Barnaby was the second youngest of six children, five boys and one girl, and grew up labouring on the farm.

“There're 18 years between the youngest and the oldest, and we always had a very low wage bill on our property because everything was done by the boys,” he said.

Like many in his area, he went to school at Limbri and Woolbrook before going to boarding school in Sydney.

“Everybody in our area went away to boarding school because we were kind of remote,” he said.

“We didn’t really have much of a hierarchy.

Because you’re always going away to boarding school, you’re sort of, once your brothers or sisters got over about 11, they were sort of away.

And so a lot of time you’re sort of by yourself, tube frank.

So you just learn how to fascinate yourself with the world around you, which is always good.

It was a pretty run-of-the-mill life, I think, for the people who grew up in my area.

”Barnaby studied accountancy at the University of New England and went back home for a few years before joining a firm in Moree.

He moved on to Werris Creek and then Queensland, where he spent the next 20 years building up his own practice.

He felt very lucky to have the chance to come back to the New England area when he left accountancy for the political sphere.

“It’s a pretty regular sort of life, I think, foremost people.

"You grow up at home and go away and work for a while, and, if you’re lucky, you come back.”

Barnaby met Natalie, his wife of 23 years, during University at St Albert’s College, affectionately known as Alibies.

“Alibies has got an incredibly high strike rate of people meeting people that they marry and I was one of those,” he said.

“She tolerates me. That’s a good start. Very easy going. Look - the person who you’re around that leaves you closest to who you thank you really are, is a good person to marry. So when you feel that you’re as close as to your real self, and you don’t have to try to be somebody else, that’s a great person to marry.”