“I WOULD rather animals than people, to be honest”.
Melissa Spencer was told by her teachers that her dream to work on the land and further her parents’ cattle business was not something she should aspire to.
But now the 25-year-old is working hand-in-hand with her parents on their two cattle properties in central Queensland, and is keen to make her mark in the industry.
Between the two properties (Malthoid at Capella, and Mayfield at Bogantungan), the family has the ability to run about 800 cattle, but Melissa said the drought has dropped their numbers.
We’ve got about 500 breeders, then probably about 200 replacement females,” Melissa said.
“We sold all our steers so we’re a bit light on our steers at the moment, we’ve probably got 150 younger fellas at (Malthoid), and then some more heifers as well.”
“We can run 800 between the two, but we don’t have that at the moment because of the drought, we sort of had to get rid of them all because we were running out of grass.
“We had pretty good rain here (Mayfield), so we’ve brought cattle back here from over at Malthoid, and it had alright rain, and we’ve taken cattle back of there but it’s pretty dry again.”
After finishing school and doing agricultural exchanges in Denmark and Canada, Melissa returned home with a new understanding of the industry globally.
“It was a good experience to see how people do things differently in other countries,” she said.
“You pick up little things that they do that you can tweak over here.”
While there may have been some tough times in recent years, Melissa said she has full faith in the industry’s ability to grow.
“I think it’s really going ahead in leaps and bounds,” she said.
“There’s not a lot of people going into it, but I think there’s a lot more coming into it now than there was a few years ago when the mining… everyone just wanted to go to the mines.”
After doing a short film course in Sydney, Melissa said it only cemented her knowledge that she belonged on the land.
“I don’t think I could really live in the city. I’d rather live in the country,” she said.
”I remember when I was in school, when I said I was interested in going back and working on the place, they said ‘oh well that’s not a job, that’s not something that you should be wanting to do’.
“But you know, you gotta eat to live, so there’s got to be some people working on the land.”
With dreams of owning her own stud, Melissa said she is keen to stay on the land for the rest of her life.
“I like being with the animals too much,” she said.
“I like doing stud cattle stuff, I like working with all the show people and doing all the shows. But I can’t really, we can’t afford to just feed cattle for shows at the moment.
“I’d like to get a stud going but it’s pretty tough.
“I’d like to do that, and that’s what keeps me out here.”