As a young uni student, someone once told Rozzie O’Reilly not to miss any opportunity that comes her way. Get rejected? Pick yourself up and throw your hat back in the ring. Fortunately, she took it on board and in 2021 Rozzie was crowned the Australian winner of the Zanda McDonald Award.
In the lead up to Beef Week, we spoke to a regular Beef Week attender Julie Pocock who has been attending the event since 1997. The family run Ellendale Simmentals, specializing in high performance Red and Black Simmentals driven by the commercial market. The team will be bringing along four bulls for the auction at beef week and for the first time ever they will be putting a semen lot up.
No one ever threw anything at Howard Gardner in the 1980s but he reckons he came close. After all, he was pitching to producers what he admits was a new fandangled way of selling livestock at a time before computers or the internet were a thing. Today that system is called AuctionsPlus and it’s since sold a ewe or two.
This week we spoke to Rhys and Amy Innes regarding the Inaugural Beef Australia Stud Cattle and Genetics Auction in the lead up to #Beef2021. Rhys and Amy started putting Angus bulls over Brahman cows roughly 15 years ago, however it wasn’t until three years ago that “we saw the light”, Rhys says, and recognised the impressive results from Brangus bulls.
Ange Wilson has spent almost 20 years with her arm somewhere she jokes her former ‘office girl’ self could never have imagined - but the artificial insemination technician wouldn’t have it any other way.
Elisha Parker has a lot on her ever-expanding plate. A wearer of many hats, Elisha is the co-founder of Cattlesales.com.au, a national cattle advertising website that is the first of its kind in Australia. As the Queensland finalist for the AgriFutures 2020 Rural Women’s Award, she runs the flourishing site alongside co-founder Annabelle Spann, while working full time remotely as a lawyer and overseeing her daughter’s School of the Air curriculum. Sound like a lot? That’s because it is.
Mitchell and Hanna with kids Macy and Dallas In the lead up to #Beef2021, we caught up with Mitchell and Hanna Redding to discuss the Inaugural Beef Australia Stud Cattle and Genetics Auction being held in Rockhampton in May. Located near Toowoomba, west of Brisbane the couple run Sunnyside Brahmans alongside Hanna’s parents Mark and Kaylene Leicht.
In her early 20’s Lynley Anderson returned from an overseas adventure to give her parents a hand on the family property near Kojonup, WA. A few weeks turned into 40 years as the young nurse rediscovered her home and a passion for the Merino industry.
We are incredibly excited to announce that AuctionsPlus has found our Unsigned Artist and will be bringing Daniel Barrett to Beef Australia with us in May. Daniel is a self-taught singer/songwriter from the Murray River town of Echuca in Victoria. When we spoke with him, he couldn’t believe that he had won, “I don’t know what to say, I’m really thankful for the opportunity. I can’t wait to show more people what I do”.
Gary and Heather Sewell have been operating their stud Oakvale Square Meaters for nearly twenty years. Gary is excited to get back to Beef this year for an array of reasons, “It (Beef) provides us the chance to meet a lot of different people with different backgrounds from right across the industry”.
At the ripe old age of 12, Graham Gilmore felt he might just have experienced the proudest moment of his life. He’d shown the champion Dorset Horn ewe as a novice breeder at the Sydney Sheep Show. While he still remembers it like it was yesterday, fast forward to today and he’s notched up another achievement he thinks might just pip it at the post - developing the Australian White breed.
Marty Rowlands has been a producer for the past 20 years, with Beef Australia his main focus every 3 years. Having stock for sale at every Beef Australia event, Marty is extremely excited by the opportunity of the Inaugural Stud Cattle and Genetics Auction at #Beef2021.
Kelly Barnes’ love for dogs and personal experience living with chronic pain and mental health have led her to develop Mates Working Dog School – a training program helping participants build low stress stock handling skills and a stronger awareness of mental health care. The Dunkeld local is passionate about offering social connections and networking events for primary producers, earning her the title of Victoria’s AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award in 2020.
Award-winning artisan cheese makers Cressida and Michael Cains live and work on their family property; 200-acres of lush, rolling hills in Robertson, the green heart of the Southern Highlands. Named after the Italian word for sheep, Pecora Dairy is Australia’s only working, pure East Friesian ewes, the most productive breed of dairy sheep in the world.
He might not be a big talker but Bill Graham has passed on some pearls of wisdom to son Tom over the years. ‘Head down, bum up’ rates up there with his top tips and now he’s passing on something even bigger - his vet practice.
A good mate and childhood mentor once told a young Liam Kirkwood that ‘he who panics last wins’. Liam admits it took him a while to figure out what his friend was on about, but today the 24-year-old champion auctioneer and principal at Ray White Townsville Rural and Livestock lives by those wise words.
AuctionsPlus is proud to be partnering with Beef Australia to deliver Beef 2021! From the 2-8th May 2021, the AuctionsPlus marquee will host thousands of people each day where we plan to inspire and challenge with new tools, genuine conversations and exciting new insights.
In 2020, Amy Kirke’s dedication to the ocean and its inhabitants earned her the mantle of Northern Territory AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award winner thanks to her work in sustainable fishing and commitment to encouraging more women into the world of Science, Technology, Math and Engineering (STEM).
For a boy who grew up in Melbourne, Sam Heagney’s happy place today couldn't be any further from the suburbs. In fact, these days he says he’s never happier than when it’s harvest time and there’s headers, trucks and people running in every direction.
In a fifth generation farming family the pull to take on the business is usually pretty strong. For Frank Archer though it was more of a slow burn that’s turned into a roaring career with Landfall Angus, a family owned and operated business in the Tamar Valley, Northern Tasmania.
After 25 years in the Angus stud cattle industry Ben Glatz and his family are facing their most devastating challenge yet. A few months ago a bushfire ripped through their Avenue Range property in South Australia while they were on holidays, destroying all pasture, fencing, fodder and sheds. But the cruelest blow? The loss of 250 cows, weaner bulls and heifers and with them, 25 years of breeding.
To say things are looking pretty good for Lachie and Sophie Kelly from LSK Poll Dorset & Suffolk Studs would be a bit of an understatement. The young couple bought the entire Clarendon Poll Dorset Stud in 2019, hosted their first on-property sale in 2020 and in May, 2021 they’ll bring home their best addition yet - their first baby.
Oli Le Lievre is a young man on a mission. Each night, he dives straight into his passion project; finding and broadcasting fascinating stories of people in agriculture. He’s just clocked 120 stories on his Instagram and podcast: Humans of Agriculture, and he says our industry needs to get better at telling its story… lest somebody else tells it first.
Organisations & Not For Profits
Two-thirds of Australian farms have unsatisfactory internet connections. We all know the routine, phone calls drop out right when you need them not to and forget about it if you need to access broadband quickly in the paddock. A consequence of this is that adopting new ag-technologies that require the internet is pretty much out of the question. Fortunately, an idea out of Wagga Wagga, inspired by a farmer in Dirranbandi, is set to change all that...
Putting down the tools and picking up the reins to Gundary near Goulburn has been more than just a tree change for Troy and Hannah McNally. A builder by trade, Troy and his young family left Sydney 10 years ago and today they’re living a life even better than what they could have imagined with their Amaroo Australian Whites.
On the days she’s battling Tasmania’s horizontal sleet and hail, Georgina Wallace jokes that even she wonders what the latte set is doing and whether they might have a spot for her at the table. In reality though, there’s nowhere she could imagine herself and husband Hamish being than Trefusis, a 7000-hectare property in the Tasmanian Midlands.
She’s the cheery voice on the other end of the phone for the AuctionsPlus commercial operations team by day, by afternoon she’s a yoga teacher and as the sun escapes the sky, she morphs into a graphic design student. Oh, and she’s expecting her first baby next year. Emily Armstong always knew she was destined for a future in agriculture; she just didn’t know she’d be quite so busy.
When Robert Mackenzie’s non station mated heifers brought a jaw-dropping price of $2130, a local agent commented, "for heifers to make that sort of money you would usually expect them to be tested in calf.” Because that’s usually where the money is: heifers in calf. Nonetheless, unjoined heifers are the newest business strategy for the highly successful and historic Mackas Pastoral company who have spent the last few years making their mark on Chinese supermarket shelves.
National rower Emma Fessey was expecting to stand on the podium with an Olympic gold in Tokyo this year… she’s been another casualty of a strange 2020. With the door temporarily closed on Olympic dreams this year, another one opened for Emma who’s been welcomed with open arms back to the AuctionsPlus commercial team.
Speckle Parks were the first beef breed developed from Saskatchewan. A Canadian composite of White Park, Shorthorn and Angus (with other breeds including Galloway, Highland and Jersey in the mix). Here, in Australia paddocks, the “appaloosa cattle” are hard to miss with their distinctive spotted sides and rear quarters. Now they’re standing out for all the right reasons at sales too.
When Dawson Bradford finally hangs up the boots, there’s one thing he knows for sure - there’ll be no Winnebago, thank you very much. He doesn’t need it; by his definition he’s already been retired for more than 60 years.
Anderson Merinos produces a sort of triple threat flock. Between carcase productivity, soft white wool (the average micron of the Andersons' ewe flock is 18.8) and fertility (lambing percentage is over 110%) their rams sell far and wide. In fact, a sire just landed on Bruny Island.
Holly Baker’s journey into an agricultural career has taken some curious turns. The daughter of a well-known large animal vet in Gunnedah, Mark Baker, she was raised on a cattle property that has been in the family for generations. Holly found herself at the age of 20 learning Indonesian and residing in a small village in East Java.
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