Former Vue de Monde chef Paul West lands River Cottage gig Paul West: "The gods of cooking have smiled on me." A COUNTRY boy born and bred, Paul West is used to dealing with farm animals - and as a chef, loves to cook them up in various delicious ways. West has been selected as the first international host of the hit cooking show River Cottage, 15 years after the series began with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the spotlight. Fearnley-Whittingstall, a British chef who began his career foraging from hedgerows, has since established a television and culinary empire including a restaurant, farm shop and cooking school. And the shows have resonated with Australian audiences, he says. "We have loads of Australians coming to visit the farm in the UK and doing our courses," he says. In fact I can't think of the last time I went down to meet a course group at the River Cottage school in Devon when there wasn't an Australian on the course. Fearnley-Whittingstall recently met West, and happily endorses him as successor. I see eye-to-eye with Paul so much on everything that's going on here that's it's been a real pleasure. West says the desire to live sustainably - growing, rearing, foraging and bartering for his food - came when he hitch-hiked around Australia aged 21. "I ended up staying with a French guy in northern Tasmania, he'd built his own house from stone and timber," he says, looking out at the forested view from the farmhouse at Tilba on the NSW south coast, where the series was filmed. He had a massive vegetable garden and a massive orchard and I stayed in the granny flat. West describes a rural idyll where they ate from the orchard and the garden every day. My eyes were really clear and my skin went really clear and I was going to bed at nine and waking up at five... for a 21-year-old that was pretty strange. West says since then he's trained as a chef, working for Melbourne's top-rated Vue de Monde bistro, but always in the back of his mind was the desire to live off the land and to cook produce professionally. "It seems that the gods of cooking have smiled upon my quest and have granted me the best possible balance imaginable in landing this job," he says. The message of sustainablility is obvious in the show, which begins with the two presenters digging and planting a vegetable garden before hunting octopus in a local estuary. Fearnley-Whittingstall says while Australia isn't under the same land pressures as the UK there are still similarities in the issues facing food producers. "It's commercial pressure and the constant need to get food on the table and into the supermarkets cheaply," he says. However the food activist, who has previously campaigned for sustainable fishing practices and against the fast-reared chickens that make up the bulk of supermarket meat options, says he appreciates there is a need to streamline farming practices and to import food. "We don't have to be ascetic and hair-shirted about this," he says. My family eats bananas, chocolate, oranges and I don't grow bananas, cocoa or citrus. But I don't see any reason why you can't provide the backbone of your kitchen ingredients from what's locally (grown) and have your creative instincts in the kitchen guided by the seasons. River Cottage Australia premieres on pay-TV's Lifestyle channel on Thursday, June 27 at 8.30pm