A decision to expand their grey Brahman poll stud has coincided with a move to consolidate family succession plans for the Curley family of Gipsy Plains, Cloncurry, resulting in the expansion of their operation to the Blackall district.
Earlier this year they purchased the 4850ha Avington Station north west of the town, on the Barcoo River, where Robert and Jacqueline Curley’s daughter Natalie will specialise in a grey poll stud of 150 head, primarily to breed a sire battery for the family company and to produce bulls for the central west.
This will leave son Clayton to manage the large scale red poll and grey Brahman business at the home base north of Cloncurry.
“We have been thinking about how to manage succession for five years,” Jacqueline said. “We got to the nitty gritty 12 months ago, with external help. We looked at a lot of properties and chose one that suited our business and had opportunities for our daughter.
We have been thinking about how to manage succession for five years.
- Jacqueline Curley
“We especially wanted to find a way for Natalie and her partner to diversify into their own tourism business model which showcases the best the bush has to offer for our city cousins.”
Avington was once run as a pastoral tourism venture and Jacqueline said this had piqued their interest, offering an avenue other than just straight cattle breeding to pay the property off.
“Natalie has an interest in photography and artistic blacksmithing, and has travelled the world taking in ideas, so this is a great avenue for her,” Jacque said. “And if she has any spare grass we’ll take agistment and help her value-add that way.”
Their $48,000 purchase of grey sire Wiltony Tandem from Brian and Cindy Hughes of Lane’s Creek at the February Big Country sale at Charters Towers will underpin the new stud, along with one of Gipsy Plains’ grey poll founding sires and the top 150 of their stud cows.
The decision builds on the family’s choice 20 years ago to concentrate on poll genetics, which has been undertaken gradually to maintain the herd’s frame.
A great deal of work and heartache has been expended over the last three years in retaining the genetics so they could come out of one of their worst droughts ever with cattle on hand.
Totally destocking to cope with drought at the end of the 1960s taught them the importance of keeping cattle for faster recovery but it’s meant a lot of agistment and a lot of feeding.
Decreasing yearly rainfall since 2012 meant that last year they had eaten through all the standing feed from good years and had only spinifex to carry them through.
Agistment was sourced at Nebo, Clermont and Rolleston, with one lot of stud heifers costing $660 a head by the time they had returned home.
“We weren’t able to claim a freight rebate - we had used them all up in fodder rebates,” Jacqueline said. “We also sold 300 of our top replacement heifers, preg tested in calf. They certainly brought good money but we had no other alternative.”
The heavens opened on Boxing Day 2015, bringing 200mm of steady soaking rain over four days, but the Curleys estimate they have only three to four months of feed at the most.
“Everyone still wants to finish off the wet season,” Robert said.
They have nothing but praise for the survivability of their Brahmans after watching them weather the extreme dry and heat of the last three years.
“They can convert protein in something like 45 degree heat,” Jacqueline said. “We’ll never go back.
“We’ve done it all. European breeds might give us a few extra kilos but when you’re considering management, you have to factor in the extra labour costs of working animals that aren’t able to walk in the heat.”
Robert and Jacque, together with Clayton, have doubled their bull output, selling up to 600 a year, MDH being their major client.
Along with everyone else in the west, they are waiting for their country to receive that big drink of water to get operations back into full swing.
