Fairfax Media's Lucy Kinbacher reflects on the year that was in 2018

But, canetoads don’t back away from a challenge. As a former journalist for the Queensland Country Life in Roma, I’ve spent the past four months filling the post of livestock editor with The Land in Tamworth.

For those who don’t know me, I was a pretty serious reporter in the south-west of Queensland. Not many people can say they investigated a giant Yowie sighting. The “auburn haired creature” was described as five foot tall (152cm) and stood beside a dead kangaroo on the Carnarvon Highway, north of Roma, in early August. 

After that experience, I figured cockroaches would be a breeze – until I visited an emu farm in my first week. Turns out emu-phobia is a thing! As a journalist I’ve happily walked through mobs of unknown cattle and been in a confined spaces with a longhorn bull. But, having the beady eyes of 900 emus staring back at you is enough to make this photographer ‘tap out’ and shoot through the fence.

It was still one of my favourite stories of the year, how the next-generation of a major emu farm at Tooraweenah in NSW had bold plans to future proof themselves in the industry. Nicole and Dan Harte were slowly taking over the reins of Nicole’s parents, Phil and Penny Henley, who first introduced the birds onto their 485 hectare sheep and cattle property in 1996.

Back then the potential for emu oil as a medicinal product was high, but with their property now holding one of only about 20 emu growing licenses in Australia, imported products from foreign countries were impacting oil prospects. As a result, they started utilising the whole bird and selling their own jerky range, feathers and eggs with plans to install an on-farm abattoir, pending approvals.

There was something about innovative farmers that had me excited to visit the Chinchilla property of Bill and Jacqui Dehnert earlier this year after they became accidental dragon fruit growers. Two years after planting six posts of dragon fruit on their 485ha sheep and goat property for its health benefits, they had done what many growers couldn’t do and produced a bumper crop from their expanded 400 posts of red, white and yellow dragon fruit.

Just like the mainstream media reports about NSW had warned me, the grass definitely wasn’t greener on the other side of the fence, but neither had it been where I’d come from.

My Australia Day posting to Cunnamulla in January was hard to watch, and it was there where I saw seasonal conditions that would be incomprehensible to most of us. There wasn’t a blade of grass in sight, their cattle were poorer than normal and the only energetic stock to be found were the flies pestering our faces. 

“The big drought started in (the year) 2000 and we have a little bit of reprieve between 2000 and now, but it’s just been an ongoing battle,” Eulo landholder Mary Haig recalled. 

Alongside her husband Mac, their 26,305ha property ran 3000 sheep and 130 composite cows, which they were feeding 2.5 tonnes of lick each week. Among the three tuck drivers who arrived at Alroy was Troy Hendy of Hendy Transport based at Saint Arnaud in Victoria.

The Cunnamulla trip was his fourth hay run after first taking part in a trip to Ilfracombe in 2016 where he will never forget a conversation with a man he had while unloading. 

“He said we have had to cut back on a little bit...I’ve had Weet-bix for the last 12 months...that gets me through the day,” Troy said.

“This was in conversation. This gentlemen, that didn't know me for a bar of soap, we got talking about his bowl of Weet-bix and it puts everything back into line. I keep saying to my drivers you aint having a bad day, there is always someone a little bit worse off.”

May 2019 bring liquid gold to all sides of the fence.