Brownsons' battle for cattle won against odds

The Brownsons were facing the possible resumption of Forest Home and surrounding blocks to accommodate defence force training needs under an agreement with Singapore.

At risk was years of work and future planning - irrigation pivots, tradeable water licences, soil testing results - which could have all gone up in smoke if the Department of Defence had gone ahead with its plans.

While that threat abated in February 2017 when the federal government backed down, the Brownsons were one of those battered by the monsoon that devastated North Queensland two years later.

"It left us fairly knocked around," Mr Brownson said, listing one dam and two water points washed away plus 10km of fencing, and 75 of their stud Brahman cows that got caught in a corner. Another 200 breeders died from hypothermia at Eumara Springs further north.

"It set us back but we were able to buy some breeders, luckily for about half the price they are now," Mr Brownson said. "We've got a lot of young cattle coming on now."

They also had the misfortune after the 2019 monsoon to be among two dozen producers in the Charters Towers and Etheridge shires initially unable to receive compensation, thanks to bureaucratic criteria that locked them out of category C assistance.

"The Fanning River, which runs through us, and the Ross River that flooded Townsville head on the same ridge so it just didn't make sense," Mr Brownson said. "We got around it eventually and the $75,000 grant was a big help."

Nearly two years on from the natural disaster, the Brownsons are feeling confident about their future again.

Mr Brownson said his father had paid something in the order of $500,000 in today's money for a Brahman bull in the 1960s, moving on from the traditional English Herefords and Shorthorns.

Their much-touted hardiness was what first attracted him to the breed, and the younger generations are building on that with fast-tracked genetic improvements, plus a number of drought-proofing strategies.

Traditionally grey Brahman breeders, selling around 150 bulls a year, they've noticed an increasing demand for reds, which prompted their decision to pay a record price for a registered red Brahman female at the Great Northern Brahman sale at Prosperpine recently.

Outlaying $63,000, they outbid a Rockhampton consortium with similar ideas to their own for Cambil Dienka 5826 (IVF) (H), offered by the North Queensland Cattle Consortium.

"I regard her as the best bred Brahman heifer in the country; she's the best I've ever laid my eyes on," Mr Brownson said.

She carries links to the Elmo red Brahman bloodline, and the Brownsons are now in the process of flushing eggs from her and at the same time building up the condition of their surrogate cows.

They have six blocks of land scattered from Coronation, south of Charters Towers on the Gregory Highway, to Forest Home, sited on the Burdekin River east of the gold city, and to Eumara Springs heading north to Greenvale, giving them typical goldfields country and some basalt country in their 285sq km range.

"The hardest part of it is, we've got three times as much fencing as most other people, and the waters are a bit spread out for checking," Mr Brownson said. "It's been good to us though."

They run about 5000 commercial cattle and cut around 8000 round bales of hay a year, and are about to build new sheds to store more hay in preparation for their next dry time.

Thanks to licences for both the Fanning and Burdekin Rivers at Forest Home, and a larger one at Eumara, they have three pivots watering mostly Rhodes grass and burgundy bean on 200ha of cultivation.

"There's definitely a benefit to growing our own hay," Mr Brownson said. "In the last big dry we locked all our breeders up and fed them, and had our best calving ever."

They'll be feedlotting the cows to receive Cambil Dienka's eggs to put some condition on.

"If we can get 100 calves from the heifer in 18 months, we'll be pretty happy," Mr Brownson said.

They leave bulls in all year round, saying it would be too big a mission keeping up otherwise.

After the windiest spring they've ever encountered, and on top of an unheard of seven frosts in a row, many of their dams have gone dry or become too boggy and they're in the process of hooking up solar pumps.

Like many other northern producers, they're counting on decent summer rain.