By Staff
When banquet chef Melody (Phillips) Murray, a 1976 Dowagiac Union High School graduate, caters Christmas feasts and bush weddings, she's not cooking at the White House.
The 1976 Dowagiac Union High School graduate lives in Australia, even though she received her training for cooking for 130 people at a bush wedding in outback Richmond at an exclusive southern country club.
During that reception a thunderstorm knocked the power out and everybody was already edgy because it was election night and they wanted to know if the Nationals were returning to office.
Murray has made her home in Australia for 13 years and this year finally became an official citizen, according to a profile published in the Dec. 9 Townsville Bulletin.
Murray is the daughter of Roger and Shirley Phillips of Middle Crossing Road, Silver Creek Township.
Murray, a Charter Towers-based caterer, juggled marriage, children and running a northwestern grazing property with some very successful cooking ventures.
She plowed across 50km of sodden, black soil plains to cater at receptions and improvised when the entire fresh food sections of her planned wedding menu went AWOL.
The latter happened when workers forgot to unload Queensland Rail's cold car in Richmond and her entire order of fresh fruit and vegetables went whistling 140km down the track to Julia Creek.
All in all, the newspaper reported, cooking in the bush has proved to be as much of a learning experience as her apprenticeship at an exclusive Atlanta country club, where the 2,000 wealthy members were serviced by a kitchen boasting 20 chefs.
When she finished her three-year apprenticeship, Melody took on a job as head chef in a casual dining restaurant in Buckhead before heading overseas to travel the world, gourmet-style.
Her first stop was Culinary Olympics in Frankfurt, Germany.
But it was in Italy a chance encounter with a Melbourne chef that brought her back to Australia.
Melody did the major cities before heading up through central Australia and into Indonesia with another Australian, a backpacker whose parents owned the renowned Federal Palace Hotel in Richmond.
She did return to Michigan to organize her wedding, then went to Australia on the arm of her grazier husband Don Murray.
For the next 12 years home was Glenlyon Station, a 55,000-acre sheep and cattle property 80km south of Richmond.
She credited her new husband and his patient brother with gradually developing her "rural" skills.
Murray found herself a long way from the Great Lakes area of her childhood, but heat and dust did not deter her.
For six years Murray taught her children through the School of Distance Education, but in 2001 for personal reasons, which included offering their four children the best educational opportunities, Melody and Don sold Glenlyon and moved to a smaller 1,400-acre property, Cumnock, outside Charters Towers.