Hamlet & Co are:

Wendy Hincks Ward

Wendy spent many years setting up and running several arts-related small businesses, dealing in (amongst other things) antique furniture, lighting, collectables, jewellery and building restoration supplies.

Deciding she should collect a couple of qualifications before it was too late, she headed off to university, leaving with a PhD in comparative cultural studies.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she's done little with it, choosing instead to head for the green hills of Eumundi and hang out with farm animals. To earn enough to support them, she teaches English and works as a freelance writer and editor (Hamlet & Co: Wordsmiths).

(It was at this point that Wendy stopped to ask herself, "Why are you writing in the third person you pretentious ...")

Phil Ward

Phil labels himself as "designer/maker", although Wendy prefers to think of him as her Renaissance man.

The diverse range of objects Phil has designed and/or made includes jewellery, interactive exhibition displays, graphic art, lighting, and most recently, a house. When he finds a spare moment, he posts photos of his extensive and eclectic body of work on Flickr, and his shiny new Phil Ward Design website.

Citroens, and travelling around in them, have been a lifelong passion. Pigs are a much more recent interest.

Hamlet

Hamlet now weighs in at around 85-90 kilos, which most people are surprised to learn qualifies him as "miniature". Yes, your average pig can balloon out to anything around three times that size. Like all pigs, Ham is intelligent, insatiably curious, sociable, affectionate, hedonistic to the point of sleazy, and full of attitude.

Pig rearing can change your life. It's certainly put Wendy off eating them. And on Hamlet's behalf she tries to do a bit of consciousness-raising on the issue of free-range pork. Phil, however, still enjoys the odd rasher of bacon, and the roast pork at Joe's Waterhole, and the occasional Chinese pork bun.

His justification is that Hamlet would have no qualms about eating him, and he respects that.

Hamlet & Co have lived at Eumundi, a green and picturesque village in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, for the past five years. The town is famous - some say "world famous" - for its lively and colourful markets, held every Wednesday and Saturday, when the streets fill with farmers, artists, craftspeople, tourists and locals of varying degrees of eccentricity. On other days, it's rather quiet ... which is just the way they like it.