Burnett Joyce dies aged 74 and remembered as a 'no fuss cattleman'

Burnett was born in the Eidsvold Hospital on January 20 1947, the second son to Raoul and Ida (nee Coates). Thankfully Ida put her foot down insisting he inherited a family name rather than both of his father's favourite rivers ...... imagine a Burnett Dawson Joyce!

He spent most of his young childhood on Gyranda and Eidsvold Station and several other properties along the Dawson and Burnett Rivers purchased by his grandfather Fitzpierce Joyce and Fitzpierce's nephew de Burgh (Burgho) Joyce in 1926 and handed on to brothers Roaul and Barney Joyce.

The Joyce families were one of the first to import purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle from America and held their first sale in Eidsvold in 1957.

Growing up and working with aboriginal stockmen, Burnett, along with his brothers Donald, deBurgh and Shane, and his cousin Anthony Coates developed an affinity with indigenous people, gaining a good knowledge of plants, wildlife, tracking and observation skills. Connection to, conservation of, and improvement of the land is an enduring passion that runs strong in the family to this day.

After home-schooling and misadventures with his brothers and cousins, Burnett boarded at The Southport School where he reveled in surfing, poetry, good mates and representing Queensland in gymnastics. He considered university but was called up for National Service, and spent 1967 to 1969 doing service in Singleton, Townsville and then Vietnam. These were formative years for discipline, tolerance and people management which came in handy when returned to Gyranda from Vietnam.

The Joyce and Joyce partnership dissolved in 1967 with the first on-property sale held at Gyranda in 1968. (Burnett spent some time AWOL insisting on being back for the big event!)

In late 1970, following an 18 month trip travelling and working overseas, Louise Cargill accompanied her father on a trip to Queensland from Victoria, visiting family and friends. Gyranda was on their itinerary. The fact that Louise was a competent horse rider impressed Burnett, plus the fact that "She looked pretty good in the moleskins I lent her". They were married 18 months later in 1972 after a long distant correspondence relationship.

These were tough years, with the beef depression of the '70s. Burnett devised methods to get the most out or Gyranda, by improving pasture production and maximizing soil quality, whilst retaining tree shade areas. Strategic land clearing was undertaken and grazing lands were turned to grain farming. Burnett, his brothers and their wives worked alongside day and night .... It was tractors, dust, insects, cockatoos, pigs, emus, kangaroos and not much sleep. A lot of fencing was undertaken to sub-divide big paddocks to facilitate stock handling without extra men.

Towards the end of the cattle depression the opportunity was taken to for the brothers to split up the Dawson Valley properties and in 1977, Raoul and Ida moved to a farm at Maleny, giving Burnett scope to continue to innovate and run the stud at Gyranda.

Research was always a love of Burnett's. His enquiring mind was always on 'how to do things better', pushing the boundaries on known technologies to learn as much as possible about the genetic makeup of cattle and to enable better management, for Gyranda, the Santa Gertrudis breed, and ultimately the Australian Beef Industry.

This love of innovation saw Burnett involved in the introduction of dung beetles to the Dawson Valley, the invention and patenting of the curved de-horning knife with Michael Read ("The Knife), and pioneering the use of stock dams to breed Saratoga. When the fish boom occurred in the late 70s, Gyranda was in a great position to instantly supply the market with fingerlings to Japan, Indonesia and Germany. In the first year over $23,000 of fingerlings were sold, at $30 each. At the time a bull was selling for $285!

Burnett insisted that any extra tool to aid decision making or better guarantee bull purchases was worth exploring. His belief in looking to science and factual analysis led him to implementing Breedplan - to objectively define genetic differences between animals in the herd - at its inception in 1985. He continued to lift the bar by being involved in developing different Estimated Breeding Values (EBV's).

In 1992 Burnett involved Gyranda in breeding cattle under contract in a world's largest beef progeny testing programs - the Cooperative Research Centre (Beef CRC). Outcomes of the program provided enough new information to develop a blueprint for the genetic and non-genetic improvement of beef cattle in Australian herds, specifically targeting carcass traits, the eating quality of beef and feed conversion traits. Later, Burnett participated in CRC trials into the development of a vaccine for Pestivirus with the University of NSW, which resulted in the vaccine Pestiguard.

Burnett's motivation to provide clients with more fertile bulls led to his cooperation in a MLA Project - Bull Power 1 (1992-98) and Bull Power 2 (2000 - 2004). These projects were industry based and involved annual testing of 2-yr old bulls, multiple sire mating of tested bulls and recording individual calf-output as well as conducting a full Bull Soundness Evaluation on a group of 40 young bulls every 6 weeks up to 2 years old.

To showcase the commercial performance of the offspring of X3X sires, Burnett entered three steers in the 1992 RNA Led Steer Competition. They were rewarded in winning two of the three championships, including the grand champion carcase. Burnett's mind was not on the win but on identifying the sire of this carcase... so he could breed more of them. He had a fair idea, but needed irrefutable proof.

There was no known technology to determine the parentage of livestock (or rather "deadstock") but at his insistence the University of Qld trialed testing the muscle from this carcass, taking blood samples from the likely bulls and other possible sires. They came up trumps in a world first. This demonstrated a new role for DNA technology in the beef industry. Dr Michael McGowan recalls "undoubtedly one of Burnett's greatest contributions was in initiating the application of DNA typing (parentage testing) to manage breeding herds. Burnett constantly encouraged us as scientists to think about the research that needed to be done to address critical industry problems. The work that was initiated at Gyranda in the early '90's to identify the major factors affecting calf output from bulls is internationally recognised. This work later helped lay the foundation for a major part of the Beef CRC research program. Burnett had always felt that genetic selection for fertility was the key and the CRC research proved that components of fertility were in fact quite heritable. I will greatly miss our lively discussions".

Burnett's belief that the future of the cattle industry lies with the youth, was demonstrated throughout his life. He took on would-be station apprentices, "problem youths", university placements, children of friends both overseas and within Australia.... in fact anyone who was keen or wanted to learn about working in the cattle industry. He supported setting up the first and subsequent Youth Camps and Judging Schools and lecturing at these and at field days. He was always willing to help (regardless of the breed) to educate the young people interested in cattle breeding and property management.

In 2006, Burnett was awarded the RW Vincent award in recognition of "outstanding contribution to the beef industry of Australia".

In 2017 Burnett and Louise were co-jointly recognised as Modern Pioneers of the Banana Shire as for their contribution to the Central Queensland beef industry and other outstanding community roles. Burnett was acknowledged as;

Burnett's death marks the end of one of the most inspiring partnerships to be witnessed by our industry.

Together Louise and Burnett made a formidable team - and this is how most people saw them. They loved life, the land, adventure, learning and people, constantly curious about new and better ways. As John Warlters (Queensland Country Life's former general manager ) expressed in his forward of Louise's 2017 book, Sale-O and Smokos "They're not cattle people, they're great people who have made cattle their lives".

Burnett held education in the highest regard. He challenged his four children, Nikki, Hayley, Jo and Dan to step outside the industry and learn new skills. He was happiest when his "team" was really humming and hoped one day agriculture would benefit from their varied experiences and the land would call them back.

Initially wary of family meetings and moderators, Burnett ultimately embraced the "new way" of succession planning. This allowed him to hand over the reins with confidence, and provided him an opportunity to embark on new adventures with his lifelong partner in crime, the person he challenged the most, was proudest of and loved the dearest - Louise.

Ultimately, it also gave us as a family the freedom to say goodbye without any caveats or hidden clauses when his time came, 11 years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. With the next two generations now back on the land, involved in conservation, research, education, messing with machinery and challenging the status quo, he would consider that a perfectly executed ending - the legacy he would be proudest of.

For those of us who loved him, worked alongside him, knew him or simply knew of him, songwriter Graeme Connors can best summarise his real legacy "If I've lived and loved too hard, I've made good use of my time. I leave the world a better place in the love I leave behind"

So that we too may not just imagine but actively build a brighter future to walk into, may this man of great presence and little fuss live on a little in each of us.