Have a beer or a cuppa with an old timer and they'll probably spin a good yarn or two, but sit around with five old timers and you'll find yourself surrounded by a wealth of knowledge.
There'll be no obvious starting point for their story, nor a rhyme or rhythm to what they tell you because "the trouble is you live too long, and you can't remember back".
And there's most certainly not an ending - they are, after all, still going strong; but when there's 105 years of family legacy, you can guarantee the conversation will be anything but boring.
So when Charlie, Ray, Alan, Stuart and Thelma Hoare - aged 93, 91, 89, 83, and 78 years young, respectively - reminisce on the days gone by, there's without a doubt a lesson or two to be learned, many laughs to be had, and moments of silence here and there as everyone mulls over what was just said and what comes next.
For the sake of telling their story, the easiest place to start is what would come to be known as Chocolate Hills, a property between Dingo and Duaringa.
Alfred Paul Hoare - the father of this spirited bunch - set out from Alton Downs with his brother George in 1913, on the hunt for more land west of the ranges. They were returning empty handed when they pulled up to camp on what would become Chocolate Hills.
It's said that Alf rode up the flats of what would become Giles Creek, to the south of Chocolate Hills, and for as far as he could see, there was green grass waving in the wind while all along the creek was running water.
After returning home, Alf applied for a selection lease in the area of Pearl Creek, which was granted on January 11, 1916.
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In the years that followed, Alf set about developing Chocolate Hills, while George developed his block, Giles Creek. During this time, they became involved in the social scene of the local community, where Alf would come to meet the tenacious and opinionated Alice Jane Sambrooks.
The couple raised their seven children - Charlie, Ray, Alan, Edna, Stuart, Thelma and Eric - on Chocolate Hills, with "the freedom" the best part of growing up there, Alan and Ray said.
"I loved it," Charlie said. "Back in them days you could do what you wanted to and made your own fun."
But the freedom only extended so far, with each of the kids being enlisted to work in the pineapple plantation and milk cows - something they all gave away at some point or another.
It's an experience that sticks with them all to this day, made clear when asked if they take milk in their tea.
"Bugger that," Alan said, and they all hummed in agreement.
Their childhood at Chocolate Hills, as well as their years as part of the social fabric of the district - where they played tennis and cricket most weekends, and enjoyed the local dances - set them up for a lifetime of happiness, hard work, community involvement and love of the bush.
Where to from Chocolate Hills?
Each of the Hoare boys left Chocolate Hills during their late teens, and over the years they were part of some of the key developments in the Dingo/Duaringa area - erecting telephone lines, or party lines as they were known, building cattle dips that are still in use today, fencing, yard building, and dam sinking using the infamous tumbling tommy scoops.
Charlie went fencing and yard building, before marrying Aileen - a pretty girl he met in the Duaringa Hotel - in April 1958.
"I moved into the Duaringa sawmill for a couple years, and then we bought a house in Rocky, got a job at the Rocky sawmill, and that's where I ended up finishing 20-odd years ago," Charlie said.
Ray went fencing and yard building when he was 17, then onto stock work. He was also married in 1958, to the beautiful Margaret.
"When Charlie and I started fencing, it was 20 cents a post, and then you gradually worked your way up and you got ten bob ($1) a day when you were working for somebody, and gradually went up and up and up until where it is today," Ray said.
"When we started fencing [in the late '40s], we had a push bike for transport to get home and back on the weekend, and we stayed out in the camp all week.
"They (young fellas) whinge about there's no money in it these days, but nowadays there's no hard work done in fencing, everything's with machinery, they want all the lines cleaned and graded and everything sitting there for them to do it."
From 20 cents a post in the '40s, the pay had risen to 80 cents in 1970.
"The last contract fencing job I did in 1970, it was 80 cents a post cut, carted, put up, and wired, and we made good money," Stuart said.
"Now it's $25 for the post lying on the ground," said with an element of disgust and a scoff from the group.
"And now they reckon there's no money in it; there's something wrong with them."
Alan left home at 16 and "went ringing".
"Done a bit of mustering here, there and everywhere for a while," Alan said.
He married Harriett in April 1965 and went to Spring Hill, Duaringa, which they worked on and owned up until retirement in 2010.
Roo shooting was also a big part of Alan's days, and how he paid for the couple's two boys, Ian and Barry, to go to boarding school.
"But only through the winter, because that's when the skins were heavier," he said.
"Used to go on a horse in those days, or a push bike, now you go in a vehicle with a spotlight. Not many motor cars around in them days."
The years spent 'here, there and everywhere' saw them bear witness to many changes across the landscape and within the beef industry.
"First mob of cattle on a cattle truck would have been late '50s or early '60s," Alan said.
But with the arrival of cattle trucks came the realisation that a loading ramp was necessary, and they each can remember a last-minute dash to build a ramp before the truck was scheduled to arrive.
"We seen some larrikin loading ramps in our time," Ray said.
They also saw the Beef Road become what it is today.
"There's always been a road there, but it was a track through the brigalow and around the tops of melon holes," Stuart said.
Next generation takes the reins
Edna lived at home on Chocolate Hills until she married Allan Lewis in June 1957, while Thelma lived and worked on the property until she married Ron Pritchard in January 1963.
Several years later, Stuart and Eric bought the property off their mum in 1968.
By the time the Beef Depression hit in the '70s, Stuart and Eric - who married Ruth in 1977 - were timber cutting for Thelma's husband, to supplement their income.
It's something they did for nearly 20 years, until a tragic accident on Blackdown Tablelands claimed Eric's life in November 1990.
"The timber cutting is the thing that Eric and I did to buy more cattle," Stuart said.
"Even with the depression in the '70s, we could go to a bull sale and buy a reasonable bull then.
"That timber cutting subsidised things, especially when we bought Oakleigh near Dingo; you could go ahead and do improvements, but you couldn't have done that out of cattle because there wasn't enough money.
"The thing about timber cutting, there was money coming in all the time; it was everything to us really because your cattle, you'd just leave them there and then just sell when you had to. You were paying the place off and doing a bit of work; it was good money timber cutting."
Stuart's land holding has changed in the years since he bought Chocolate Hills, and now consists of about 4000 hectares (10,000 acres) altogether, including Mountain View and Giles Creek.
A lifetime in the beef industry
In a good year, Stuart runs 450 breeders plus followers, but that number is "very few at present, because it's dry".
"I don't know much about these good years," he jokes.
His herd is mainly Brangus-cross, because "flatbacks are what's all the go in the saleyards now" and they perform well on the box and forest country of Chocolate Hills, with progeny turned off as weaners through CQLX Gracemere.
"Last sale I sold was the best I've ever seen in my life," Stuart said.
"When you can get a calf that you can see a fresh brand on him and they're making over $1000, by gee, it's pretty good."
Stuart says the price of cattle is "the best it's ever been", while Alan remembers "selling cows and calves for $22 a unit in about 1975".
"The only thing that worries me is it's going to go down because being the age we are, we've seen it drop so many times," Stuart said.
"End of the '50s, the price of cattle dropped down and... I still think the '70s was the worst because you were flat out selling cattle."
And it couldn't be a better time for anyone that wanted to start out because the cattle market is so good, Ray said.
"Of course, you never know when it's going to come back, could happen overnight that's what all of them say, we've seen it before, but how far will it go once it starts?"
The Chocolate Hills herd of today is vastly different to that of the one Alf ran all those years ago.
Alf loved his Herefords, but in more recent years Brahman, Droughtmaster and Brangus bulls have been introduced into the herd, with little or no resemblance to the original herd.
It's the Brahmans that the group point to as making the most difference. For all their years in the beef industry, and all the changes they would have seen, one would think they'd have different answers when asked what had the most significant impact on the industry.
But after pondering the question for only a moment or two, they almost simultaneously said 'Brahmans', then all nodded their heads in solidarity to cement the notion.
"Brahman cattle had the biggest impact, without a doubt," Stuart said.
"Brahmans were the best thing that happened, because they kept the ticks away and no doubt the Brahman-cross was a bit tougher in the dry," Alan said.
"Dad said the moment he died, the boys would go into Brahmans," Thelma said, and that they did.
"Don't think Dad would have ever approved of the Brahmans, but Herefords were good to us in those days," Stuart said.
Weathering the wet and the dry
The move to tropically-adapted breeds have been fruitful for the Chocolate Hills operation, like it has for most producers in the region, as they weather the wet and dry years.
And the Hoare men are no strangers to the fickle beast of Mother Nature.
The dry years of 1944 and 1946 were both bad, they say.
And the wet years of 1952, and especially 1954, brought about many stories that will never be forgotten.
"Fifty-four is the biggest flood I remember round these parts," Charlie said.
Springs ran out of the hills for months and months, where there was never water before. Cattle were drowned by the thousands in floodwaters on the river.
And there were plenty of stories about how the Mackenzie River below the junction with Springton Creek rose 30 feet in one night, catching many people off guard.
Asked what hurts more, a big flood or a bad drought, Alan said: "Drought, I think. It's cruel if you get a bad drought."
"Sixty-nine was bad, and the difference between it and say [2018 to 2020] is that you could buy hay now," Stuart said.
"Back in '69, yeah you could buy some hay, but things were just starting to come where you could get your poly pipe and cement tanks and things like that that make a hell of a difference now.
"Bad drought back then though, when you got rain you benefited from it, but it doesn't seem to benefit now."
Asked whether the seasons have changed in their life, the response was quite vehement from the group.
"Bloody oath it has," Alan said.
But just like the landscape of Chocolate Hills, and the fig tree near the site of the original homestead that's been firmly planted in the chocolate soil for as long as the Hoare family, weather the veritable storms they have.
And as that tree continues to thrive, just as the family does, thoughts have now turned to the Chocolate Hills legacy reaching the 110 year milestone.
Family legacy carries on
It's something that won't be hard to achieve, with the next generation of the Hoare family firmly planted in the beef industry, and their children growing up with a love of the land.
But Stuart said retirement's not in the cards just yet.
After all, "I'm not old", he says.
"I could give it away easy sometimes, because little things start to annoy you, but then I'd have to sell the lot," he said.
One acquiescence to his years of experience though is giving up riding horses.
"I rode a horse for the last time earlier this year, but I've given it away," Stuart said.
"I'm too bloody useless, can't get on, no spring left, and it's not hard to get off at times," he laughs.
Secret to longevity
Asking the secret to a long life may seem like a serious question, but this bunch have a fairly simple answer.
"Hard work," Alan says; a sentiment that Charlie and Ray echo.
"A cup of black tea at the end of each day," Thelma adds.
"And fair dinkum tucker," Stuart says to round it out.
Those many years of hard work are evident on their hands, in the laugh lines on their faces, and the steady way they walk away from regaling a young journo with what can only be a small glimpse of a lifetime's worth of adventures.
So after several hours of sipping on a beer, gnarled hands wrapped around a glass of scotch, and yarns that never quite transitioned seamlessly from one to the next, Ray boiled that 105 years of family legacy down to a simple fact: "It was a good life in the bush; wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
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