Dr Terry McCosker OAM has racked up more than 55 years in the agriculture industry. During that time, he's worn many hats, made a few mistakes, had a number of successes, and devoted himself to learning and teaching.
A researcher with the rare capacity to operate his grazing and livestock experiments on a commercial scale, Dr McCosker has long been seen as a pioneer in the industry, and during his years he's discovered as many things that don't work as do work.
Speaking in a recent RCS Australia webinar, Dr McCosker shared some of the wisdom gained from growing up in the bush and his time in the industry.
Have a dream
Growing up on a dairy farm, Dr McCosker had been "pretty successful at failing" throughout his school years.
The dream had always been to return to the farm, but it didn't pan out that way.
"I approached Dad and I still remember we were walking down from the dairy one night after milking and I said I'd really like to take this over.
"He said, 'there's no way in the world any of you kids will come back here. Go get yourself a job'.
"He said, 'if you really want to stay in agriculture, go and join the Department or something like that'.
"He actually said become an advisor, and that's what happened, as much by accident as by design.
"I heard the statement that says have always a dream in your pocket. And Pam, my wife, will probably attest to the fact that I've had too many dreams in my life.
"I've probably done too much dreaming and not enough doing, and it's probably led me to many dry gullies, but I've always had dreams in my pocket."
Take the emotion out of it
Joining the Queensland DPI in 1967, while also studying agriculture, Dr McCosker had found something he loved; a new dream.
"I studied for five years while I was a cadet at the DPI and then became an experimentalist... working in the dairy industry to begin with, on pastures and dairy stuff.
"I had passion even then that could get me into trouble.
"One day I sat down and wrote a paper on Pangola grass. My boss at the time took it to his boss, and it came back with red ink all over it, but the higher bloke said 'this is good'.
"My boss said don't worry about the red ink... you've got to take the emotion out of it.
"That was my first lesson that I was a bit emotional about things."
The paper was published, against 'a hell of a lot of opposition in the DPI'.
"I think I'm still the youngest person ever to publish a paper at the DPI.
"I wrote it at 18 and it was published when I was 19. That's probably a record that won't be broken, and it was because of passion."
From Brisbane, Dr McCosker relocated to Innisfail with the DPI, working in the beef industry.
"I got to the point where I figured that what I was doing there wasn't actually contributing to agriculture in the real world, so I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out how to get out.
"I got my private pilot's license, then I got my commercial pilot's license and the next step was to get an ag rating.
"I was going to take over the ag flying business in Innisfail, and thankfully I never did because I probably wouldn't be here today."
Instead, he ended up in the Northern Territory.
Preconceived ideas
"I was employed on a pretty big place in the Territory. My job description was they wanted somebody who knew something about growing grass.
"Pam and I went over there, and we had a three-day interview.
"The place was owned by Americans at the time and I was interviewed by three sort of fairly senior executives out of the US."
At the end of the three days, Dr McCosker was offered the job, but decided he didn't want it because he knew nothing about the environment.
"I said [to them], I don't know the trees, I don't know the grass, I've never worked with an extensive breeder herd. You should go off to the local Department and find somebody that knows what they're doing.
"They said something to me then that I've never ever forgotten, and it's actually stood me in really good stead for most of my life.
"They said 'no, we want somebody who has no preconceived ideas', and you wouldn't believe how that actually paid off.
"It paid off in so many ways because I had no paradigms about what I was supposed to do, and to work out what I should have done, I had to go back to first principles."
Going back to first principles and approaching an issue with no preconceived ideas was where he "first started to run into opposition".
"I discovered the wet season protein deficiency in northern Australia and I was ridiculed by scientists and people that said that's just rubbish. It was rubbish until somebody else proved that, but people just told me I was nuts.
"It was things like that, because I had no paradigm, I could look at things completely differently.
"It's one of the reasons why once we started RCS, we were teaching about paradigms right from the beginning because I think that we're constrained by our paradox, our training, upbringing, background, all those things constrain us and I think that it's actually been an advantage not to be so highly educated and to work things out from first principles all the time."
Trust your gut
It also led him to understand that things have to fit together.
"On that property...after about six months, I told them to sell up and go because it wasn't working.
"They said, 'well, put together a R&D program to fix the problem'.
"Within about six or eight weeks of giving them that and a budget, I changed my mind and wanted to go 180 degrees away from that because my gut said that what I was actually wanting to research was wrong.
"I had no reason to accept that, but my gut just was really strong, and I guess that's another lesson - that we all need to listen, first and foremost, to our gut.
"When your head is saying something, your gut is saying something else, go with your gut. It is always right, and it doesn't matter what anyone else is saying."
The abrupt change in direction, based on gut instinct, was not received well by those in charge.
"They actually tried to fire me and then couldn't find anybody to replace me in a hurry, so they decided that we were going to have it out.
"They came to the station and we sat around for three days with a big whiteboard that I explained and explained and explained my paradigm shift, and at the end of the three days, I had them believing that I was actually right.
"That's a pretty big thing for 67-year-old really senior executives to accept from a 28-year-old, wet behind the ears, ex-DPI person.
"I only convinced them because my gut had convinced me, and it turned out that I was absolutely right, that we were going initially in the wrong direction.
"We were going in the direction that was conventional wisdom, and if they hadn't picked somebody that didn't know what he was doing, that had no preconceived ideas, we would have continued on down the path of that conventional wisdom.
"I got a lot of opposition as a result of that, but you've got to learn that when you want to do something and you've got the science right, then it's right for you and you've got to have the strength of your convictions."
Strength in his convictions, and having no preconceived ideas, led to a range of successes for Dr McCosker.
"I said let's look at supplementation to increase the productivity of breeders on native grass, and then look at really highly developed pastures based on new grasses, so we could get high carrying capacity and high productivity at the same time.
"We went from 14% death rate in our breeders to 2%, and we went from 44% reproduction rate to 72%, which is not bad on some of what I would class as some of the worst country I've ever seen.
"So we solved a lot of problems with our cows, and then I went back to CSIRO and people like that and they sent me 300-odd species of grasses in just tiny little packets of seed.
"I went and planted 3000 plots based on these tiny little packets of seed, and out of that I discovered a range of species that would actually grow in that country without fertiliser.
"We took country there from a beast to 100 acres, to where you can now virtually run a beast to the acre on some of that country with the pastures that were developed back then, without fertiliser.
"It was a systems approach really - I broke it down into what were they doing, and what wasn't working."
Greatest achievements and choosing the right life partner
From there, Dr McCosker had many other research wins and losses over the years, but they weren't his most valued achievements.
"I think you don't achieve things and have a great life if you don't have a life partner. Pam and I ticked off 50 years married this year.
"My second-best achievement is that Pam raised three beautiful daughters while I was away, and they are beautiful citizens and beautiful human beings, and I think you can't do much better than that.
"In terms of agriculture, I have been involved in paradigm shifts.
"In northern Australia, identifying the wet season protein deficiency, identifying some of the issues with bull fertility in northern Australia back in to 80s before there was DNA.
"I ran the team that created the first useful genetically modified rumen bug in the world to detoxify fluoroacetate and that was back in the 80s when DNA was just a word; I'd heard the word so I went and did that because I didn't know it was impossible."
Ignorance is bliss
Dr McCosker said ignorance can sometimes be a useful thing, when you don't know that something's impossible.
"I think ignorance has actually been a useful tool, and it comes back to trying to not have too many preconceived ideas when you're confronted with a problem."
The difference between self-esteem and self-importance
For all his achievements over the years, and the wisdom he's gained from both successes and failures, Dr McCosker has easily kept his ego under control through one simple ethos.
"I'm not important. The important people are the people on the land, the people that actually make the change.
"All I've done is spruik some ideas and help set up an organisation that can help that change process, but I'm not the one who's done the work.
"The real heroes are all the people out there that have gone and made a difference to their land, their farm, their community, their family, as a result of some of what we have delivered to them.
"I can't do that, I can't change a landscape, and I know that that's not what I'm good at, so it's pretty simple - I'm not important."