The John Glover Art Prize is one of Australia’s most signficant painting awards.
Story Kirsty McKenzie Photo Kelly Berne
Mick Henricks has a passion for fire and steel. The spark that ignited his business 5 years ago, in Roma, Qld, The Farmer’s Forge, was there from a very young age.
As a child, his favourite place was in the shed on the family farm, often doing things he shouldn’t be – jamming things in grinders and the like. Mick says his father Rob was “big on doing things yourself” and his mother, Gail, very supportive of Mick’s creativity.
On finishing school, Mick settled into farming life. On reflection he says he regrets not having completed a trade but, at the time, the call to be home was strong, and he enjoyed driving tractors and working with machinery. Moonlighting casually with a local boilermaker, he put his ever-increasing skills to practical use, building for others on request.
Around that time, Mick “properly” met his wife-to-be, Mardi Bauer, in Toowoomba. They had been at school together from year 4, but in those childhood years, Mick flew well under Mardi’s radar. Eighteen months after meeting, the couple were married and settled together on the Henricks’ farm.
After downsizing the family farming operation, Mick and Mardi opened a trucking business, which they ran for several years. However, the call to work with steel never abated and Mick attended his first blacksmithing workshop at the Cobb & Co museum in Toowoomba in 2009. Subsequently, between trucking and helping Mardi with their 3 sons, Spencer, 16, Ted, 13, and 9-year-old Jack, he attended as many workshops as possible.
As his skills and reputation grew, the number of enquiries he received to craft things, from garden ornaments to hammers and knives, increased. “Being self-taught is, in and of itself, a double-edged sword,” Mick says. “It’s a more expensive way to learn, as you make more errors along the way, but with each iteration you learn from your mistakes. You build a deeper understanding and almost a relationship with the steel.”
This story excerpt is from Issue #160
Outback Magazine: April/May 2025
