From the Big Brother compound to the dog house, David ‘Farmer Dave’ Graham is settling in Yarraville and  making plenty of friends – albeit of the four-legged variety.
BRAD RYAN explains

Farmer takes to Yarra life

YARRAVILLE is a far cry from the outback farming town of Goondiwindi – but according to reality TV’s David Graham, there are "more similarities between Goondiwindi and Yarraville than you’d care to poke a stick at".

Graham, who described himself as "the token farmer and the token gay guy" while on Big Brother in 2006 and later competed on Dancing with the Stars, said he had fallen in love with the suburb since starting work there a month ago. "The Yarraville village is just spectacular – it’s just so casual and everyone is so friendly, it’s like it’s a small country town," he said. "I desperately want to move here."

Graham has left the farm in Goondiwindi to expand his free range lamb meat business in Melbourne and is managing a daycare centre for dogs on Hyde St.

He told the Leader he was feeling "emotional" about the demise of Big Brother, which Channel 10 says will not be revived after its eighth series ended last week. "I spoke to probably five of my housemates (from the show) last night and we were all saying how weird it was and how emotional it was," Graham said. "The first year we were all so intensely busy with the things we were doing we didn’t really miss it, but now we have time to sit down and watch it occasionally, we kind of all got attached to the house again."

The controversial program gave Graham an outlet to highlight the issue of homophobia in rural Australia, and his popularity then catapulted him on to Dancing with the Stars, where he championed another cause close to his heart – that of farmers crippled by drought. "I wouldn’t go a single day where I wouldn’t have someone say something incredibly positive about their response," Graham said. "Regardless of the fact that 17 million Australians didn’t watch Big Brother or Dancing it’s hard to escape that my story got out there in every medium possible."

Today it continues to do so, primarily via cyberspace, with website farmerdave.com.au recording more than 150,000 visitors since October 2006. Set up to document farm life during one of the worst droughts in history, it now also includes blog entries on househunting in Melbourne and Graham’s growing business projects. "I couldn’t keep up with the emails and letters," Graham said.

For now, Graham has abandoned a foray into politics, in which he flagged an ambition to stand for the National Party and push the party on gay rights policies. "I put myself out there as a gay person that people could identify with and there’s only so many things you can do before people start being put off by activism," Graham said. "There’s been zero negativity at all whereas before I went on Big Brother there was. "I was bashed and left for dead on a street in Brisbane and there was a reason to jump up and down."

For now, there’s nowhere Graham would rather be than surrounded by a multitude of dogs in daycare. "The intense urge that I’ve always had just to get back to my farm, make sure everything is all right, go for a horse ride – it’s not gone but it’s sufficed by being here." "It’s so integral to being a country person, being around animals. "This is the best job in the world."

 MARIBYRNONG LEADER July 29, 2008