PARTICIPANT PROFILE : VALERIE MURRAY
Valerie Murray was a participant of the Indigenous Women Food and Fibre Entrepreneurs Program, Bunya Mountains Workshop, Toowoomba Workshop & One-on-One Mentoring.
WORDS & IMAGES BY ALICE ARMITAGE
There is a warmth to Valerie Murray that settles over you like sunlight. She speaks openly, with humour and honesty, and her joy in creating and love of her culture is so genuine.
From her kitchen in Jandowae she has grown Maudu Collective into a business that blends native food, weaving, cultural education and community connection. With her signature product, Indigi-Fudge [spoonable fudge infused with native flavours that's best eaten straight out of the jar!] quickly became a standout hit!
For Valarie, the Women’s Indigenous Food and Fibre Entrepreneurs Program offered her a reprieve from the challenges of the day to day and offered her the chance to reflect on her success and to create some clarity on her future path.
Valarie shared this about her participation in the Women’s Indigenous Food and Fibre Entrepreneurs Program. “I found the whole program very exhilarating,” she said. “It really sparked my interest in my business and made me like my business a little bit more, rather than it just being a chore.”
Valerie’s understanding of native foodways is deep. She knows that many people want to cook with bush foods but don’t know where to start. That they want to learn but fear getting it wrong. So she begins gently, pairing flavours they know with ingredients they don’t. “A lot of my customers ask about our foods, but they don’t know how to use raw native ingredients,” she said. “They identify with foods they already know, and then I add the native ingredients. That’s the linkage for me.”
She is not simply making fudge or jams or oils, she is educating through flavour. Teaching through sweetness and creating cultural bridges through taste and texture.
Valerie’s business is inherently relational. She thrives on connection, on conversation, on the warmth of a workshop full of people who arrive as strangers and leave as something closer to kin. She talks often about how her confidence has grown since the last program session, how she is seeing her own value more clearly, and how she is beginning to understand the depth of impact her work holds.
You can find more information about Valerie and her work here.