Neroli Brennan: This is Seeds for Success, a show where we have
Neroli Brennan: a good yarn about ag life, with producers who are
Neroli Brennan: having a go. On this show, you'll hear from farmers in
Neroli Brennan: New South Wales who are out there battling the elements, making tough calls,
Neroli Brennan: and getting the job done. You'll get a laugh out
Neroli Brennan: of some of their stories and also pick up some
Neroli Brennan: knowhow along the way. I'm your host, Neroli Brennan. In
Neroli Brennan: this week's episode, we're chatting with Brad and Beck Hurley.
Neroli Brennan: Brad and Beck own and run 22, 000 acres across their properties,
Neroli Brennan: Eremeran and Kalabra, a hundred kilometers northwest of Condobolin. In
Neroli Brennan: this episode, Brad and Beck explain how living through the
Neroli Brennan: millennium drought help them to shift their focus and their
Neroli Brennan: approach to farming in their low rainfall zone. They've moved
Neroli Brennan: away from their more traditional cropping and Merino sheep to
Neroli Brennan: beef cattle, utilizing Speckle Park bulls, running White Dorpers, as
Neroli Brennan: well as embracing the benefits of miniature donkeys to protect
Neroli Brennan: the lambing mob and keep foxes and pigs at bay.
Neroli Brennan: They also share how the construction of exclusion fencing in
Neroli Brennan: a collaboration with their neighbors has benefited their farm business.
Neroli Brennan: You'll also hear this energetic and fun- loving couple make
Neroli Brennan: community a big part of their life with weekend sport
Neroli Brennan: a priority in their weekly schedule. And if they're not
Neroli Brennan: busy enough on farm, Brad's also expanded into a business
Neroli Brennan: repurposing old wares such as silver spoons into cherished pieces
Neroli Brennan: of jewelry for family and friends. Local Land Services Natural
Neroli Brennan: Resources Officer Jasmine Wells sat down with Beck and Brad
Neroli Brennan: at the family table to share some delicious baked goods
Neroli Brennan: and this great chat.
Jasmine Wells: I'm out at Kalabra, 100 Ks northwest of Condo, so the
Jasmine Wells: first time I came out I thought I was headed
Jasmine Wells: to some pretty rough goat country, but it's beautiful out here, guys.
Jasmine Wells: Thank you so much for having me.
Beck Hurley: Oh, we love having you come and visit. We have
Beck Hurley: a lot of people come and visit.
Jasmine Wells: And I can see why.
Brad Hurley: Yeah.
Jasmine Wells: So Brad and Beck own two properties, Eremeran.
Brad Hurley: Yes, well done.
Jasmine Wells: And Kalabra. And so Eremeran is a village in itself really,
Jasmine Wells: or was?
Beck Hurley: Yes. No, it's an amazing spot and I wish we
Beck Hurley: could do something with it. It was settled in 1863
Beck Hurley: and changed hands a few times with wars and what
Beck Hurley: have you, but majority of the time it was run
Beck Hurley: by Goldsborough Mort. The homestead's still standing and a stone
Beck Hurley: cottage and the general store post office is in pretty good
Beck Hurley: nick. Shearing huts...
Brad Hurley: Just to 80- odd stand wool shed. Just to imagine
Brad Hurley: how many people were running around there at shearing time.
Brad Hurley: I can't imagine it because you go over there now
Brad Hurley: and there's nobody. Call it progress, but there were hundreds
Brad Hurley: of people on this property a hundred years ago, now
Brad Hurley: there's two of us.
Jasmine Wells: And how big are the properties?
Beck Hurley: Eremeran originally was 400,000 acres.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah. Wow. And what have you got there now?
Beck Hurley: That holding is 6,000, the house block.
Brad Hurley: They split it up in the seventies and dad tended
Brad Hurley: for it and we won the house block. And then
Brad Hurley: we bought the paddock in between when the neighbors sold
Brad Hurley: up a few years later. So that joined us up to Kalabra.
Brad Hurley: So now it's all one.
Beck Hurley: It's an L- shape.
Brad Hurley: Yeah.
Jasmine Wells: And how big is this place here?
Brad Hurley: All up now, it's 22,000 acres.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah. And it's just the two of you here running
Jasmine Wells: all of that?
Beck Hurley: Yes, it's just the two of us. I don't know
Beck Hurley: what the kids will end up doing, but hopefully we'll
Beck Hurley: be able to bat on for a while until they
Beck Hurley: decide what they want to do.
Brad Hurley: But we've tailored things so that the two of us
Brad Hurley: can run the place.
Jasmine Wells: You both talked about, it did seem very much boom
Jasmine Wells: and bust once upon a time and you had a
Jasmine Wells: bit of an epiphany and a change of the way
Jasmine Wells: you do things like...
Beck Hurley: Millennium drought.
Jasmine Wells: ... what caused the change, probably?
Brad Hurley: Yeah, well I've been here 40 odd years since I left boarding school now,
Brad Hurley: and I've seen things come and go. You tend to
Brad Hurley: learn from your mistakes, but I think we always used
Brad Hurley: to try and run maximum stock and then if it
Brad Hurley: doesn't rain for six months, all of a sudden you're
Brad Hurley: well and truly into a drought and then you're feeding
Brad Hurley: and then it rains again and it was a boom
Brad Hurley: or bust cycle that we're just trying to eliminate that
Brad Hurley: by getting our stocking rates right, and trying to be
Brad Hurley: a bit conservative. There were a lot of years where
Brad Hurley: you could make more money, but you know what's around
Brad Hurley: the corner so you stick to your conservative rates and
Brad Hurley: see what happens.
Jasmine Wells: So you were wheat, sheep?
Brad Hurley: Yes. Well, everyone was.
Beck Hurley: Yeah, that's changed a lot.
Brad Hurley: Fifties, sixties, seventies, that's all there was. It was wheat and sheep and-
Beck Hurley: Your dad's always had cattle.
Brad Hurley: Dad loved cattle. There was no cattle in the district,
Brad Hurley: really, back in the fifties and sixties. My dad got
Brad Hurley: into cattle in the fifties and I'm glad he did,
Brad Hurley: but it was mainly wheat and sheep.
Beck Hurley: So that line of cattle is still going.
Brad Hurley: Oh, wow.
Beck Hurley: Yeah, it's the same line.
Brad Hurley: Sheep are also boom or bust with your wool prices,
Brad Hurley: et cetera. Back in the fifties, the wool boom, a
Brad Hurley: lot of damage was done to this country from everybody
Brad Hurley: running maximum sheep. So they flogged the country out because
Brad Hurley: of the wool boom. They wanted to run as many
Brad Hurley: as possible, but they flogged the country out and that's
Brad Hurley: when a lot of woody weeds took over. It didn't
Brad Hurley: have the competition from grass, basically.
Beck Hurley: And there were rabbits, as well.
Brad Hurley: When they had the big wet and then a lot of woody
Brad Hurley: weeds took over. And I think even Cobar was open
Brad Hurley: grazing country before that time.
Jasmine Wells: And even now, you guys are still battling woody weeds, that's one of your biggest concerns.
Brad Hurley: Yes. Every time we get a couple of wet years, the woody weeds shoot up, which is the rabbits used to chew
Brad Hurley: the top off them back in the day. They used
Brad Hurley: to help with the woody weeds, but now they're gone.
Beck Hurley: There's no more rabbits.
Brad Hurley: No, I'm glad they're gone.
Beck Hurley: It's unreal.
Brad Hurley: Back to the wheat and sheep. It was in the late nineties, whether it
Brad Hurley: was boom or bust, something had to give, something had to
Brad Hurley: change. So sort of thought, why are we growing wheat and
Brad Hurley: running sheep? And it was because dad did. I think
Brad Hurley: a lot of sons come home and they do what dad
Brad Hurley: did because dad probably doesn't let them change. Yeah, my
Brad Hurley: father died when I was 21, so I sort of had to learn
Brad Hurley: a lot, or Beck and I had to learn a
Brad Hurley: lot as we went along. But I think the not
Brad Hurley: growing wheat and getting rid of Merinos were two of
Brad Hurley: the greatest things we ever did. I think we're just
Brad Hurley: a bit far northwest of anywhere to grow wheat.
Beck Hurley: And to be fair, we don't like mechanics, like doing mechanical
Beck Hurley: things. We're not very mechanically minded.
Jasmine Wells: I think you either have to love sitting there on
Jasmine Wells: a machine and playing with spanners.
Beck Hurley: It's the maintenance part we're not good at.
Brad Hurley: So 2000, there was an alternate meat breeds seminar at Broken
Brad Hurley: Hill, so a few in the district. We jumped on
Brad Hurley: a train and went on a train trip to Broken
Brad Hurley: Hill and we were introduced to Damaras and Dorpers and Dohnes and
Brad Hurley: all sorts of different breeds up there that we thought
Brad Hurley: could be a new direction to go. So we came
Brad Hurley: home and bought some Damaras, put them over the Merinos and we got
Brad Hurley: the first cross. That's how we got started there. And then after
Brad Hurley: a couple of years we had $ 23 of ram lamb
Brad Hurley: live export and that was big money back then. A
Brad Hurley: couple of months of age, put them on a boat.
Brad Hurley: It was good for a while, but then the buyers
Brad Hurley: in the sail yards sort of turned off Damaras a
Brad Hurley: bit. So we switched to Dorpers, which was great. So that was best
Brad Hurley: thing we ever did, I think. So we stopped growing
Brad Hurley: wheat and started running Dorpers and the cattle and that was a turning point. And then we went into
Brad Hurley: a 10- year drought.
Jasmine Wells: And how'd you get through that? That's when you started
Jasmine Wells: changing numbers and how you actually... You'd already changed your
Jasmine Wells: enterprise, but then you changed how you organized the enterprise.
Brad Hurley: Changing enterprise and then by chance-
Beck Hurley: We'd had three, two wet years, '98, '99, 2000, three wet years,
Beck Hurley: a bit similar to what we've had. And then boom,
Beck Hurley: the drought came and we thought we had a lot
Beck Hurley: of water and the dams were full of silt really,
Beck Hurley: weren't they? So we ran out of water, which was
Beck Hurley: a bit of a debacle. We scraped through.
Brad Hurley: So the neighbors, we got new neighbors when that drought started and they had to
Brad Hurley: sell their stock and they were going to buy new stock when
Brad Hurley: they moved here, but then all the drought was here
Brad Hurley: so they didn't bother. But I was watching, they had
Brad Hurley: grass next door and we were bare dirt. They had their butts
Brad Hurley: still sitting there, the butt grass. And we'd get 40
Brad Hurley: points of rain and they'd get a bit of green
Brad Hurley: pick. We'd get 40 points of rain next door over
Brad Hurley: the fence and we'd get a green pick, but then
Brad Hurley: it'd die three weeks later. But theirs was still there.
Brad Hurley: And then we'd get another 30 points and their green
Brad Hurley: pick would grow a bit more. And mine would start
Brad Hurley: again. It was good to watch because it was right
Brad Hurley: on the boundary. We had a road up the fence
Brad Hurley: and I just watched what was happening there with their ground
Brad Hurley: cover. Anyway, it's not rocket science, but we were boom or
Brad Hurley: bust running capacity all the time. So yeah, I thought if we can
Brad Hurley: try and maintain that ground cover because out here a
Brad Hurley: lot of time you only get 30 or 40 points and you've got to
Brad Hurley: try and do as much as you can with it.
Brad Hurley: Once the drought finished and we got our grass back, we've sort
Brad Hurley: of kept it ever since, until the big droughts.
Beck Hurley: Yeah, 2019 there was not much anyone could do about
Beck Hurley: that one.
Brad Hurley: No, true.
Beck Hurley: It was a bit ugly.
Brad Hurley: That was a learning curve. And so now we try and maintain our ground
Brad Hurley: cover as much as possible.
Jasmine Wells: And I think you probably don't give yourselves enough credit
Jasmine Wells: there. There's a real skill in looking over the fence
Jasmine Wells: and realizing that maybe what you've done isn't right and
Jasmine Wells: someone else has just done it a bit better. And then learning
Jasmine Wells: from that and committing to that I think is a
Jasmine Wells: huge thing.
Beck Hurley: I think being open to change.
Jasmine Wells: And likewise for learning, seeing someone else do something wrong.
Brad Hurley: So Peter Andrews' books we read about the same time
Brad Hurley: and that was, I think every farming kid that leaves
Brad Hurley: boarding school should have to read those books as soon as he
Brad Hurley: gets home.
Beck Hurley: Just a different perspective on what is normally drummed into
Beck Hurley: kids. Even, I'm sure, agriculture hasn't changed at school since
Beck Hurley: we did it and they just need to bring in a
Beck Hurley: few different theories.
Brad Hurley: There's reasons why things happen. Anyway, that's what I learned,
Brad Hurley: that not all weeds are bad. They're our friend a
Brad Hurley: lot of the time.
Beck Hurley: Slow the water down.
Brad Hurley: That was another good learning curve. So that's where we're at. And then we
Brad Hurley: got through the drought and since then I think we've
Brad Hurley: done pretty darn good.
Jasmine Wells: And speaking of slowing water, you've got some water spreading in?
Brad Hurley: Water spreading banks. Yeah, we're cleared a paddock and we've
Brad Hurley: got some water spreading banks and now we're trialing all
Brad Hurley: different pastures. We're having a bit of fun with what
Brad Hurley: works and what doesn't out here, so we're not talking big
Brad Hurley: acres. They're sort of 30, 40 acre plots at the biggest.
Brad Hurley: And now we're just having fun trialing all different pastures
Brad Hurley: and try and get a smorgasbord. We're very big on
Brad Hurley: the native grasses and if we can maintain them and then
Brad Hurley: have a little lolly here and there for the stock,
Brad Hurley: that's the plan.
Jasmine Wells: That's a good plan. They all seem pretty happy. And you're
Jasmine Wells: not just running cattle and Dorpers, you're running some mini
Jasmine Wells: donkeys too, who have their own Instagram pages.
Brad Hurley: So another learning curve. Years ago I split our Dorpers
Brad Hurley: into age groups to lamb. And I had them in
Brad Hurley: different paddocks obviously. And then it came to land marking, the
Brad Hurley: paddocks, as you went, each paddock further away from the
Brad Hurley: house, the lambing percentage dropped about 10%, so had to
Brad Hurley: be foxes or pigs and we can't leave them all
Brad Hurley: around the house. So neighbor had some donkeys that we
Brad Hurley: read about the donkeys that that's technically why we got
Brad Hurley: them, to chase the pigs and the foxes that are in my house.
Beck Hurley: Have we really done that?
Brad Hurley: They're here purely for my enjoyment. No, they're-
Beck Hurley: They're about to go out again.
Brad Hurley: So then we've had a couple of drought years and a
Brad Hurley: couple of wet years. So lambing percentages, we sort of
Brad Hurley: haven't had a true indication, but we're back to normal
Brad Hurley: this year, so we'll put the donkeys back in at
Brad Hurley: lambing time and we'll see what happens this year.
Beck Hurley: Up to seven, nearly eight.
Brad Hurley: Eight. I've got one on the way.
Beck Hurley: Tanya is-
Brad Hurley: Tanya's about to have a baby. So yeah, so I've got nearly
Brad Hurley: got eight donkeys.
Jasmine Wells: So is the plan to keep them or will you
Jasmine Wells: start actually trading?
Brad Hurley: Depends on who you ask. If you ask me, I want 100, if
Brad Hurley: you ask Beck, I've got to start selling them.
Beck Hurley: Pretty soon.
Jasmine Wells: How do they work? Do you put one out on its
Jasmine Wells: own per mob or they go as a pair or-
Brad Hurley: If you put a pair they play with each other. I've got to put one out and if you put one out there, they'll adopt the herd,
Brad Hurley: hang with them and God help any fox that tries
Brad Hurley: to get a lamb.
Jasmine Wells: So you've seen them in action?
Brad Hurley: I've seen them staunch a neighbor's dog. A dog they
Brad Hurley: don't know, they'll just want to-
Beck Hurley: They sort of barrel things. Bill, our son, saw Glen
Beck Hurley: take after a pig and they sort of drive their chest into the pig.
Brad Hurley: We all would've assumed that they kick it.
Beck Hurley: Yeah, we just assumed they kick.
Brad Hurley: They don't, they use their chest, they drop their legs back and they drive their chest into them and squash them,
Beck Hurley: And bite. Yeah, they go for the neck, sort of thing.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah, they seem so lovely and friendly.
Beck Hurley: Yeah.
Brad Hurley: Well they are, yeah. But if a foreign dog walks up, they just pin the ears back and
Brad Hurley: just want to take a piece out of it.
Jasmine Wells: They're miniature donkeys, aren't they? Why miniature as opposed to-
Brad Hurley: Because that's what my neighbor had.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah. Okay. And they're cuter.
Brad Hurley: And they're cuter. Yeah. So there's dwarf, they're the next ones down. They're as
Brad Hurley: big as a dog. So there's donkeys...
Jasmine Wells: Is that on the cards?
Brad Hurley: ... then miniature then dwarf.
Beck Hurley: I was pretty quick to say that, wasn't I?
Jasmine Wells: There was no doubt about it.
Brad Hurley: Are we allowed to have any? No. Little donkey. So yeah, hopefully we'll have a normal
Brad Hurley: year this year and we can put them out. Yeah,
Brad Hurley: so one with each mob.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah. Okay.
Brad Hurley: We'll see what happens.
Jasmine Wells: And then the other thing, we're jumping all over the
Jasmine Wells: place in this podcast, but there's just so many cool
Jasmine Wells: things out there, your exclusion fences. Let's talk about how
Jasmine Wells: that design came around.
Brad Hurley: Well, we're only a part of a group. We're just lucky enough that it
Brad Hurley: came our direction I guess. But a couple of blokes
Brad Hurley: got together that had been up north and decided to
Brad Hurley: try and get funding for one here, which they did,
Brad Hurley: which was good. So it's 230 kilometers in a circle.
Brad Hurley: There's about 23 properties in it, a quarter of a
Brad Hurley: million acres nearly.
Beck Hurley: And then you got a brainwave to do your own.
Jasmine Wells: Was that with Western LLS? Is that right? Are you part of that same fence?
Beck Hurley: Yes. Everyone's in Western.
Jasmine Wells: But your fences here are a different design to what I've seen.
Brad Hurley: So they added up to be quite expensive, the exclusion fence.
Brad Hurley: So it was like six or $ 7, 000 a kilometer.
Brad Hurley: So we had a problem along the main road here.
Brad Hurley: So I thought if I could build it, try and
Brad Hurley: emulate it a bit cheaper. So we built a two-
Brad Hurley: foot bank and then put a four- foot fence on
Brad Hurley: top of that. So effectively when you're standing back you've
Brad Hurley: got a six- foot fence for half price.
Jasmine Wells: And it's also got a dip from where you've built that fence up as well. So
Jasmine Wells: the roos are sort of jumping from a lower-
Brad Hurley: Yeah, where they take their spot is down lower. And it worked. I sat up on the ridge and
Brad Hurley: I could see for a kilometer. I watched a roo.
Brad Hurley: A roo won't jump a fence unless it's chased. They
Brad Hurley: prefer to push under. Left alone in the wild, they'll
Brad Hurley: just slowly walk up to a fence and try and
Brad Hurley: push under it. So I just sat up there and a
Brad Hurley: couple of roos luckily hopped over to the new fence
Brad Hurley: and they tried to push under it and I've seen
Brad Hurley: roos running at it, being chased, and they get 30 meters
Brad Hurley: from it and start veering thinking I can't jump that. Yeah. So
Brad Hurley: they just started veering and run along it.
Jasmine Wells: So visually it deters them. Choose a different path.
Beck Hurley: The pigs made a horrendous pad too. They couldn't get
Beck Hurley: through it either.
Brad Hurley: Up and down. Yeah.
Jasmine Wells: Is there a skirt? Have you got an apron?
Brad Hurley: No, just got a big barb on the bottom laying on the ground. It's laying on
Brad Hurley: top of the bank. It'll rust but not in my time.
Jasmine Wells: So financially-
Brad Hurley: It was half price. Yeah, just as effective, I believe.
Jasmine Wells: In amongst all of this, you had three kids going through
Jasmine Wells: School of the Air?
Beck Hurley: Yes.
Brad Hurley: Did we?
Beck Hurley: That's a blur, man.
Brad Hurley: Yes, three kids through distance ed.
Beck Hurley: Yeah, 13 years doing that. Shannon, Bill and Tash all
Beck Hurley: did school at home until year seven and then they went
Beck Hurley: to boarding school. So through Dubbo distance ed, that was their call sign.
Brad Hurley: "Shannon Kalabra over." And then they progressed to computers and then it was Zoom with the teacher. So it did progress along
Brad Hurley: the way. But yeah, neither of us were school teachers.
Brad Hurley: I ended up being the art teacher and Beck was the rest.
Beck Hurley: What did they call you? Mr. Duck Bean. The kids called
Beck Hurley: him Mr. Duck Bean.
Brad Hurley: The art teacher. Yeah. So that was different.
Beck Hurley: Yeah, that was a busy time of life actually because most of it was during that millennium
Beck Hurley: drought. So the kids, a lot of time doing school
Beck Hurley: themselves. So they're very independent learners, the three of them.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah.
Beck Hurley: Good kids.
Jasmine Wells: I can't relate to it but often, and you shouldn't
Jasmine Wells: judge, everyone's situation's different, but you often hear people how
Jasmine Wells: busy they are. And then I think of people like you
Jasmine Wells: guys like running all this country, keeping stock alive, keeping
Jasmine Wells: kids alive and educating them, hundred Ks from town. And
Jasmine Wells: also very active in the community as well.
Beck Hurley: Yes.
Brad Hurley: Well no, God, no wonder I'm tired.
Beck Hurley: No, it's a cycle. Definitely. There's good times, there's bad
Beck Hurley: times. But I think the thing as you get older
Beck Hurley: you realize that the bad times don't last forever. Yeah.
Beck Hurley: I think that's one thing that gets easier to accept
Beck Hurley: as you get older, you think-
Brad Hurley: Keep looking forward.
Beck Hurley: In 2018 and '19, we were thinking, oh gosh, is it going
Beck Hurley: to go on for 10 years again? But you just
Beck Hurley: keep positive. I think that's probably important with all aspects
Beck Hurley: of life, not just farming.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Hurley: But it's easier. We haven't got the costs. We're breeding everything. The outlay
Brad Hurley: isn't there. It's not as big a risk, I don't
Brad Hurley: think. We've just got to turn strike, keep the stock alive.
Brad Hurley: But we've done a lot of, all the fences are
Brad Hurley: new in the last 20 years. It's all the infrastructure's
Brad Hurley: sitting there now. So it's just-
Beck Hurley: I'd like a few more fences.
Brad Hurley: Yeah, we're doing a few more. So we're doing that. Yeah, we're splitting paddocks down, we're trying to make life easier.
Beck Hurley: I'm sick of the big paddocks.
Brad Hurley: Yeah. So that's our next project. We're-
Beck Hurley: Split a few.
Brad Hurley: Put more sets of yards around so we're not mustering
Brad Hurley: all day, we're just trying to make it easier because we're getting older.
Jasmine Wells: I'm close behind you, don't worry.
Brad Hurley: So that's the plan, try and make it a bit easier for a couple of oldies to be stock people.
Jasmine Wells: So you had really good percentages this year too, you
Jasmine Wells: were saying. So you're putting, we were talking about that
Jasmine Wells: earlier, Speckle Park bulls over your heifers.
Beck Hurley: Oh yeah, the heifers were good. Yeah.
Brad Hurley: Yeah. So we've just, we've had Herefords for 70 odd years.
Jasmine Wells: The same line too, is that right?
Brad Hurley: Yes, yes. Been breeders since then. We're just trying to
Brad Hurley: make carving easier. We're trying to reduce all the labor-
Brad Hurley: intensive stuff. So we bought some Speckle Park bulls to
Brad Hurley: put over the heifers and everything will be... Expendable?
Beck Hurley: Terminal.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah, terminal.
Brad Hurley: Terminal. That's the one. So everything will be terminal out of a Speckle. I'm a bit
Brad Hurley: anal when it comes to looking at my stock. I
Brad Hurley: hate things with black spots or white spots or they're not Hereford-looking...
Jasmine Wells: Nice and neat.
Brad Hurley: ... they really grate me.
Jasmine Wells: But they serve a purpose.
Brad Hurley: Yes.
Beck Hurley: Yes. No, the heifers just spit them out.
Brad Hurley: Everything that we turn, yeah. So out of this year's hundred heifers, we
Brad Hurley: had 96 in calf. So we'll see what happens there.
Jasmine Wells: So that's this year you started doing that?
Brad Hurley: No, last year we started. Yeah. So this should be the second.
Beck Hurley: So they're few on the ground now. Yeah.
Brad Hurley: Yeah, the bulls were a bit young last year. We
Brad Hurley: didn't get the proper percentage but they worked well this year. So we'll see what happens there.
Jasmine Wells: And then-
Beck Hurley: Yes, it's fun. We love our cattle.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah, just not nice, neat tidy Herefords.
Brad Hurley: I hate a Dorper with a black spot, even. That's why I don't have blackhead Dorpers.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah.
Brad Hurley: Just the white ones.
Jasmine Wells: And then just to jump around a little bit more,
Jasmine Wells: we didn't talk about Good Going Out Cutlery.
Brad Hurley: The artist within.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah. So how did that come about?
Brad Hurley: Well every now and then I get a fad. I
Brad Hurley: was down in Tasmania and there was a bloke down
Brad Hurley: there making rings out of spoons, teaspoons. And I was
Brad Hurley: going to buy one for my wife and my two
Brad Hurley: daughters and I chose them and I was walking up
Brad Hurley: to the counter and I thought, ah, I could make these. I went
Brad Hurley: and put them back on the shelf and I went to
Brad Hurley: a secondhand shop and bought some spoons and came home
Brad Hurley: and started making Good Going Out Cutlery. So I had a bit of fun
Brad Hurley: with that, but if I can't do it in a
Brad Hurley: couple of minutes, I lose interest. So I never take
Brad Hurley: on big arty things if I'm... I could never do
Brad Hurley: a sculpture for 10,000 hours or anything. But anyway, so
Brad Hurley: yeah, I started bending spoons and-
Beck Hurley: You had a lot of fun with it.
Brad Hurley: Especially with my marketing girl.
Beck Hurley: Tash helped you with your website.
Jasmine Wells: I just love that. I know family here, they had
Jasmine Wells: some cutlery from their family and they gave that to
Jasmine Wells: you and I actually got one of those rings from
Jasmine Wells: the Neils and I just think it's beautiful. That was Esme's
Jasmine Wells: good cutlery and now it's the girl's Good Going Out Cutlery.
Brad Hurley: And I know it will get used.
Jasmine Wells: That's right.
Brad Hurley: There was another lady that's-
Beck Hurley: Had a few families do it. It's a great concept.
Brad Hurley: Yeah. Another lady bought some teaspoons in Germany when she
Brad Hurley: was there when she was 20 or something and they've been in the drawer ever since. So
Brad Hurley: she sent them to me and I made six rings
Brad Hurley: for her six granddaughters.
Jasmine Wells: That's so sweet.
Brad Hurley: All different styles. That was, yeah, I liked doing stuff
Brad Hurley: like that. That's got a good purpose.
Jasmine Wells: And it's really, I guess you do all styles, but
Jasmine Wells: what I've seen, I guess the word would be quite contemporary.
Jasmine Wells: It's really cool stuff. It's not nothing boring about that.
Beck Hurley: The ones with the forks, so the little cocktail forks are pretty groovy.
Beck Hurley: They're a bit different, aren't they?
Brad Hurley: Yeah, no two are the same is my motto at
Brad Hurley: the start.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah, I think you've achieved that.
Brad Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. And they're quick to do so I don't lose interest.
Jasmine Wells: So you can stick to it.
Brad Hurley: Yeah, so that's a bit of fun.
Jasmine Wells: So what's on for the future? What are the plans?
Jasmine Wells: Making things easier?
Beck Hurley: Yeah, a few more fences, divide a few paddocks up,
Beck Hurley: a few more dams.
Brad Hurley: More dams, more fences, more pasture.
Jasmine Wells: Are you finding with more ground cover you're having to
Jasmine Wells: watch the water more? You're not getting as much water in dams?
Brad Hurley: Well luckily we're still getting the big rains. We've got
Brad Hurley: quite slope- y country, so it's a good catch. If
Brad Hurley: we're on flatter country, I'd be very wary. I've heard
Brad Hurley: of blokes, they maintain their ground cover and all of a sudden they never run
Brad Hurley: water anymore. We're luckier that way. We've got a lot of ridges
Brad Hurley: and good catches. So good heavy inch of rain will
Brad Hurley: do go a long way to filling most dams. So
Brad Hurley: it's not hard to get that every now and then.
Brad Hurley: So no, we're lucky that way.
Beck Hurley: It's like a block full at the moment, that's for sure.
Brad Hurley: Yeah.
Jasmine Wells: It's beautiful.
Brad Hurley: That's not a negative. Biggest negative, it will be one
Brad Hurley: hell of a bushfire when it comes through. I mean
Brad Hurley: that could just change everything because we've got so much
Brad Hurley: ground cover. Funny, the old days they would burn the
Brad Hurley: rank grass because nothing you needed. That was a mentality.
Brad Hurley: Oh, you got to burn that and you get the
Brad Hurley: green pick. Yeah, well you get the green pick and
Brad Hurley: then it turns 40 degrees and then you've got nothing
Brad Hurley: again. And then that was back to that cycle of you
Brad Hurley: never want bare ground out here because you're not guaranteed
Brad Hurley: the rain to replace it. So we are keeping all
Brad Hurley: the dry rank grass now, but gee, everything's still growing
Brad Hurley: underneath it. I think that old mentality's very wrong. Plus
Brad Hurley: you've got the competition, the galvanized burr and all those
Brad Hurley: sorts of things just don't grow when you've got so
Brad Hurley: much ground cover.
Jasmine Wells: Yeah, well they're those early colonizing plants, aren't they?
Brad Hurley: Yeah.
Jasmine Wells: They're the ones that it's hard to look at because
Jasmine Wells: you have to leave them there because they're doing a job.
Brad Hurley: After a drought, they're the first things to grow. But then once your
Brad Hurley: grass takes over again they die out and then they don't come back. I think
Brad Hurley: it's a great cycle of the galvanized burr. This country used to be flogged
Brad Hurley: out with rabbits and sheep and covered in gal burr,
Brad Hurley: now you're lucky to find a gal burr once the
Brad Hurley: grass is established. So that's a good change.
Jasmine Wells: So more time for more golf.
Brad Hurley: Now the kids are all educated.
Beck Hurley: All independent.
Brad Hurley: All independent. We play golf on Saturdays.
Beck Hurley: And they'll say that that you played golf the whole
Beck Hurley: time through their childhood.
Brad Hurley: Yeah, I played sport on Saturday.
Beck Hurley: We all played sport Saturday.
Brad Hurley: We all played sport. You've got to get off the farm and do
Brad Hurley: something one day a week.
Beck Hurley: That was our church, wasn't it?
Jasmine Wells: I love that because it is 100 Ks. Fair chunk of
Jasmine Wells: it's dirt or gravel.
Beck Hurley: Yeah, nearly half.
Jasmine Wells: But it's nothing for you guys to just, I see
Jasmine Wells: you at the race meetings and you are 100 Ks from town, but you are
Jasmine Wells: so involved in the community still.
Beck Hurley: Yes, and we've always been like that.
Brad Hurley: Yeah.
Beck Hurley: Brad's been captain of the golf club now for a
Beck Hurley: few years, which is pretty hectic. It's a big job,
Beck Hurley: but you love it.
Brad Hurley: Well. They say to be a good captain, you've got to have a lovely wife.
Jasmine Wells: Then you should be the best captain.
Brad Hurley: I'm sure of that.
Jasmine Wells: Well, thank you both so much for your time today.
Brad Hurley: No worries. Thanks, Jas.
Beck Hurley: It's been a pleasure.
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