No ordinary Mortgage - The McBeans at Ruby Downs Station

The house had been vacant for eight months, so the garden was a jungle and the mower was out of petrol. There was no phone, no Internet, no television and on the first night in their new home, the generator didn’t work, so there was no power.

But for Sam McBean and his fiancé, Sarah-Jane Fletcher, these were small challenges. It was just exciting to be first home
buyers.

First priority was a trench so Telstra could connect the phone to its nearby tower.

Satellite dishes are on the way, there are plans to paint, pave, fence and create a garden, and timers have been ordered for the generator, shared with a tenant running the property’s melon farm.

“We were just used to a generator that was on 24/7,” says Sarah-Jane.

For this is no ordinary home. And Sam and Sarah-Jane are no ordinary people. At the age of 26 and 25, the engaged couple are also the proud owners of a million dollar mortgage.

It’s a bit of a fairy tale that started with their first meeting in Grade 5 – over the School of the Air Radio.

Sam was living on Bradshaw Station near the Western Australian border. Sarah-Jane, who had been born on a Queensland dairy farm, lived in Ngukurr, where her mother was a nurse.

“I thought he was the cutest Grade 5 boy,” says Sarah-Jane.

They got to meet in person one week a year and at Christmas. Later, they shared planes on the way to boarding schools in Queensland, then lost touch for several years as Sarah-Jane went to university in Darwin and Sam to agricultural college in Victoria and back to Bradshaw.


They were reunited in a Darwin nightclub on a V8s weekend. Sarah-Jane had just asked her brothers if they ever saw “that Sam McBean”. She turned around “and there he was!” Soon Sarah-Jane was commuting from her hospital administration job to weekends at Bonalbo, where Sam worked for his parents, Kay and Ian McBean. She moved permanently a year ago to work on the property as a cook. Last year they went on a Contiki tour of Europe and soon after were engaged.

Keen to spread their wings, the couple bought Ruby Downs, 500 cows, and plant and equipment from the McBeans Senior.

“I’m really excited, it’s good to be out on our own,” said Sarah-Jane on Day One, only slightly fazed by the work to be done.

“The McBeans have been good teachers and they are just around the corner for support,” she said.

However, Sarah-Jane is under no illusions that this is a romantic tale that ends with riding a white horse into the sunset. Sam works hard, from dawn to dark seven days a week. Not many young couples would take on such a punishing schedule.

“We work hard out here, sometimes for little reward,” agrees Sam. “But we love the lifestyle.”

So apart from restoring the solid but slightly unloved homestead and planning for a wedding next May, step one is restocking with another 1000 steers so they can be fattened over this year’s Wet and sold next April.

Despite his reputation as one of the district’s hardest workers, Sam admits to being a little daunted by the looming battle to rid his property of the weeds that plague the Douglas Daly.

“It’s all through the timber,” says Sam.

There’s thickets of Gamba Grass that Sam plans to burn and replace with perennial pastures such as Jarrah, Buffel, Sabi and Tully grasses.

But the Gamba Grass is nothing compared to the carpet of Sida and dry, black Hyptis weeds, both natives of South America. Hyptis was reputedly introduced by explorer Leichhardt, and Sida by early Chinese goldminers who used its fibrous stems to make brooms. Now the seeds are carried by the abundant birdlife that feasts on them and other feral animals such as pigs.

There’s also the battle to get a moratorium on clearing in the Douglas Daly lifted. To eradicate weeds and improve the pasture, Sam needs to clear another 500 to 1000 acres of the 5000 acre property to make it viable. About 1200 hectares have been cleared already.

He is frustrated by the delays and myths floating around the Northern suburbs about farming practices, but Sam has been a key player on a committee working on an Adaptive Management Plan to guide sustainable development and farming practices in the Douglas Daly and appreciates the sensitivities of the topic.

For Sam and his generation a farm is a capital asset to be nurtured. Farming means improving the land, not degrading it.

“The better I look after Ruby, the better it will be in the future, and the better the crops will grow.”