WHEN the rains of ex-tropical cyclone Oswald belted down on Australia Day last year, the dams on Rodney and Karen Johannesen's property burst, sending a wall of water through the foothills of the Burnett Range.
The inland tsunami struck the area where their prized Bazadaise cows and calves camped each night.
"I lost about 15," recalled Mr Johannesen, whose property, Ironie, lies between Maryborough and Biggenden.
"When you see their bodies lying around, it's pretty devastating.
"One cow, when I found her, was walking around with half her hide stripped down from her hip. I nursed her back to good health, but she lost her calf."
Next followed a perishing drought and stud cows that would normally fetch thousands were sent to the meatworks for $650.
"Their calves were my next year's income, but if I'd let them calve and there was no rain, they would've died."
And unless it rains again, Mr Johannesen could lose another 150 before the end of the year.
For the owners of Folkslee, their Bazadaise and Brangus stud, which normally supports 500 breeders, it could be easy to give up.
"Little steps," Mr Johannesen said.
One of these steps and a boost to morale was a trip to the Royal Queensland Show this month, where his cow Geisha took grand champion female in the Bazadaise section of the stud cattle.
On top of that, Mr Johannesen was presented the Community Resilience Award by Local Government Minister David Crisafauli.
"I am not out there looking for recognition but it is a really humbling experience to be recognised for what you do, which just comes naturally because you love what you do. I am not accepting this and thinking we are doing it tough - a lot of people are out there who deserve recognition for doing what they're doing."
However, when describing how he established his stud, Mr Johannesen shows his resilience is not just isolated to surviving the floods.
"I have loved cattle since I was a little tyke," he said, outlining how his observations and questions would sometimes frustrate his parents.
As a child, he could remember each calf through to adulthood because of their special markings, and arguments over identity often ensued.
Once he grew up and left home, Mr Johannesen spent many years as a frustrated farmer - he had no land -while he ran a carpet cleaning business in Bundaberg.
"You can take the boy from the country," he said, and so he began leasing land outside Bundaberg.
Around the same time, he had been reading about artificial insemination and came across an article about Bazadaise in the Town and Country Farmer magazine, piquing his interest.
He learned how to carry out AI, bought some semen from Bazadaise and a few other breeds, used this in Santa Gertrudis and Brahman cows and waited.
"I borrowed the cows to AI, so they weren't even my own cows," he said.
When the first lot of Bazadaise calves hit the ground, Mr Johannesen was impressed with their growth.
"Then when it came time to send them off to slaughter, the meatworks rang and asked if I had any more."
Not just content to build up his Bazadaise, Mr Johannesen then began experimenting with producing a polled herd through the Santa Gertrudis cows he was breeding from. There were no polled Bazadaise in the world.
So in 2005, when the first polled Bazadaise was on the ground, it was a momentous occasion.
But disaster hit three years later when she burst an artery during calving and she died.
"She dropped dead in front of us. It was a freak thing that happened. We were out in the paddock, proudly watching as she had a polled heifer, and she just dropped dead."
The calf died too, and the event hit Mr Johannesen hard.
"It was devastating."
Despite the huge knock, he did not give up.
By 2009, the Johannesens bought a rundown property at the foothills of the Burnett Range and have slowly been redeveloping it.
The next April, their first polled bull was born, although a number of polled females had been bred.
This bull, which produces about 80-90 per cent polled calves, is now being used over pure Bazadaise females and two more unrelated poll bulls have been bred.
"We started from nothing."