Lives and Livelihoods

Outstanding achievements by outstanding Individuals

The Sullivan Family

The Northern Territory’s cattle-breeding Sullivan clan reckon they got the best of both worlds when they bought Cave Creek Station in Australia’s famous ‘Never Never’ country in 1990.

All three generations – Jim and Barbara, their five adult offspring and a growing band of grandchildren – either live on or regularly come to Cave Creek and thrive in the wide open spaces and rough-and-tumble of cattle station life.

But they also cherish a rare bush bonus. The station is just 10 km from historic Mataranka township, which means they can nip down to the local supermarket for emergency supplies, and the younger children can attend a fully-fledged primary school.

The regional service town of Katherine is handy 100 km drive up the track and just three hours further north is Darwin, key Australian exit port for the huge livestock carriers that take Cave Creek’s cattle into South East Asian feedlots.

Cave Creek, in the Territory’s Upper Roper District, is traversed by 18 km of the Waterhouse River and was excised from Mataranka Station to its west. The property is bounded by Beswick Aboriginal Reserve to its north and Elsey National Park to its south. On the eastern border is historic Elsey Station, immortalised by pioneering pastoral wife Jeannie Gunn in her all-time classic, We of the Never Never, which told of her life with husband Aeneas in a time when this was a wild and remote part of the Territory.

The Sullivans’ patch is 37,000 ha (370 sq km) of undulating savannah woodland country where sandy red soils dominate a mix of soil types including black soil creek frontages. The main .grazing pastures are reached via creek crossings that routinely flood in the wet season, cutting access to the cattle for months at a time. But that’s all built into the seasonality of cattle work in the north.

“We’ve got it pretty good here,” says Jim, 70, the station’s self-confessed ‘dog’s body’ who lives with wife Barbara in a cosy one-bedroom ‘hogan’ he built to replace his original ‘lean-to’.

“We’ve been in a position to buy an affordable, good-sized cattle station, we’ve got reliable annual rainfall, the capacity to produce good quality cattle for a readily accessible market - and then there’s the added convenience of being so close to all the supplies and services we need.”

Jim upped stakes from his New South Wales home at just 15 to become a stockman, but found himself wheat growing at Coonamble instead. He eventually ended up in the Northern Territory as a 1960s pioneering farmer fattening cattle on improved pasture and later trialling rice, bananas, melons and other crops. His base was Wandinya, a pilot farm he and Barbara drew in a ballot and developed at Tortilla Flats on the Adelaide River floodplains.

They sold out in 1985 and Jim moved his young family to more remote parts. He spent five years managing cattle operations on Aboriginal stations including Aminbidgee in the Victoria River District (VRD) and Palumpa near Port Keats southwest of Darwin. When the Northern Territory Government offered Cave Creek for sale in 1990, the Sullivans snapped up a rare opportunity to buy an affordable and conveniently located land parcel where they could develop a pastoral operation concentrating on breeder cattle.

Oldest son Rohan, a University of New England Rural Science graduate and former manager of the VRD’s government-run Kidman Springs Research Station, is Cave Creek’s manager. He’s the only one of Jim and Barbara’s five children who lives permanently on the station – but the others come whenever they can and take a keen interest in the cattle operations.

Second son Tim is an oil and gas production supervisor with Woodside at Karratha in WA, Meredith works in HR at Darwin’s Menzies School of Health Research, public servant Penny lives in Canberra, and former journalist-turned-bush teacher Rosemary is the principal at Tipperary Station School in the Daly River district. She’s also an up-and-coming children’s book author with a head full of new stories since her first publication about Aboriginal boy, Tom Tom, sold thousands of copies and received glowing accolades around the country.

All the adult Sullivans are shareholders in Cave Creek Station Pty Ltd. The family business oversees three separate breeder herds, one each owned by Jim, Barbara and Rosemary, Rohan and wife Sally, and Tim. All owners pitch in for agistment, feed supplement and mustering costs to bolster the station’s cash flow.

“In 1994 when I was a single parent raising twins and working full time, Dad convinced me to borrow some money and buy 50 cows,” Rosemary says. “They have now increased to 150 cows and I have to say it’s the best investment I ever made. I don’t own a house but I’m glad he made me do that.”

Rohan and Sally, a Natural Resources graduate and soil conservationist heavily involved in the local Roper River Landcare Group and Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association, met while both were studying at the University of New England. They also have five children aged from 15 down to eight and oversee a lively household come holiday times. Teenage daughters Donal and Jess board at St Phillips College in Alice Springs, and 12-year-old Margo will go there too next year when she’s finished her Katherine School of the Air middle year studies, supervised by Mum Sally. Younger brothers Dean, 10, and Philip, 8, head off to Mataranka Primary School every morning.

Cave Creek has extensive native pastures that help to sustain about 2500 head of cattle. The pastures provide valuable roughage but lack vital nutrients so the station spends thousands of dollars a year on loose-mix mineral supplement to feed the stock. Cave Creek’s main focus is on live export feeder steers.

Rohan and Sally are also equal joint owners, with Tom and Bev Stockwell, in Birdum Creek Station about 80 km further south at Larrimah on the Sturt Plateau, and maintain 1500-2000 head of cattle there.

Closer to home, the family company leases the 52,000 ha Chambers Block from the traditional owners of neighbouring Elsey Station, and graze 1000 head on the 12,000 ha of land they have been able to develop so far.

“We took the Chambers block on because it was an opportunity to spread out and increase our herd numbers, and there was also an element of taking on a challenge to develop something from scratch,” Rohan says.

“All up, we now have 5000 head of cattle between the three properties. We started out with Drought Master cattle and gradually built up numbers and introduced more breeds, and we now have a Brahman-cross herd. We’ve been in a herd build-up phase for a few years now and are starting to concentrate on lifting our weaning and turn-off rates. We should wean close to 2000 this year, which will be the peak we have achieved so far.

“We are hampered a bit by the wet season every year. Our future strategy is to run the breeders at Cave Creek and Chambers block and take the young stock to the drier and easier country at Birdum Creek, so we can turn the steers off earlier.”

Always an innovator, Jim Sullivan has been cross-breeding Brahman with a small herd of high-fertility pure African Boran cattle that he bought in from Toowoomba in Queensland six years ago. He expects to start seeing significant improvements in his herd numbers in a few years. He calls the trials ‘Jim’s folly’ – something else for him to do in between his other jobs of doing the lick drops to the herd twice a week, helping maintain the fencing and other duties as they arise.

“Brahman and Boran are both Zebu type cattle that originated in India, and it’s hard to pick the difference between them when they’re together,” he says. “The Boran was introduced into Ethiopia maybe up to 2000 years ago. The Boran people selected them for milk production because they had high fertility capabilities.

“The CSIRO did cross-breeding trials with Boran in the 1986 and found they could improve herd growth by as much as 12-18 per cent. Generally, people in the industry don’t have a high regard for Boran – but people thought that about the Brahman too when the CSIRO brought them in for trials in the 1930s and it took 20 years for them to be accepted. Everyone thought at the time that you couldn’t do better than the British breeds. Well, people now know that the CSIRO was right – and I reckon they’re right with the Boran too. In two to three years time, there will be a lot of Boran cattle on Cave Creek and eventually throughout the Territory.

“The northern cattle industry has taken huge steps forward since I first got up here in 1964. The Brahman breed has been introduced, and cattlemen have discovered the value of supplementary feeding to make up for lack of nutrients in native pastures. Live export shipments have started and TB has been eradicated. The one main thing left for the industry to do is lift the fertility in the herds.”

Rohan and Jim are a generation apart and both visionaries in their own right. Jim has been a leader of industry groups and Rohan’s was recently elected President of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association, whose membership includes the owners of more than 90 per cent of the Territory’s two million-strong cattle herd. He also finds time civic duties as a Roper Gulf Shire councillor.

Father and son don’t always see eye to eye on techniques and future directions but they respect each other’s views and knowledge, gleaned from different working systems over different eras and environments. Rohan agrees that Cave Creek’s big strengths as a live export producer are its near guaranteed 800 mm of rain a year, its close proximity to Darwin’s export shipment facilities, and its capacity to grow well-rounded cattle suitable for this market.

“We have plenty of challenges too, a lot of which are the same as those experienced by other regional producers,” he says. “We’ve got low quality pastures which mean we have to pay to feed lick to the cattle all year round. Feeding lick is costly but we put up with it because we wouldn’t survive as a cattle business without it. Supplementary feeding was introduced during my time at Kidman Springs and the transformation in the herd there was nothing short of phenomenal. Within a month, the cattle were more robust and energetic and our annual mortality rate dropped from 12 per cent to below 4 per cent. Kidman’s weaning rates also went from 50 per cent up to 75 per cent in two years. It was enough to convince us to use licks when we bought Cave Creek.

“We also have a challenge in mustering on this country because it is fairly heavily timbered and very wet early in the year. Finding skilled labour is another big problem, not just for us but for most cattle stations around Australia. We take whatever labour resources we can find. We employ some locals from Mataranka and Jilkminggan (on Elsey Station) from time to time to help with fencing and other station jobs.”

Any labour shortages at mustering times are eased by an energetic team of home-grown helpers. Mustering at Cave Creek is specially scheduled to coincide with school holidays and most of the Sullivan kids can pitch in. They include Rosemary’s teenage twins Jem and Emilie, who board at Walla Walla near Albury NSW. Both love getting home in time to join the week-long muster and sleep out under the stars at ‘Paradise Camp’, about 20 km from the homesteads. Cave Creek stages two musters a year, one in June/July when helicopters and horses combine in the round-up and the other in October when the cattle can be trapped on water.

“It’s a very busy, exciting time and very special because the whole family can be together and involved in the muster in some way,” says Donal, 15. “It’s pretty full on from the time we get up till we crawl back in our swags at night. We’re always pushing ourselves to the limits. We wake up before sunrise to get dressed and have breakfast, and then we’re out on the horses in time to see the sun coming up through the trees.”

For sister Jess, 15, a favourite time during the muster is sitting around the stock camp fire at night sharing stories and a lot of laughter and fun with family and friends after a hard day out rounding up the cattle. “I love mustering time – but I like everything about being home for holidays. I love the freedom of not having to ask permission if I want to walk with my dog or go down to the river to spend time by myself. I miss it a lot when I’m not here. At the moment, I can’t see myself working on the station when I’ve finished school, but at the same time I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Donal, Jess and all other well-fed mustering crew members sing the praises of the stock camp cooks - Mum Sally, Grandmother Barbara, and Aunties Rosemary and Meredith, who all pitch in to cook up huge pots of stew, lasagne, spaghetti bolognaise and other hearty fare. It’s all a far cry from the bully beef and damper of bygone mustering days that still existed when Jim and Barbara arrived here in the 1960s.

“The cooks do an excellent job,” Donal says. “They make the best food, and they know everyone’s likes and dislikes so they cook special dishes if they know someone won’t like what’s on the menu on a particular night.”

The Sullivan women are a multi-skilled and resilient force behind the Cave Creek family venture. They come into their own as sustenance providers at muster time, but they’re capable of tackling almost any task that might rear up to meet them. Sally recently found herself in unfamiliar territory when faced a freshly killed beast that needed boning out after the men were suddenly called away on other urgent matters.

“I’d never boned out an animal before and I didn’t have a clue where to even begin,” she says. She did what any modern, resourceful woman would do. She googled ‘meat cuts’ and ‘home butchery’ the internet, and soon had all the cuts in separate bags, labelled with ‘top of leg’ and other layman’s names and safely stored in the freezer.

Barbara says she’s been blessed by wonderful, versatile children who put in a big effort to help where they can – and she reckons nobody could ask for a better daughter-in-law than Sally. “There’s absolutely nothing that she won’t try. She just amazing,” she says.

Barbara tags herself as the station’s background helper who’s always available to pop into town if something is needed urgently. She’s a former teacher and puts those skills to good use by helping out on a casual basis at the Mataranka school.

“My usual job is to keep up the fruit cakes and pickles and jams. I do a lot of the cooking, and a fair bit of childcare, though they’re all fairly independent and find plenty to amuse themselves down at the creek or around the station.”

With 45 years behind him as a Top End farmer, Jim Sullivan has been around long enough to have seen enormous advances in the northern cattle industry, and especially the live export sector which remains robust and destined for further growth, despite the global economic downturn.

Jim sums up his family’s success in developing and positioning Cave Creek as an integral player in this sector. “We came to the Northern Territory with the hope of getting into cattle production and with no real prospects of that happening, but by being realistic we have achieved it. That’s something we’re all very proud of.”

Source: Kerry Sharp, as published in 'OUTBACK Magazine' (Aug/Sept 2009)