IT'S not often you hear of a qualified pyrotechnician making the switch to work in the agricultural industry, but then again, Hannah Mills isn't your typical young woman.
She began her apprenticeship as a pyrotechnician at just 14 years of age.
By the time Ms Mills was 18 she had enough experience to successfully apply for her pyrotechnic operator's licence, becoming the youngest licensed pyrotechnician in Australia at the time, with the achievement earning her a spot as a finalist in the 2017 Telstra Business Women's Awards.
Working at West Coast Fireworks, Geraldton, she was responsible for applying for permits, designing firework shows, liaising with clients as well as packing and firing the explosives.
"I was the lead pyro for a lot of shows and on days such as Australia Day and New Year's Eve we would have multiple teams working on multiple shows, so I would co-ordinate those," Ms Mills said.
With her boss also the owner of Stone Echo Mining & Civil, Ms Mills worked as an assistant shotfirer simultaneously.
However the combination of being raised on a 12 hectare property at Mingenew and regular trips up north with her family strengthened Ms Mills' ties to the agricultural sector and ultimately led to the career switch.
Ms Mills fondly recalls completing the Canning Stock Route and Gibb River Road during her childhood, visiting stations and discovering places in the Murchison, Gascoyne and Pilbara regions.
"Dad was a jackaroo before getting married and starting his family, so the camping trips were his way of reliving his past," Ms Mills said.
When her father, Darren, leased some property to farm in the Mingenew region, Ms Mills helped out over harvest in 2017, driving a chaser bin and by March the following year, she had successfully applied to work as a trainee account manager for CSBP Fertilisers in Albany.
In that role, Ms Mills gained a broad understanding of agriculture and farming systems and would frequently travel back and forth from Kwinana as part of her training program.
After relocating to Kojonup for a year to work as a CSBP account manager, Ms Mills took off on an open-ended trip to the northern United States, Canada and Alaska.
"I went overseas for about four months but then COVID hit and I heard rumours that Australia's and WA's borders might shut, so I booked a ticket home and it was a two-week wait for a flight," Ms Mills said.
"I ended up flying in on Friday, March 13 and by Tuesday our borders had closed."
Returning to CSBP as an account manager in Merredin, Ms Mills said it had been a tricky couple of years for the fertiliser industry, with supply interruptions and uncertainties around fertiliser pricing making the job challenging.
"The farmers can get stressed too and that feeds back onto you - but you certainly understand where they are coming from," she said.
"Sometimes you will go in and you don't end up talking about fertiliser at all - you talk about how they're coping with all of the uncertainties in the industry."
Despite this, Ms Mills said she had a soft spot for the Merredin farmers she had worked with and who she found to be very easygoing.
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"I think it's because in a region like Merredin, the good years come and go and while they have seen a lot of rough years, they have made peace with it," she said.
"It's been rewarding to come out and work with farmers in a low rainfall zone because that's where the innovation comes from."
Also studying an associate agribusiness degree at the Muresk Institute part-time, Ms Mills enrolled in the course to put herself on a level playing field with others working in the industry, as well as solidify her existing knowledge base.
"A lot of my training came from CSBP, but being fresh to the industry I wanted to understand all aspects and I thought studying the degree would help me in that," Ms Mills said.
Having learnt a lot about relationship management and crop nutrition in her roles with CSBP, Ms Mills was excited to commence a new job as a graduate agronomist with Nutrien Ag Solutions in Merredin at the time of writing.
In her new position she will have the responsibility of liaising with the local grower group, Merredin and Districts Farm Improvement Group and get some hands-on and practical experience in agronomy.
"My role with CSBP was very much focused on nutrition, which was fantastic, but it's a small portion of farming, so when this opportunity arose with Nutrien in Merredin, it meant I could stay in the region
and go out onfarm and talk about chemicals, rotations and crop varieties - and see how all those different elements work together to get the end result," Ms Mills said.
Seeing the idea of owning her own farm one day as a pipe dream, she said becoming an agronomic adviser was most likely the direction her career would head.
"It's so hard to start a farm from scratch these days without the money behind you, so for me it's about remaining involved in ag, being helpful, providing solutions and maybe another perspective to help overcome some of the problems that farmers face."
