Allure of the North
Article & Photography by Dimity Cole
Spending time up north in the early years of adulthood has embedded itself as a cultural rite of passage for regional people. But what is it about working in such harsh conditions, with extreme isolation that’s so alluring and why do so many choose never to come home once they’ve experienced this very unique lifestyle?
Dimity Cole is a nurse and photographer who has spent the last few years witnessing this phenomenon for herself and in this piece she explores the allure of the north with some who have been trapped by its rapture.
Jimmy Bellingham
Tell me a little about yourself?
I’m twenty four and I run a contract mustering business based around Katherine. I’ve been running my own show for the last two years and worked for someone else for five years before that.
How did you end up here and what made you stay?
I originally came up for a gap year to escape going to uni. I deferred for three years in a row, I found so much opportunity up here so I continued to stay. I grew up in the agriculture industry, I went away to boarding school and going to uni felt like the next step in fulfilling my potential but there is so much on offer up here. If you put your heart into it, then you’re better off being here in my opinion. The scale for opportunities is hard to beat.
What made you decide to go out on your own and start your own business?
Mainly because I like taking a lot of pride in my work and like to see a good job being done. It’s not always a given across the industry and up here. I take a lot of pride in delivering quality to cattle and to clients.
What’s the biggest thing that working up here has taught you that you think everyone should know?
This life drills a certain sort of independence into you. All as young people, such a long way from family and friends. You are doing at least twelve hours and working for long periods at a time. I’d say getting through that can set you up for life. Getting into that routine of working day in, day out and having to get up every day and do the same job and finding enjoyment in it – I think it’s a very good thing. That resilience and work ethic can take you anywhere in life. After that you can go down any sort of path and you have that work ethic in you. That drive and that determination to get a job done in any sort of circumstance.
With contracting you move around so much and are always living out at camp. Do you ever wish you had a more stable and consistent base?
There are plenty of days I wish I had a house. Especially when you’re out in your tent when it rains. But it’s the thing that you have to do. In order to be able to do this stuff, to live this lifestyle and to see what we get to see you lose some of the creature comforts. It’s all part of putting in the effort and making this business work.
How many people do you have in your crew?
I run two crews – about twelve staff at the moment. Might take on a few more people next year but it gets very risky much bigger than that. Then you’re not running the show yourself, you lose the quality control which can be tough. Your reputation is everything up here, which can be tough. So you just have to protect it.
How have you found it managing people and running your own show?
To me running your own show well is all about work ethic. It’s great to oversee people, and you get to an age where you’d rather do less of the hard labour, I don’t always want to be down there in the slot sweating absolute balls. But if you want people to work for you and you want people to respect you, you have to be there alongside them.
Does the isolation affect you?
Not at all. When I was growing up, Mum and Dad were fencing contractors so I grew up in a caravan. I think as long as you’ve got a good bunch of people around you, you’re fine. There are usually seven or eight of us together all the time. To me, that’s not isolated at all – this life is so peaceful to me.
How do you get through the hard days?
I love my job but it’s not always easy. This most recent job hasn’t been the greatest conditions but this morning I was walking through the yards. I looked at a big grey cow and I thought ‘I love working with these things.’ Sounds stupid but it’s like that, it’s a feeling. Those little things and being grateful for where I am and what I get to see and experience, those are the things that get you through.
Run me through an average day for you.
The day starts around five, we all have breakfast together as a crew and then get organised for the day. If we go mustering, we’ll run the horses in, get them started on a truck and load up bikes. We’ll head out to water as the sun comes up and get cracking. If we’re doing yard work the day is pretty similar, we just bring cattle through the yard all day. You can’t ever really tell how the day is going to go and yesterday was the perfect example of that. We were sitting in the paddock until three in the afternoon waiting for cattle because the choppers went too far back. We sat there for hours, they finally got cattle. Then I made a stupid mistake chasing a bull and got my horse horned. So my horse had a big hole in it, so I went to put him back on the truck and the truck wouldn’t start. Then I got bogged. I was cursing the world for five hours asking myself why I do this. But we got back to camp in time for dinner – we always get back for dinner.
What do you think is the most unique thing about your lifestyle?
The main reason that I came up to this region is because of the scenery. That’s what I absolutely love. You can’t beat these big red, rugged escarpments. Watching the sun tear over those ranges is spectacular. From the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed you get to see it all. When you’re out mustering in those remote areas you see places that few people have ever seen before, that no one has touched for years – it’s really special to me. I pull up in the paddock and wonder how many people have seen what I’m seeing and I found a bit of purpose in that.
Christie Pearson
Tell me a little about yourself?
I’m twenty nine and I grew up in the Blue Mountains.
When did you first go up north?
I first moved to the Northern Territory in 2016, I started working as a cook at Heli Muster. I followed my boyfriend up here. I only stayed working as a cook for a few months but I’ve pretty much been up here ever since.
What do you do for work at the moment?
I work as a livestock team leader in Katherine. There is a group of eight of us girls that run research projects for the Northern Territory government. Basically connecting with producers and industry and hoping that we can get some adoption of our findings for sustainability of the cattle industry.
What does an average day look like for you then?
Everyday is different – in any given week there could be a number of things that are pressing. It could be admin, project proposals or meetings about different projects. It could be data analysis or writing reports or I could be in the yards processing cattle. I enjoy the variety, it keeps everything exciting but there’s certainly a lot of challenges. It’s one of those things you just have to be in it for long enough to sort of get on top of everything.
When you think about the cattle industry, what’s one thing that you think the top end does well?
It’s almost like Alaska in that it’s like the last frontier for Australia when it comes to agriculture. I think opportunity is everywhere in the Northern Territory and you don’t necessarily have to be qualified or amazing at what you’re doing. You just have to want to give it a go and you’ll be given a chance.
What’s one thing that being up here has taught you?
That it’s okay to be a bit weird – to be different. There’s a lot of pressure, culturally and socially, in the city for people to conform but up here everyone’s so unique. We’re all working towards a common goal, but people don’t seem to care if you’re a bit unique as long as you’re getting the job done. All kinds of people are embraced up here.
I think there is also a bit of a misconception, especially for younger ringers, that it’s frowned upon to ask for help or to get any support – what’s been your experience?
There’s a lot of support with this region for anyone who is willing to ask for it. Part of who we are as territorians is that we sort of muddle our way through a bit and just give it ago so everyone’s very willing to help anyone else who’s also just trying to give things a go.
Do you think a lot of people who come up here for the first time have the wrong idea of what life will be like for them?
It’s definitely romanticised – especially life as a ringer or working on a station. When you get down to the daily grind, it’s fairly unglamorous and sweaty hard work but I think it’s worth it. After a really hard day you feel like you’ve achieved something. It’s a tangible sort of achievement – when you look at the yard of cattle that you’ve processed, pretty rewarding.
From your work, do you think there are gaps in the industry up here?
From a scientific perspective, there are times when we have research and evidence that certain practices will perform well for producers and the people working on the ground are often aware of those things. But with so many big, corporate owned operations up here, it’s hard when management aren’t always cattle people and don’t truly understand what’s happening on the ground. So managers are sort of hamstrung and they’re not always able to implement the practices that would potentially be better overall for land condition, cattle production and sustainability. I think that’s our biggest challenge as an industry moving forward – working to educate everybody within the system of the stuff that happens on the ground, because that’s the stuff that affects the spreadsheets and what feeds people.
Have you had any particularly hard times while you’ve been up here?
Where do I start? I did my PhD remotely from a station four hours from Katheine. I was doing it remotely through the University of Sydney. For those four and a half years I didn’t really have any contact with my supervisor or my project team, I could only get in touch with them over the phone. It was pretty challenging, lots of long days in total isolation writing up papers and stuff.
And now you’re also a pilot, how did that come about?
Well I’d finished my PhD and thought it was time to get a job and that was likely to be in Katherine. My partner Charlie is still based on that station four hours from Katherine and I knew I couldn’t be driving back and forth all the time. So we bought this plane, I went to Sydney for the five week intensive to get my licence and that was that. I just knew it was a reality of living my life up here the way I wanted to.
Any advice you’d give to someone thinking about coming up north?
When you feel like giving up, just go a little bit longer and usually things turn themselves around.
Sam Zupp
Tell me a little about yourself?
Sam, I’m twenty five years old from Toowoomba. We’ll have a block between Warwick and Inglewood.
When did you first go to do station work?
My sister and I went and did some work experience at Headingly Station, QLD. My sister went back and did a full year there and then I went full time as a station hand in 2016.
How did the work experience come about?
It is just something we always wanted to do and it was a bit of a program AACo was running at the time and yeah, both myself and my sister wanted to do it so we thought it would be a good idea over the school holidays. We caught the bus from Toowoomba to Mount Isa, twenty four hours on a bus and then up there for two weeks and loved it.
If you had to think about the type of person you were when you first started and worked at Headingley, what would you say you were like?
Green. I was excited, pretty open to most things. Pretty open to the whole experience, wanted to see the lifestyle and see if it was for me. To start off it was only going to be a gap year and I was gonna return home. But after a year or so I kind of got hooked with it. I’ve been doing the same thing ever since.
Where did you go from there?
I went contracting for PLB. Our first contract was actually back at Headingley station. After that we moved from Headingley QLD across to Moola Boola Station just out of Halls Creek in the Kimberley. We were there for six months, then went down to the Gascoyne and finished the year on block in the Pilbara. The next few years I got to see some incredible country and live a lifestyle that is so unique to this industry and those parts of the country, like the Kimberley, the Pilbara, northern Australia.
Do you think you did a bit of growing in that couple of years? Do you reckon the person that came out of it was different to the person that went into it?
Definitely. I did a lot of work that I hadn’t done before. Like a lot of cleanskin work, building panel yards, fixing all your broken gear. You get a good skill set from doing something like that because it wasn’t just mustering cattle or fencing. It was a bit of everything I guess.
What about your attitude in those years? Because I have heard a couple things of what you were like when you first started and I compare that to the person you are now, which is different to me.
Yeah I was pretty keen. I was a bit stuck in my ways and I was just always one to try and perform and do the best and thought the way that I was shown was the best. But after a while I realised that there is more than one way to skin a cat pretty well and I sort of opened my perspective and mind up a bit.
I guess contracting does that in general because you are never doing the same thing for the same person, so you kinda learn how to do things differently. You’re always working for someone different or they have a different way of doing something. Contracting you see a lot of good ways of doing things and a lot of bad ways as well. If you go into it with more of an open mind you actually learn something from it instead of just being set in your ways. If you open your mind to what people have to offer, whether it’s good or bad, you’ll still get something out of it. You will either look back and think gee that worked well or gee I will never do that again. But either way it’s experience and it is learning. I guess one of the good things about contracting or even just this lifestyle is you are kind of forced to be adaptable because sometimes that’s the only option you have got.
Where are you now?
I’m at Narwietooma Station down near Alice Springs, working for Hewitt Agribusiness. They have integrated into a few different fields now. They aren’t just cattle anymore, they do lamb production, pork production, and export to America with boxed meat.
Going back to the good experiences and bad experiences, do you have any moments or experiences that you look back on and you learnt something from, or a lesson you learned that you refer back to a lot? Yeah, there was one point where I had a few fellas working underneath me and all that sort of stuff. It was the back half of the year, it was hot and everyone was wanting to go home, but we had a lot of work to do. We were moving cattle around in less than ideal situations and everyone was getting a bit hot, a bit tired. I kept trying to push for excellence even though everyone was over it, I still tried to push them to get the most out of them. Probably a bit too headstrong at that time. I really should have stepped back and gone a lot easier on them and tried to make that whole experience a bit more enjoyable for them.
What would you say to someone thinking about going down the same path as you have?
Make the most of all the opportunities. In this industry everyone’s end goal is the same but I guess the steps we take on each property to achieve it are different. Hewitts for example have a variety of different properties that each have a different immediate goal but overall they are all contributing to and are focused on treating the land right and the animals right to produce high quality and sustainable meat. The industry as a whole has so much opportunity within it and I think it is something that isn’t seen enough.
We see a lot of this rough lifestyle which gives the idea that it isn’t a long term career choice, but if you keep your mind open to the opportunities, you can make a career out of it and make a future for yourself in the industry.
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