- When Hollie moved to rural Australia from the UK, she fell in love with the outback – especially the big farming and mining equipment
- Then she also fell in love with a farmer, Jono and before long, he proposed
- Hollie was thrilled to start planning the ultimate country wedding, complete with tractors, huge trucks and machinery
- Holly Armstrong, from Comet, Qld., shares all the details on her rural romance…
The man next to me took a sip of his beer.
“I hear you’re single,” he said shyly.
“I am,” I replied, laughing.
I’d known Jono, 34, for around a year and we were at a mutual friend’s barbecue.
“Great,” Jono said. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out.”
We talked late into the night and connected on a deep level.
He worked on his parents’ cropping farm. I’m from England but had been living in rural Australia for around seven years and was working as the director of an early years education centre in Comet, Qld.
I just loved the outback, especially all the big farming and mining machinery.
Pulling over to let the huge mining and earth-moving equipment pass on the narrow outback highways was always entertaining to me.
Jono had two kids, Lola, seven, and Ruby, five, who I adored but it was important to me that I set the record straight early on.
“I want to get married and have children of my own,” I said to Jono on one of our first dates.
Read more: He proposed… then our boat sank!
“I’m open to that,” he said.
Jono is a funny, warm and hardworking man.
After we’d been dating for around nine months, he took me on one of the farm’s helicopters to a dragline on a mine site. A dragline excavator is a piece of heavy equipment a bit like a crane.
We went up to the top and I was absolutely terrified.
Back on solid ground, we had a picnic as we watched the sun set.
“We should go,” Jono said eventually. “I don’t want to fly when it’s too dark.”
He put out his hand and helped me up, then went down on one knee.
“I want to do life with you,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” I cried, hugging him.
When I told my girlfriends afterwards, they laughed.
“Proposing next to a dragline!” Jess giggled. “That’s perfect for you.”
I was an events planner in the UK before moving to Australia so planning our country wedding was easy.
The triangular grain shed on the farm was the perfect reception venue.
For the ceremony, Jono had a bottle tree uprooted and moved to the top of a hill near our house and we built an arch out of timber to be the altar next to the tree.
I went to a dressmaker in Emerald, Qld, who designed me a stunning gown. My beloved grandma, June, died when I was 18, and we had a pendant necklace of hers added at the back so she’d be with me for the big day.
Jono cleaned up some of the green tractors, trucks and machinery and had them on display inside the shed and I hung up fairy lights.
My family flew out from England for the wedding.
Finally, on June 24, 2023, the day of our country wedding arrived.
I drove my dad, Jono’s daughters, who were flower girls, and my bridesmaids to the ceremony in a Polaris buggy, a 4×4 farm vehicle.
Then I walked down the aisle with a bouquet of Aussie native flowers. When the minister asked for the rings, my friend Britt released my blue heeler dog Bandit down the aisle with the rings attached around his neck.
Later, in the barn, everyone was given a dark green stubby holder as their country wedding favour and they could grab their own beers out of the truck excavator buckets that were filled with ice.
“This is the best wedding I’ve ever been to,” my best friend Rachel said, dancing.
She’d flown from England for it but lots of the local guests said the same thing.
I know not everyone would want their wedding surrounded by heavy machinery but for us it was perfect.
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