew that Sydney was not the life we wanted to live.

“We couldn’t be happier with school, care, work and life in general in Orange. Both boys are doing really well, and we get to spend so much more time with them. That has got to be better for us all.”