‘I lost my phone in the first week’: a new generation of drovers in outback Queensland

It is 5am and a near-full moon is dropping to the western horizon; the land is dark and quiet. A generator rattles to life and artificial lights pierce the night. From horse floats and trucks emerge stockmen and women, snuggling into coats, collars raised against the settling frost.

The predawn light rolls in, revealing grasslands, scattered trees and penned steers. Steaming coffee is downed as horses are caught and saddled. More horses are released from a makeshift yard and they wander away slowly, pausing to pick at fresh grass. Dogs bark in anticipation.

The sun breaches the east; it is time to release the cattle. An electric fence is dropped and 2,000 steers make their way down a 100m-wide fenced corridor, with a sealed road down its centre.

This is the long paddock, and this is Bill Little's droving team, south of Roma, 475km west of Brisbane, in central Queensland .

Droving is the art of moving large mobs of livestock along stock routes, which are lands gazetted by state governments and administrated by local councils. For $0.30 a head each week, Little is granted permission to move his herd, which belongs to a company, a minimum of 8km a day between sunrise and sunset.

Little, 67, has been droving for 40 years. "When I was 26, I had cattle near Blackall [960km north-west of Brisbane] and it got dry, so I took them for a walk and I took other people's cattle to make it pay," he says.

He has not stopped walking.

Stock routes in Queensland cover 72,000km but they spider across the country, having formed with Australia's pastoral expansion. The Canning stock route in Western Australia, where Indigenous stockmen outnumbered their white counterparts, was renowned as the world's longest; the Murranji as one of the most deadly, with poisonous plants and scarce water.

The stock routes birthed legends. In 1879 Patrick and Michael Durack, of Kings in Grass Castles fame, moved 7,250 cattle from Thylungra in Queensland to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Two years later Nat Buchanon became famous for his record-breaking feat of droving 20,000 cattle 3,200km from southern Queensland to Glencore station in the Northern Territory.

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Little is the modern-day Buchanon. In 2013 he oversaw the Brinkworth drive, taking 20,000 cattle owned by South Australian pastoralist Tom Brinkworth from western Queensland to southern NSW, separating them into smaller mobs and employing contract drovers to assist. His favourite route is from Julia Creek to Roma in Queensland, where the feed is reliable and the route wide.

Droving began to fade from the Australian psyche in the 1950s as road transport became dominant. Then, Little says,"people realised the stock routes were still a valuable source of feed and graziers began using them as part of their management plan". That led to a droving renaissance in the 1980s.

These cattle, for example, will be on the road for four months and will then return home where a fodder crop will be waiting for them.

Droving remains an integral part of Australian agriculture and is attracting a new generation. Bill has experience on his team with Gene McAuliffe (53) and Dayle Little (60) – no relation to Bill but also employs horse-loving teenagers Riley Swanson (19), Kodee Judge (17) and Kate Staub (16).

Swanson grew up in urban areas and has no family connection to agriculture. "In Brisbane I enjoyed watching westerns with my Nanny and that first gave me the idea; droving became something I wanted to do," he says. "I love John Wayne."

He has the look down pat: leather belt slung low over his hips, wide-brimmed hat, stockwhip casually draped across his shoulder and a packet of tobacco in his shirt pocket. Astride a two-year-old, freshly broke quarter horse, he stops to roll a smoke.

"Life is simple out here. It's just you and your horse looking after cattle," Swanson says. "There's no stress and you're only thinking about the next watering point. It's beautiful country and it's good to see it from the back of a horse."

Staub left school at 15 and is a week into her first droving job. "I saw the job advertised on Facebook and thought it would be a good experience because Bill is well known as one of the best horsemen," she says. "Sometimes it's go, go, go and other times it is quiet and steady, but I'd hate to be trapped in an office."

By 9.30am the cattle are quietly grazing or making their way to the water truck and the girls break for breakfast, swatting at flies as they rest with their horses beneath the shade of a cypress pine.

They value every minute of sleep. "You've got to work out whether you want a comfy sleep in pyjamas or to piss Bill off by being late if you take extra time to change, so I usually sleep in my work clothes," Judge says.

"I lost my phone in the first week, but if people really want to know I'm alive they'll come and find me."

Little, who is often found on a motorbike these days as age encroaches, watches them closely. "These kids are used to partying all night and sleeping all day and I've got to turn their life around," he says. "I call it two-week-itis – after two weeks the gloss has worn off, their bums are [saddle] sore and they're missing home. That's when they work out if they really want to be here."

Staub clocks out at two weeks, but Swanson and Judge remain.

Little also watches for traffic. Stock routes follow public roads, and the team has signs warning oncoming vehicles of their presence. The signs give the cattle right of way and should a vehicle hit one, the driver is liable for payment. But with the mob worth $2m, it pays to be cautious.

As the sun arcs towards the west, an electric fence is once more erected and the team push the steers into their nightly camp. There are horses to be contained, dogs and people to be fed, short showers to be cherished. Life on the long paddock continues, its future guaranteed by the experience of drovers such as Little and the enthusiasm of youth. "I love it, I really do," Judge says.