Troy Setter, CPC tells me he is in London seeing shareholders this week.
“A bit cool over here at this time of year,” he said.
Troy then gave me the latest CPC news.
“Last week in Cloncurry for two days I caught up with our station managers from Queensland, NT and WA and some of our team from our Brisbane office,” Troy said.
“We met in Cloncurry to review company and station performance and to forecast our performance and program into next year. We went through the next stages of the development of our genetics program that is strongly focused on increasing productivity and meeting future customer requirements.
“With the move to more value based payment for carcases in Australia and Indonesia we are adjusting our breeding program to not just focus on more calves and faster young growth but also meat quality and carcass yield.
“Ian McLean from Bush Agribusiness worked through performance benchmarking with the CPC team. All of our stations are performance and safety benchmarked for key performance indicators so we can focus on the right continual improvement initiatives.
“We also completed our bull selection and vet fertility testing for our Qld bred bulls that are heading to the NT and WA stations for joining this wet season. We selected the sire and herd bulls bred at our Allawah Brahman and Composite Stud in Central Queensland for the Newcastle Waters Station herd bull breeding operation and Angus and Composite herd bulls that we have bred at Isis Downs and purchased externally that will go into both herd bull breeding and commercial herds.
“Once we finished in Cloncurry I headed back to Brisbane for the National Exporter Awards. CPC won the NT Agribusiness Exporter and NT Overall Exporter of the year award earlier this year.”
A truly vintage champagne
When I caught up with old mate John Kelly recently he gave me an interesting story of rellies and friends and a true vintage of a bottle of champagne, well over 100 years in the cellar.
Fleur Lehane (nee Tully), respected and popular author of two books, Heartbreak Corner and All our Yesterdays, died in May this year. Fluer’s home at Highfields had a brilliant display of memorabilia, collected over a lifetime.
Among the articles was a bottle of champagne, 108 years old. Fleur was the youngest child of Frank and Anne Tully, from the Quilpie district. Frank was an outstanding athlete in track and field and amateur boxing, holding amateur boxing titles in 1915.
Metre and Hector Michael (Jock) Hammond grew up on Tenham Station, a property taken up in 1867 by their grandparents, Frances and James Hammond. Metre Hammond enlisted in 1916, and trained as an air-force pilot. He continued with his boxing, winning the prestigious Lord Charles Beresford Trophy.
Frank Tully bought the bottle of champagne, bottled in 1908, to have a drink with Lieutenant Metre Hammond when he returned home from active duty. Unfortunately he never returned – his plane was shot down over France in 1918, and he was never recovered.
John Lehane, a son of Fleur, was discussing the future of the 1908 bottle with Margaret Shaw, a distant relative of Metre Hammond. It was suggested that a member of the late Anthea Kelly’s family would like to have it. Anthea Kelly, nee Hammond, was a niece of Lt Metre Hammond. Her only son, Tim Kelly, of Goondiwindi, is the custodian of his great uncle’s boxing trophy and he and his family will probably be custodians of the historic bottle of champagne, 108 years old.
By the way John, let me know when you decide to crack it.
Vale Jaremiah Francis ‘Frank’ McIvor
My old mate David McIvor, McDougall & Sons, Warwick, told me of the passing of his Dad Frank McIvor last week aged 90 years. My sympathy to Frank’s family, Anne and John Cuskelly (Newcastle), Chris 'Disco' (dec) Paul (Darwin), David and Gail ( Emu Vale), Brendan and Tanya (Emu Vale), Louise and Rodney Howard (Kilcoy), Kerri and Craig Deacon (Sunshine Coast).
Their Mum, Rita, passed away last year. Frank’s funeral service will be held today, Thursday at St Mary’s Church Warwick at 11am.