Grace Cheatley is raising a young family, running the only pub in town and working out what it means to belong somewhere she didn’t grow up.
Only five years ago, her life looked very different. She was working as a student counsellor at a Melbourne university when she met her now-partner Dennis at a country race meeting. Within weeks, the pandemic swept through and everything shifted. “Dennis was like: just come up here,” she recalls. “And I was like, all right.” She never went back.
The transition into country life came quickly and wasn’t without pressure. In her first year, major floods cut them off from town more than once and wiped-out kilometres of fencing. Their farm had only recently shifted from cattle to sheep—who didn’t cope well with all the rain. “We had a really hard time,” Grace recalls. “We had every problem under the sun.” But over time, that uncertainty settled as they flood-proofed the property, and developed a clearer understanding of sheep.
Three years ago, Grace took over the Stockman Hotel—the only pub in Texas—from her mother-in-law, Helen. In a town this size, it was never going to be just a business. “It’s a community hub,” she says, “A place to see people and have a good chat with them.” Gradually, she’s been making the pub her own—freshening up the place with some white paint and layering in local history.
What she found, unexpectedly, was a sense of connection that hadn’t come as easily in the city. “I feel very much part of the community now,” she says. “My short time living in Melbourne felt lonelier than it ever has been in Texas.”
For Grace, motherhood hasn’t pulled her away from her new life so much as deepened it. With another baby on the way, she’s clear about what she needs to hold onto. “I love Hallie so much, but I couldn’t not work and have that sense of achievement,” she says. “Just making sure you’ve got that work-life balance makes me a better mum for sure.”
Now, her focus is shifting beyond the day-to-day. There are plans to keep improving the pub—and to invest more broadly in Texas itself. Projects that will bring more people through town and strengthen the place she now calls home.
Mother's Day Collection
