Tweed’s Jordana Kerr shares her tragic past and how it inspires her TikTok
Tweed’s self-proclaimed “buckle bunny” may share plenty of smiles and laughs online, but the TikTok creator has come from a difficult start to life. Read her inspirational story
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When you go to Jordana Kerr’s TikTok page the first video you will see is of her horse Lily snoring, joining 1.4 million other people who’ve watched it.
The 19-year-old self-proclaimed “buckle bunny” has amassed 68.5k followers on the handle @jorrdanaaa sharing a mix of TikTok trending videos and plenty of videos with her horses Kenny and Lily and her greyhound Rabbit.
But it’s not all smiles and farm life.
“My dad left me before I was born and my mum passed away when I was 11,” she said.
“All my other family couldn’t really look after me at the time so I had to go into foster car.”
Ms Kerr was fortunate to be placed with the same foster carers for her whole teen life moving to the Tweed area from Grafton when she was 11.
But the tragedy of losing her mum still weighs heavy on her.
“Through seeing psychologists and talking about how I feel and talking about my mum, it’s helped a lot,” she said.
Ms Kerr’s love of horses definitely isn’t genetic, with her mum allergic to them, instead the passion was passed down from her carer.
“They’re therapeutic, you go out there and it’s just a sense of serenity,” she said.
“I’m very interested in why they act the way they do and why they do the stuff they do and how you can build a bond with them.
“They’re just very interesting animals.”
She said having the responsibility of having to look after such a large animal had helped put meaning in her life.
Like most people Ms Kerr signed up to TikTok to view other content before making her own, then before she knew it her videos were attracting mass views and followers.
“I’d wake up with 1000 new followers,” she said.
“It was quite a progressive thing, I did have a couple of videos that did blow up, I have about three that are close to or over a million views.”
Between the bright smiles and farm videos, Ms Kerr shares a number of videos addressing mental health concerns, especially suicide rates in rural areas.
“There’s been heaps of people who’ve messaged me over the past year or two where I’ve started to get bigger where they’ve reached out to me and I’ve been able to help them,” she said.
“I love that feeling and I love also advocating for getting people into agriculture.”
When she’s not making TikToks Ms Kerr works on a cattle property as a farm hand and in the greyhound racing industry.
Attracting large amounts of followers comes with pros and cons.
A benefit is Ms Kerr has established sponsorship deals with Outback Cobbler, Simply Hide and Selfie Skin.
But for all the positive comments she receives they come with a number of negatives.
“I used to bite back, but now you’ve got to learn that they’re baiting you so I just delete the comments and block them now,” she said.
Ms Kerr is now planning what’s next for her, which involves moving to Middlemount in Central Queensland to start working in the camp draft industry.
In her future she sees herself continuing to work in agriculture and in the long term owning her own farm.
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