According to the Melbourne Age Newspaper, receivers McGrathNicol have taken Wrotham Park and Moola Bulla off the market while they are mustered, and they will be offered for sale again early next year, after ‘the next big wet, due in November’.
This article is a classic example of a journalist who has absolutely no understanding of the industry they are writing about, nor the climate in northern Australia. The newspaper article states…’not even the receivers of Great Southern’s cattle stations are able to go against the way of life in the outback.’ What a hilariously stupid thing to write. Like running a cattle station is just a way of life, and making a living is not actually the point of it all? No mustering means no money coming in – people don’t muster cattle because it is ‘a way of life’! Wrotham Park was put on the market with an estimated 32,000 breeders. At a conservative 65% calving rate that’s 20,800 offspring. Value them at $300/head and you have $6.24 million gross value of stock being produced each year. Value them at $400/head and the value is $8.32 million. Precise values fluctuate and depend on the age and quality of the stock, and the exact makeup of the stock numbers depend on the details of the breeding management plan (eg how old the cows are when they are culled), but generally speaking, half of these offspring will be males that become steers and are sold and of the 10,400 females, 4-5,000 or so would be kept as replacements and the remainder sold. These figures are very rough but you get the picture for the purposes of the exercise – weaners (calves old enough to be weaned from their mothers) grow into breeders that produce more calves; and steers (castrated male cattle), cull heifers, aged cows and bulls are sold to earn a crust to keep the whole thing going – which usually includes buying in good quality bulls from stud breeders each year. No muster, no weaning, no sales, no income = go broke at a rate of knots (or broker, as the case may be).
Mustering a large station takes many people months of work and costs a large amount of money – staff, fuel, helicopter hours, trucking costs, etc. But you have to spend it to make it. Cattle don’t come when you call them.
In addition, these stations are leasehold properties. This means, according to leasehold terms, that Lands Departments are supposed to keep an eye on them – ensuring that capital assets are maintained and new capital works undertaken each year, and that the land is looked after and not overstocked. Most pastoralists are under the impression that not mustering a fully stocked property for one year would result in massive overstocking that could not fail but to damage the environment, especially in fragile landscapes – and no property owners or managers would ordinarily contemplate not mustering and weaning each year. In fact, it is rare for large cattle stations to not have two rounds of mustering, with just a short gap of a month or two inbetween (often, around August). Two rounds of mustering are undertaken because it is often difficult to get a clean muster (so those that are missed during the first round can be picked up on the second lap a few months later), and also because it enables weaning to be more carefully done – with calves younger than is ideal to be weaned, left with their mothers until the second round; while the removal of large calves during the first round enables their mothers to recover and get back in good condition faster, before the feed quality reduces towards the end of the year. Also, not mustering at all, for a whole year, causes stock deaths. Towards the end of the northern dry season (October-November), older cows and any not in good condition, who have large calves that ordinarily would have been weaned earlier in the year, die. If they don’t die, they may well be in too poor a condition to conceive, so though they survive, they miss producing a calf in the following year. One way or the other, there goes income that would otherwise have been due in two year’s time.
Last but not least – everyone in the north will be pleased to hear ‘the next big wet is due in November’. So thanks to the Age journalist for letting us all know in advance. Wrotham Park often gets some patchy storms in November, however rain does not usually set in until January. Every wet season is different to the last, however the highest rainfall month is February, followed by January and March.
Tags: Wrotham Park Station, Pastoral companies, Rural properties for sale and ownership, Moola Bulla Station