Scott Parker with the Turfco Cow created in his honour. Photo: Supplied.
Fifteen years ago, a purple cow appeared in a paddock at Jaspers Brush just south of Berry.
Turfco Australia’s Scott Parker was moo-ved to create the coloured bovine after attending an industry function in Tasmania in 2010 which explored author Seth Godin’s idea of the “purple cow”.
Seth states that to truly stand out in a world full of the same old marketing, you need to be remarkable – you need to be the purple cow among the same brown cows.
Scott took that literally, little realising that 15 years after buying and painting that first purple cow, his ever-changing iconic creations would become part of the landscape and sought out by travellers along the Princes Highway.
To mark the milestone, Turfco secretly organised artist Alexandra Blunn to paint Scott’s portrait on the side of one of its unofficial mascots, which now include a herd of eight cows, bulls and calves.
Scott, who has been with the company since day one in 1987 as a turf harvester and truck driver and became part-owner, remembers the early buzz it created as people asked: “Have you seen the purple cow?”.
Since, he’s created more than 200 distinctive and often a-moo-sing cow designs, from a NAIDOC display that reached 1.2 million on social media, to Barbie-themed cows, national holidays, community events, State of Origin rivalries, and even the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“I’m a butcher by trade, so I can cut up cows and paint them,” he said, laughing.
“It gives me satisfaction putting the cows out there. Some months I’m pushing out heaps and other months I’m not.”
Among his favourites was the Barbie and Ken creation, which gained huge engagement online.
“I went into the office, because the girls tell me what’s going on and what they think we can do, and then I just put it together,” he said.
“They came back with the Barbie movie and I thought, ‘What is this Barbie movie?’.”
Scott took it one step further by packaging up Barbie and Ken cows into boxes, like the Barbie dolls.
“I don’t go to the pictures with my wife very often, but she wanted to go and see that movie,” he said.
“We were standing at the steps of the Nowra cinemas and these people were talking about Turfco Cows.
“My wife says, ‘He does them’, and the next minute they’re shaking my hand and carrying on.”
His next creation he hopes to centre on the State of Origin, with a humorous idea to have a bull in NSW colours, alongside a small calf propped up on a pallet and decked out in opposing team colours.
“We’ve had some fun with them over the years,” he said.
“We’ve had a few beers and then we’ve gone over to move them around.
“I had the police one night before the highway went through shining a torch on me saying, ‘People are ringing to say someone’s pinching the Turfco Cows.”
It was just Scott having some fun.
Sometimes his fun has been reined in when he admits his cheeky ideas “go off the rails”, but they’re always designed for a laugh.
A self-taught artist with a lifelong passion for drawing, Scott doesn’t deem himself an artist despite there being signs of artistic talent from an early age.
“I can sketch, more than anything, and turn a little picture into something big,” he said.
“Funnily enough, my brother rocked up here the other day with a plate that I drew for him when I was 14.
“It was those plates you baked when you were at school, and mine had Pink Panther on it.”
His mother had kept the plate, along with meticulously collecting a photo of every cow since the Turfco Cow project’s inception.
Some of the cow ideas come from staff, some from community contributions and some even from his eldest son, who has already stated he won’t be taking over from his dad.
“Because I’m getting older – I’m nearly 60 – I said ‘I’ll be retiring soon, so you’ll have to take over the cows’. He said ‘No way, I can’t do that,'” Scott said.
In the meantime, the latest roadside attraction honours Scott’s contributions over the years, which he described as “alright”.
“It was a bit of a surprise the other day,” he said.
“I was down the back from where the main office is, and I saw all these people coming.
“I saw them bring a cow out of the shed with a ribbon and cloth over it. I didn’t have a clue.”
He was also recently gifted a “Turfco artist” apron with a picture of a cow’s udder, because all his Turfco high-vis shirts are now covered in paint.
While Scott isn’t sure how long he’ll continue painting cows, for now he’s happy to keep up the quirky roadside attractions to bring joy and surprise to passersby.
“If I’m still around and I don’t go travelling, I’ll probably pop in and do them from time to time for them,” he said of life post-retirement.
“My main goal is to do the Olympics when they come to Australia.”
Learn more about the Turfco Cows.
