ROB Cook and his wife Sarah have gone through more than anyone would like to imagine.
After a helicopter accident while mustering damaged his spinal cord, Rob was left a quadriplegic. But the grazier was born and bred on the land – and was not about to leave it behind.
They had made their home at Suplejack downs station in the Northern Territory, but now Rob and Sarah and their two boys, Braxton and Lawson, are living near Bundaberg, running a highly successful Brangus operation.
With the help of sensors, automatic technology and cameras Rob is able to work within his limitations – with only the ability to operate his powered wheelchair to guide himself around.
But Rob is nothing if not optimistic, and is determined to give his two sons the same grassroots upbringing he himself got on the land.
The family own three properties including a backgrounding block, Cabbage Tree, which is 404 hectares, a breeding block Tandara, 1420 hectaresm and their final finishing block, Werribee, 120 hectares.
The decision to move to Bundaberg did not come easily.
“We didn’t fall in love with the country, it’s hard to fall out of love with the Territory, but we could see value in it, our initial purchase was Cabbage Tree and so we decided to build off the back of that and find somewhere to live,” Rob said.
“It used to be an organic Aloe Vera farm, and what they didn’t pull out, we pulled out.”
Werribee is the aboriginal word for spine, which Rob said was definitely fitting, considering his accident.
But now the Cook’s are working on something much bigger than their properties – they have opened a butcher shop, Tender Sprouted Meats, and are retailing their own beef over the counter.
They have their own barley sprouting setup, and Rob said the concept was something they were not new to, after having a similar setup in the Territory.
“We wanted to safeguard ourselves. Everything we have done, we’ve done for the long haul,” he said.
“We wanted to do it on a larger sale so if we did find ourselves in drought, or the dam was empty and we couldn’t irrigate, it gave us that backup feed.
“Essentially we started feeding cattle on our sprouts, but it wasn't until we started receiving positive feedback from the processes about the quality of the meat that we realised we stumbled onto something phenomenal.
So then Tender Sprouted Meats was born – and the shop is already doing exceptionally well, only 14 weeks after opening the doors.
“Off the back of the success of the butcher shop we knew we would struggle to supply the demand and that's when we purchased Tandara, which is up near Agnes Waters,” Rob said.
“It acts as our breeding block where we run 400 black Brangus cows.
“The weaners get truck through to Cabbage Tree where they go through our education program and later turned out on supplemented open grazing country. Here we take them up to 350kg to 380kg before bringing them home into the feeding program ready for the butcher shop.”
Having people know exactly what they are buying was the key message for Rob, who has strong beliefs about people fully understand the paddock to plate message.
“We offer 100% lifetime traceability of each cut so our customers will know what breed and age the cow was before buying the steaks, and will know what they were fed and when they were killed,” Rob said.
Rob said there is a 3 day turnaround from when the live animals leave his property to when they are delivered back to the butcher shop.
Tender Sprouted Meats can be found on Facebook.
