Rarely, though, would you come across someone who mentions timing the tide just right for an ocean channel crossing, or seaweed piles that are seemingly foreign to the cattle.
That’s the reality for the Hammond family of Robbins Island Wagyu, who regularly do ‘saltwater musters’ that are equal parts beautiful and logistically challenging.
Requiring plenty of attention to detail, Alex Hammond said it’s a unique experience.
“It’s such a beautiful thing when you’re out there and it’s a nice day, you’re on the beach on horses and with the cattle,” he said.
“But we can have some pretty rugged days too; you’re pretty exposed out there when the famous Tassie roaring 40s are blowing and it’s raining as well.”
Based in north-west Tasmania, across country at Montagu and on Robbins and Walkers islands, the Hammond family has built a successful Wagyu brand over the past 30 years.
They run 2000 cows - mostly purebred Wagyus, with some fullbloods in the mix – in a spring-drop and autumn-drop breeding program, to ensure year-round flow of cattle through their system.
“On the commercial side of the operation, everything is born and raised on Robbins Island, so those cows never leave the island - unless they come back to our Tassie base to be embryo flushed, if they’re elite enough - and our bulls don’t leave either,” Mr Hammond said.
“The calves are born over there, we tag them at birth and mother everything up, so we’ve got the traceability right through our system.”
Most of their breeding program is based on fixed-time artificial insemination.
“We then put patches on them and do a repeat AI over a seven-day period on the ones that cycle, and then we put a bull in for a cycle after that,” Mr Hammond said.
“Ninety per cent of our calves that hit the ground are from AI, so that we can get consistency of our product through at the end.
“We raise those calves, wean them at about seven months of age and then carry them through on pastures and some forage crops on Robbins Island until they’re about 21 months of age.”
At that point, the cattle are walked across the channels from Robbins Island and trucked from the Hammonds’ Montagu property to a feedlot in southern NSW where they’re fed for 450 days.
“They’re then slaughtered and go into our Robbins Island Wagyu brand and out to customers around the world.
“We send cattle to the feedlots every six weeks so that we’ve got continued flow coming out for our brand, and do a monthly kill, so our cattle drives we’d probably average one every two months.”
Calling the cows home
Robbins Island totals 10,000 hectares, with 2000 of that being grass and the remainder being bush country.
Combined with the 700ha of bush on Walkers Island, which sits to the north of Robbins Island, it’s a great place to run dry cows that are back in calf.
“To try and spell our pastures and utilise that native grass and weed and whatever they want to eat out there on the bush, we wean the calves off our spring-drop breeders, preg test them and put them out in May, and then they come back in in mid-August.
“They have this bit of a love-hate relationship; I think they love the freedom out there, but they love the grass and say there’s a 1000 head out on the bush, 800 will come back in with us just going out and calling them.
“The last 200 we usually ride up to Walkers Island… we muster the island, and we time it with a midday tide, so we’ll muster all morning, gather them up in the middle of the island and then we’ll take say 150 of those 200 and drive them back across and through the paddocks on Robbins Island and let the last 50 stubborn ones come in by themselves.”
Saltwater muster
Getting cattle from Robbins Island to the paddocks at Montagu involves a 10km walk along the beach and crossing the main channel off Robbins Island.
“We’ve kind of started breaking our cattle in a lot better so that when they hit the beach, they don’t have too much sensory overload, because at times in the past we used to kind of cowboy it,” Mr Hammond said.
“They’d hit the beach, they’re seeing seaweed and if it’s 30km/hour winds and the waves are foaming up and splashing everywhere, it’s kind of a whole other dynamic for them as well, so we try to take as much of that out as we can so it’s a nice, calm experience.”
There are many factors involved in achieving that experience though.
“The tide runs out both directions, which is quite unique and allows us to do it when it shallows up enough, but tide height can vary between a 1.3m low tide and a 0.1m.
“So, there’s 1.2m tide variation throughout the year and the easterly actually holds the tide in as well, so we’ve got to try and time it when it’s not an easterly wind.
“We can sometimes swim, and if we’re lucky and the tide’s low enough, we can do it without getting too wet.”
The last hurdle to cross is the mouth of the Montagu River.
“In the middle of winter, there’s a lot of fresh coming out of that too, which makes it deeper.
"Most of the time we don’t have to swim, but I’ve certainly gotten wet plenty of times.
“It's alright in the summer, but not so much in the winter.”
Quality country makes for premium beef
Despite the challenges, the pristine environment of Robbins Island, with its the cool climate and salt air, makes it the perfect place to produce top-quality Wagyu beef.
“We’ve got really high production, which is good and bad in a way, so we’ve got to fertilise our land and keep our inputs up to it because we run quite high densities,” Mr Hammond said.
“We rotationally graze and keep things moving, but we have great grass production from that system.”
The combination of this pristine environment, a herd that has been selectively bred to carry the elusive ‘soft fat’ gene, and a specific grain-finishing ration that aims to mimic the local flora of Robbins Island has yielded some of the 'most tender and best-tasting beef in the world'.