Kadina Lawyers And The Real World Of Rural Law cover art

Kadina Lawyers And The Real World Of Rural Law

Kadina Lawyers And The Real World Of Rural Law

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

 In Kadina, the commercial heart of South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, farming families have been trusting the same lawyers with their most important moments for generations. This episode brings two of those lawyers to the table: Doug Reed, who has practised in Kadina for 50 years and is preparing to retire, and Kylie Mildwaters, who grew up on a nearby farm, left for Adelaide to study law, and came back to build her own thriving practice. Between them, they offer an unusually honest portrait of what country law actually looks like: the trust earned slowly, the gossip that spreads fast, and the quiet privilege of knowing the grandchildren of your very first clients. There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode The Musical Pilgrimage this week is perfectly timed: Adelaide artist My Chérie releases her new single Stuck Inside My Head today, the same day she performs at WOMADelaide. It is an indie folk-rock meditation on neurodivergence and the challenge of quieting a restless mind, and it could not be a more fitting soundtrack for a week when this city is buzzing with live music and big ideas. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Kadina Lawyers And The Real World Of Rural Law 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:03:01 Doug Reed and Kylie Mildwaters Kadina in the 1970s, as Doug Reed (Germein Reed) remembers it, was a proper provincial town: half its current size, built around farming, animated by fierce rivalry between Kadina, Moonta, and Wallaroo, and populated on Fridays by farmers’ wives dressed to the nines for their weekly shopping. Small Woolworths. No McDonald’s. Three pubs per town, and a pub meal was a night out. The frictions, factions, and fictions of small-town life, as Steve puts it, drawing on a line from The Carpathians, were very much in evidence, including, as Doug notes with some amusement, two rival Methodist churches in Kadina alone. Kylie Mildwaters (Mildwaters Byrth Lawyers & Conveyancers) grew up on the other side of that rivalry, as a Moonta girl who had nothing to do with Kadina. The inter-town competition, she and Doug agree, has mellowed considerably since council amalgamation, though not, they hasten to add, on the sporting field. The footy rivalry remains entirely intact. It is when the conversation turns to trust that the episode finds its real heart. Doug is direct: you cannot advertise trust. You earn it through your work, your community involvement, and your reputation, and when you make a misstep in a town this size, it spreads like wildfire. Kylie’s version of the same lesson is more pragmatic: word of mouth on the Yorke Peninsula is the best advertising you could possibly have, which means looking after every client, every time, without exception. Her additional piece of hard-won wisdom for any country lawyer? Do your Woolworths shopping online. Doug reflects on one of the quieter privileges of rural legal practice: the moment you realise you are sitting across the desk from the grandchild of a client you first helped decades ago. He calls it a privilege, and it is hard to disagree. That kind of continuity is particularly characteristic of rural practice. The corporate memory you carry about a family, built across generations, is something a city firm simply cannot replicate. It is also a responsibility, and one reason why Doug’s decision to transition the bulk of his client base to Kylie’s firm, Mildwaters Birth Lawyers, has clearly not been taken lightly. The conversation takes a sharper turn when farm succession enters the picture. The number of farming families on the Yorke Peninsula, one of Australia’s premier cropping regions, is now a fraction of what it was when Doug first arrived. Farms have grown dramatically, consuming neighbouring holdings, and with that growth has come a corresponding rise ...
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.