Big country

With a tiny team, the Weir family is running a highly efficient 12,500sq km beef operation in Central Australia across 5 connected stations.

Story + Photos Ken Eastwood

It’s bitterly cold on Ammaroo station in Central Australia and the slightest breeze feels like a blast from a meatworks freezer. Even the poddy calves have been given dog coats to keep them warm, and the Weir family has scrounged around for the warmest jackets. When the sun peeks over the edge of the 12,500sq km of connected stations leased and run by the family, it gilds the gidgee and ghost gums, and highlights the arrival of the supply truck, with its once-a-week drop off of everything from cans to car tyres, to restock the station and the store they run for locals.

In the yards, 24-year-old Will Weir is loading a few of his stud Brahman and some of the station’s stud Santa Gertrudis to take them into the Alice Springs Show. “He was in the yards from about 2 weeks old,” his mum Anna says. “He can read cattle really well – he’s a natural. And he has a really good memory for cattle. He’ll say, ‘We caught that heifer a couple of years ago at Derry Downs’.”

But even Will can’t keep track of all the cattle across this vast desert empire, situated on the Sandover Highway some 320km north-east of Alice. Stewart doesn’t like to talk about numbers but acknowledges that 25,000 head is a “reasonable” figure for the cattle spread across Sandover Pastoral Company’s Ammaroo, Derry Downs, Arapunya, Old MacDonald Downs and Dneiper. North to south it’s more than 200km from one end of the combined properties to the other. “I think Central Australia is the best place to run cattle in Australia – you can run every breed, and you can run from weaners to steers to bullocks, and your costs aren’t that high,” Stewart says. “It’ll fatten anything this country. John Hagan [an NT cattleman] used to say, ‘The Barklys will run a lot of cattle, but Alice Spring will fatten a yard post.’ You could run 50,000 here in a good season. When it’s good you can go hard. But when it’s not, you rein it in.”

Through a station development program that focuses on efficiencies, such as using permanent cattle traps on waters (rather than mustering), this entire operation is run by the 3 Weirs with just a few additional staff. With a reputation for high-quality, heavy bullocks (600kg plus), the Weirs truck thousands of cattle out to the Townsville meatworks (1600km away), Naracoorte, SA (2000km away) and the Darwin port (1200km away), where they are exported primarily to Vietnam for the heavy slaughter market.