Actor Rachel Ward’s sterling efforts to farm sustainably make for an inspiring, charming documentary. It places optimism and energy front and centre

Hang on – the Rachel in Rachel’s Farm is Rachel Ward?! By heavens, it is! She was the star of the 1983 cassock-ripper The Thorn Birds, which united several countries in pursuit of the question of whether her young, wild Meggie – in the Australian outback to help her aunt run a sheep station – would persuade the local priest (played by 1983’s Richard Chamberlain) to forsake his calling for earthly pleasures. Well, Ward has now forsaken acting for literal earthly pleasures and become a regenerative farmer.

This charming and inspiring (if slightly rambling) 90-minute film takes us to the smallholding she and her husband, Bryan Brown (yes, him from The Thorn Birds, too! They met on set and have been together ever since!), have used for decades as a holiday escape from their lives in Sydney. It follows their efforts to make the farm ecologically sustainable. She is clearly the driving force, while Brown is happy to go along with everything. “I’m totally supportive,” he says with an easy grin from an easy chair on the porch. “As long as it doesn’t cost me a bundle.”