Host: Southampton
Managers/ Owners: John & Queenie Kilpatrick and Kylie Savidge.
Region: South West Queensland, Maranoa Warrego, Roma Regional Shire.
Nearest town for shopping, doctors etc: St George, 110 km.
Nearest roadhouse: St George
Number of cattle: 700 breeding head in a normal season, currently only 500 breeding cows.
Number of staff: 3 permanent and the kids when home on holidays plus the occasional backpacker.
Size of station: 11,000 hectares
How often and how the mail is delivered: Mondays and Thursdays, weekly.
How often and how the stores shopping is done: Fortnightly, by phone order and collection.
How far off the bitumen you are: 60 km
Southampton
Hello, my name is Kylie Savidge and I live in SW Qld on our family property.
Southampton is a small, family run beef cattle property 110 ks NW of St George in SW Qld. We have 11,000 hectares of open red box country interspersed with sand ridges and rough mulga country. Southampton has been in my family since it was drawn at ballot in 1923.
We run a beef cattle herd comprising of Santa/Hereford cows and either Santa or Hereford bulls. Our carrying capacity is around the 600 breeder mark. We aim to turn off feeder steers for the feedlot market and also weaner cattle for the domestic market. We sell off our cull heifers to feedlots or through the Roma saleyards, and we breed our own replacement heifers.
When I came home from school I introduced Black Angus bulls to some of our herd as well as some commercial Brahman breeders to throw in some hybrid vigour. Over the years we have introduced Shorthorn and Droughmaster bulls with the resulting calves being a good, solid line of weaners and replacement heifers have been kept to further invigorate our bloodline. We still rotate Santa Gertrudis and Hereford bulls through our breeders to maintain our original cross of predominantly Santa Hereford cows. We will be also introducing some Black Angus bulls for a terminal line of calves. (This means that none of the resulting calves will be kept as replacements, but sold as weaners straight into the saleyards to generate income)
I am splitting my time between school and Southampton, living part time in St George, Mon-Fri with school holidays and weekends spent out bush. My parents, John & Queenie along with my partner TJ are living there full time. TJ also works away contract mustering when the work is available.
Jack is in his second last year of boarding school. Ben has just entered his first year of boarding school and Meghan has 18 months left of primary school. This means I have 18 months left of Mon – Fri in town with school (yay). My weekend travel is a 220km round trip and I am quite looking forward to not having to do that anymore. I keep busy when I am in town with bookwork and planning for the work and mustering that is required to keep us up and running throughout the year.
The past few years have been very tough but our current season is starting to look up and into the positive, hopefully we are coming out of the drought that has had us with our backs to the wall. We are starting to add to our current stock numbers and hope to get back to full running capacity in the not to distant future.
The Rain Tumbles Down in December, January & June
Host: Southampton Our rainfall over the 12 months since I last wrote has been rather incredible. We had excellent falls in the middle of summer, with December totalling 107.5 mm (430pts) and January’s total 136.75 mm (547pts). We had good heavy falls which ran water and helped top up our dam supplies. A great and […]
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Let us get down to business
Host: Southampton Easter brought around our annual bang tail muster and much planning was afoot. All our cattle were home from their various places of agistment and numbers needed to be tallied, calves marked and weaners weaned. There were steers to be sold and heifers to select for joining come later in the year. Cleanskin […]
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New friends and old mates
Host: Southampton As I said earlier, Paige joined us in December to get her Aussie legs under her before heading off for her adventures in Australia. She settled in to our family like she had always been a part of it; being very much a country girl coming from a semi-rural area in Alberta, Canada […]
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Distance education, and distance parenting
Host: Southampton As you all know from my previous blogs, my eldest son, Jack, has been away at boarding school the last 4 years. This year it was Ben’s turn to go to boarding school. I have always worried about how my children will fare without me and I hope that I have done a […]
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My turn in the Careflight air ambulance
Host: Southampton Let me say that I never wish to go through this experience again and nor, do I think, my family want that to happen again either. It was my turn to get an emergency flight out on the CareFlight air ambulance. Very similar to the RFDS in its services, CareFlight provides expert medical […]
