Outback Roots

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‘In the vast expanse of southwest Queensland, Wendy Sheehan navigates the challenges and joys of life on her family’s 264,000-acre sheep and cattle farm. As the youngest of six, Wendy returned to her childhood home to help her mother manage the property, which has been in the family for over a century. Each day brings new responsibilities, from tending to livestock and managing the land to balancing the demands of remote living and distance education for her children. Amid the rugged beauty of the outback, Wendy finds solace in the rhythms of nature, the bonds with her animals, and the close-knit community that defines her life.’

Background

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I’m the youngest of 6 kids, by a gap of eight years, so by the time I was 4, the youngest of my siblings was heading off to boarding school for secondary education, and some of the older ones had almost completed their formal schooling. I grew up here, on the family property that I now live on again, until the beginning of Year 8 when I headed off to Toowoomba for boarding school. Prior to that, my mother taught me through School of the Air.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Wendy’s home Southwestern Queensland (a few weeks ago after a storm). Cheviot Hills to the left, Gray Range on the right.*

Can you tell us a little about your family farm?

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My husband and I graze Merino sheep and beef cattle on 264000 acres of native Australian rangeland vegetation in southwest Queensland. My great grandfather bought the original block about 110 years ago.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Guardian alpaca -Helps to protect sheep from dingo/wild dog attacks.*

I grew up here as the youngest of 6 kids and we were the only ones available to come back here to help my mother run the place in 2000, which we did, and have been here ever since.

The landscape varies wildly, from hard red mulgalands, to natural plains populated with Mitchel grass and many other natives, to the crumbling cliffs of ancient ranges. We are never in danger of being flooded because our house is only a couple of kilometres from the top of a watershed.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - How green it can be on Wendy’s property*

The whole property is fairly high, being a watershed point for the Bulloo River on one side, the Barcoo River on another side, and Cooper Creek as well.

What does a typical day on the farm look like for you?

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Days vary wildly for me, with the occasional one spent in the office, catching up on paperwork, but I much prefer to be outside. Maybe I’m not a proper grazier because I don’t actually like getting up at the crack of dawn! Unless it involves stockwork of course, and then we’re up well before.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Mustering cows and calves in the mulga*

On a typical day I might drive around and check troughs and dams, put out a ton of supplementary loose lick for the cattle (it comes in 25kg bags), collect some native grass seed to spread around areas that might not have a good seed bank in the soil, take photographic records of vegetation growth at specific site pegs, as well as doing the washing, cook dinner, make something for smoko, feed chooks and dogs and any orphans we might have (at the moment it’s just one calf called Hellon (Hell-on-wheels) who gets a drink of milk morning and night), and handle phone calls (it can be days between calls).

Photo by Wendy Sheehan - The repeater tower on top of one of the Cheviot Hills, which is what we use for communication via UHF radios in the house, vehicles and on motorbikes. And an almost full moon setting.

Other days could be all about stockwork, going out and mustering sheep or cattle to the yards for varies animal husbandry, like shearing, crutching or lamb marking (sheep), or branding or weaning (cattle). Then we have to make sandwiches for lunch, pack plenty of water and leave well before the sun comes up, and often get home as or after the sun sets.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - One of Wendy’s musterers blocking up cattle*

What are some of the tasks you find most challenging or rewarding living in the Outback?

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I love working with well-educated stock, while it lacks the excitement of handling wild or poorly behaved stock, it’s very satisfying to walk a mob along on your own (or with others) where they’re all calm and quiet.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - The grass has mostly dried off, reducing its nutritional value, so the cows are looking for some supplementary lick to help.*

Most challenging…. Probably trying to convince businesses from closer to the coast that just using our surname, property name and closest town as the address will work for parcel delivery, and that no matter what your courier company says, they will in fact, not deliver to our door, they will actually hand it off to a series of other freight companies who will leave it at the local post office, where our local mailman/woman will pick it up, along with any mail, groceries, parts, stock feed etc that we might have ordered from our local town this week, and bring it out on one of the 2 days a week we get a mail service.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Blue-banded bees sleeping*

What is your relationship like with the cattle? Do you have any favourites?

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I love working with cattle, I do have favourites, some of which are my milkers (I only have one at the moment), and a big yellow cow with a cock horn and a white face, just because she stands out, I think, and she has a good calf every 12 months. I’m not very brave when it comes to a cranky beast in the yards, but luckily they are rare.

How far away from the big city is your home?

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We’re 1200km from Brisbane, our nearest town is 200km away (80km dirt, 120km bitumen) but we get fuel delivered about once a year, via truck, mail comes twice a week, and carries other parcels from town if we’ve ordered them. I ring or email an order through to the local grocery shop a couple of days before the mail is coming, giving him time to pack my groceries up. I don’t order every week, sometimes once a fortnight or less.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Mail Day happens at our place twice a week…*

What are some of the ways you find joy and relaxation in the bush?

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Listening to the sounds of the bush, sitting at a dam and taking photos of birdlife…while avoiding the ants. Walking my milking cows’ home in the evening if they’re lactating and I want to milk the next morning. Conversely, if they are being stroppy and hard to get along with, this is also when I get the most frustrated!

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Brolga dancing*

What are some of the biggest challenges you face living in the outback?

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For me personally, it was teaching my kids through distance education for primary school. We had governesses at times, some were wonderful, some woeful, and if they were woeful, I had to teach. It wasn’t a very happy time for the kids or me, but we got through it. From a grazing business point of view, the cost of doing business here is very high, freight/fuel adds many dollars on to everything we buy, and everything we sell.

How do you feel about the land you live on? Is there a particular place you find special?

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Our land is the most important thing we have, it grows the grass, forbs, shrubs and trees that feed the animals we sell to make a living and feed ourselves. We have to manage the grazing pressure, which doesn’t just include our livestock, which we can truck out and destock when things are getting dry, it also includes other herbivores like kangaroos, which, due to the enormous number of water sources we’ve added to the landscape (pre-white settlement, there were 4 permanent (or almost permanent) rockholes on this property.

Now there are 50 dams and troughs) are here in much greater numbers than there used to be, and they are specifically evolved to match Australia’s boom and bust weather patterns, so they breed up extremely fast, but they’re also on the national emblem, and much more rarely seen closer to more heavily populated areas, so managing roo population is quite an emotional discussion.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Red kangaroo doe and joey*

We have a really wide range of plants and animal species, and I am building a photographic record of all the different plants and animals I see around the place. A couple of times I’ve been asked to send plant specimens to the Qld Herbarium for their records as I’ve found something they didn’t realise was present in this region. I love the variety of native bees, but they are often terribly frustrating to photograph.

What are some of the things you've learned about the outback from observing nature?

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Don’t rely on nature to tell you it’s going to rain. Black cockatoos flying north, emus hatching out lots of chicks, Barcoo Swagmen (slaters) on the move….none of them are right all the time! Seasons change, some years are good, some years are bad, some start off looking very positive, but a few little showers on dry grass, or an intense warm spell can change the outlook within days or weeks.

*Photo by Wendy Sheehan - Mud drying out in its own particular way.*

There will always be another drought not too far away, so need to plan for that, and when you are in a dry spell, make your decisions around livestock and land based on what you actually have, not on what you hope is going to happen. You hear people say, ‘It must be going to rain soon!’, but if you have a look back through the relatively few years of rainfall records that we do have, you can always find a time when it was worse.

My great grandparents decided to marry, but they wanted to wait until the drought broke. They waited 2 years and decided to marry anyway. It was another 5 years before that drought finally ended.

Have you ever encountered any dangerous wildlife?

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Snakes are one of the more dangerous, because they can be hard to see. My mother was bitten by a Mulga snake while picking cucumbers in the veggie garden, and nearly died, saved by the RFDS though. Pigs have been cranky, dingoes are generally only having a look but will kill your domestic dogs. And then there are the little ones that are extremely painful but not deadly (to adults anyway) like redback spiders and centipedes.

It always pays to keep your eyes open.

Do you see yourself living anywhere else? and what does the outback mean to you Wendy?

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For now, I plan to stay where I am. One of the kids says she’s going to come home and take over the place, but that’s a few years away yet.

Outback = community. A small number of people are spread out across a vast area, but we know nearly everyone in a 100km radius and we either know or know of most people in a 200km radius. If there is a community event on (like a gymkhana/campdraft), it’s organised and run by local volunteers, and many of those community events fund raises. The Royal Flying Doctor is a popular recipient.

Words of Wisdom

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Arr, I don’t think I have any of those. But if you got this far, thanks for reading.

And this month (October) I’m walking 100km to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (who have landed on our airstrip a number of times over the years, to provide emergency care to us and neighbours) so any support (whether through donation or story sharing) is much appreciated. Links to my fundraising page are in links on my Facebook page Bulldust_and_mulga and Instagram Wendy Sheehan (@bulldust_and_mulga) • Instagram photos and videos and of course if you’d like to follow along and see a bit of what we do, you’d be most welcome.