John Gryphon
Well-Known Member
Aussie newspaper yap.
Jack embarks on biggest job in agriculture
Jack Belcher on the cattle grid entering a single paddock that measures over a staggering 5170 square kilometres.Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian Jack Belcher on the cattle grid entering a single paddock that measures over a staggering 5170 square kilometres.
Twenty-year-old Jack Becher has the world at his feet – or a large portion of it at least.
The Tweed Heads butcher has spent the past year working on the biggest cattle station in the world and has built up such a love for the agriculture industry that he plans to stay in it.
Standing on a grid that leads into a sole paddock that covers about 5000sq km and takes two weeks to muster, Becher says returning for his second year at Anna Creek Station, in northern South Australia, is a “no-brainer”.
Yet with a huge demand for workers in the outback, and often not enough willing hands, ringers like Becher can be hard to find.
The young station hand left school at 15 to become a butcher, and after completing his trade, he wanted to see the other side of the beef industry.
“It’s been pretty surreal,” Becher says. “I sent a heap of resumes out and didn’t expect to hear anything back, but I got a reply within half a day.”
Before heading out to Anna Creek, he had never been further west than Warwick, 150km west of Brisbane. “It’s been a big eye-opener,” he says. “I never knew you could get cattle that looked so healthy when it is so dry and in the desert. The nutrition out here is unreal, they’re the fattest cattle I’ve ever seen.”
With little previous stock experience, Becher has quickly picked up skills required to work on the land. “You learn 100 different trades being out here,” he says. “Plumbing, fencing, building sheds, welding, building yards, running poly pipe.”
The biggest reality check was the sheer size and remoteness of the property. Often, the work crew will camp out for weeks at a time to save a daily commute that can take up valuable daylight hours.
At 2.367 million hectares, Anna Creek is bigger than Israel and currently stocks about 16,000 Hereford and Angus cattle. Its scale is best demonstrated by the six radio channels used by the property’s workers to communicate, the 300km round trip to check the water storages and the need for a plane to assist in mustering.
Once forming part of Sidney Kidman’s chain of properties, Anna Creek was carved out of a deal to sell the Kidman empire to Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and business partner Shanghai CRED in 2016. The Williams family, which owns eight stations in SA, emerged as the new owner in 2017.
Station manager Matt Williams, 38, says while there is a ready supply of first-year ringers, keeping staff longer term is a challenge and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find experienced workers. “You can always fill the first-year roles no worries but in terms of the semi-experienced and experienced ones, it’s hard,” he says.
“It is getting harder but you’ve got to choose more wisely … You try to look long-term, if you can.”
With an optimal workforce of about 20, filling positions can be a constant challenge and is sometimes supplemented with backpackers. That’s why, Williams says, workers like Becher are particularly valuable. “You can have two or three lads similar to Jack’s potential and that can help make up for not having an experienced head stockman,” Williams says.
Westpac analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that the make-up of the country’s agricultural workforce changed significantly between 2006 and 2021. The significant decrease in workers aged between 34 and 60 is attributed to a lack of younger workers entering the industry in previous years.
Williams suspects the cause was the millennium drought and the allure of high-paying jobs in the resources sector that saw an exodus of workers.
While it noted the steep increase in workers above the age of 60 in the agricultural sector over the past 15 years, the Westpac report also said the growing number of young workers were “ready to make their mark”.
It’s a fact not lost on Becher, who sees plenty of opportunities for career expansion. “I’ve been encouraging heaps of people back home to do it,” he says. “I’d be happy to be doing this for as long as I can.”
By Charlioe Peel
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/.../dac3d6ee5280a0897825...
THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU
You call that a big paddock? This is a big paddock
