Managers/ Owners: Sarah Streeter (Manager and family member)
Region: North Queensland (Collinsville/Bowen)
Nearest town for shopping, doctors etc: Collinsville and Bowen (both approximately 50km)
Nearest roadhouse: As above
Number of cattle: Approximately 900
Number of staff (approx.): One (yours truly)
Size of station: Approximately 7000 hectares (17,000 acres)
How often and how the mail is delivered: We do not have a postal delivery service therefore I have a post office box in town which I collect about once a week.
How often and how the stores shopping is done: I’m really not that far from town, so I generally do a weekly trip for groceries.
How far off the bitumen you are: 14km of dirt road
Taking a break in a water and supplement run with my patient little helper
My name is Sarah Streeter and I manage “White Kangaroo”, an approximately 7000 hectare property located west of Bowen in north Queensland. The property was named for the population of distinctly white/pale kangaroos which, if you are lucky enough, can be spotted grazing contently in the steep range country. The property was formerly owned by my parents although as part of family succession has recently been purchased by my brother and sister-in-law. This step saw the property become part of an even greater integrated beef business. This includes a red Brahman cattle stud founded by my Grandfather and which produces bulls predominately for northern Australia breeding herds; a commercial breeding herd; backgrounding (where young cattle are purchased and grown on grass to feedlot entry weight); and a feedlot to grain-finish cattle for beef destined for domestic supermarket and export box beef.
In a former life, I studied a Bachelor of Agricultural Science at the University of Queensland and worked in beef cattle research for the Northern Territory Government Primary Industries department. This time gave me a great platform to develop my knowledge and skills in research and extension in the northern cattle industry. After seven years, I climbed back over the fence to the producer side of the industry.
I am kept busy with the day to day running of the property, where barely a week will go by without a busted pipe, a fence broken by bulls, a machine of some kind requiring tinkering (I am no mechanic) along with the antics of a very energetic, 3-year old cowboy. I enjoy having the opportunity to closely monitor developments in the research arena as a member of the North Queensland Beef Research Committee and as vice-chair of the producer advisory committee for “Spyglass”, a Queensland Government owned research station.
I hope you enjoy the my blog over the week, where I share with you some of the principles we apply to managing our cattle, as well as some of the trials and tribulations that I face in my day to day life on the land.
Everyone is ready for a drive to deliver phosphorus supplement to cows during the wet season
These Red Brahman stud (registered) heifers are a product of almost 50 years of careful breeding and selection. Bulls bred from these females are sold into breeding herds in northern Australia.
The sky is the limit
Host: White Kangaroo Station Written by Sarah Streeter – Manager, White Kangaroo Station. It may come to a surprise to some that we are using quite advanced genetic diagnostic and profiling technology in our stud cattle herd. Genetic technologies have a number of applications to our herd, most which can be easily related to commonly-used […]
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Multi-tasking
Host: White Kangaroo Station Written by Sarah Streeter – Manager, White Kangaroo Station. Multi tasking . . . they say women are better than men. Mothers tend to have a supernatural skill to attend to several tasks as if they were working from a body with more than two sides of a brain and certainly […]
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The sweet sound
Host: White Kangaroo Station Written by Sarah Streeter – Manager, White Kangaroo Station. Stock water and the pumps we rely on for delivery of this life-giving entity, are the bane of my existence as the dry season drags on. Check fuel, switch on, choke on, pull. Ahhh . . . the sweet sound of a […]
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Mob Mentality
Host: White Kangaroo Station Written by Sarah Streeter – Manager, White Kangaroo Station. I work White Kangaroo solo for most of the time. My brother and sister-in-law with one other employee come in only for the week or so that it takes to do each round of mustering, which we do three times a year […]
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Man Up
Host: White Kangaroo Station Written by Sarah Streeter – Manager, White Kangaroo Station. I prefer not to define myself by being a single parent. There are countless women raising their child/children on their own, whether it is due to the ending of a relationship, their partner spending weeks or even months away working, or a […]
