WHITE papers have begun turning eyes northwards and towards agriculture for new development opportunities, but one young couple ahead of the game are Sandy and Katherine Warby, who began moving their business west from Roma to the Northern Territory nine years ago.
With help from Sandy's parents, Charlie and Judy-Anne Warby, they settled on Phillip Creek at Tennant Creek and now say they wouldn't live anywhere else.
"It's been a good challenge," Sandy said. "The Northern Territory is the place of opportunity."
According to Katherine, it was while working with Zanda McDonald at Devoncourt and Rutland Plains that Sandy got bitten with the northern bug.
"We didn't really want to live with oil and gas, and there wasn't the potential for expansion down there," she said.
Phillip Creek is 1 million acres of spinifex red soil country with mulga woodlands, running 5500 Brahman/Charbray-cross cattle.
As well as being an opportunity to buy breeder country, when they inspected the property in 2005 they saw cattle in top condition despite it being really dry.
"They'd had 320mm for the year when we looked at it in November and we thought, 'If they can be this good when it's this bad, the country's got to be good'," Sandy said.
"It's different to Roma, that's for sure. We had 18,000 acres (7284ha) down there - the horse paddock here is that size.
"It's a different style of country and I had to learn a bit."
What he learnt was that it came down to managing waters.
Although all the water that falls on the property stays on it, running into swamps, Sandy said 121,400ha was undeveloped.
"It's cheaper to put money into that than buy another property.
"We're working on infrastructure and have just put in three new solar pumps, one on a big dam, which opens up 50,000 acres (20,200ha) on the north-west side."
In the nine years that the Warbys have been at Phillip Creek, there hasn't been a time when there was a bad season at both Tennant Creek and Roma.
"We're very fortunate that we've been able to retain our breeding herd," Sandy said.
They were using their country at Roma to background cattle for feedlots or meatworks but in the last two years have made use of live export markets because of the ordinary seasons at Roma.
Before that, when the live export suspension and resulting fall-out was impacting the industry in the north, the Warbys were able to send cattle to Roma to fatten.
"We were very lucky," Katherine said. "The trucking fees to Roma just to sell would be exorbitant."
The distance between the two places is 2200km.
They've since sold Wycarbah at Roma to fully concentrate on their venture in the territory and are leasing neighbouring country at Tennant Creek to grow their weaners out for the boat trade.
As far as markets go, they've been able to be choosy, depending on where the best money is.
Last year it was live export, along with a meatworks at Warrnambool in Victoria for fat cattle.
They've also sent cattle to Townsville, with good bitumen access for the whole 1500km stretch.
One of the things common to both Roma and Tennant Creek has been wild dogs, which were roaming unchecked when they first arrived.
Since then they've formed a syndicate with Tennant Creek Station, which allows them to inject their own meat with 1080 when the need is there.
Sandy said they usually saw dogs towards the end of the year when surface water dried up. Just as big an issue were feral don-keys and horses, which smashed fences and muddied waters.
