Tell us a little about yourself:

We breed, grow and fatten cattle at “Womblebank,” west of Injune on the Great Dividing Range, with two other blocks at Hannaford and Moonie to grow out and fatten stock and produce some forage crops.
 

Why did you join the Rabo Client Council?

Sally – who plays an integral role in the chairmanship as well – and I joined in 2022 as a way to give back to the community. We saw it as something different, it was not so much really local to our area – as our Rabo Client Council covers a large area west of Thargomindah, to Gatton, and down to Goondiwindi – with more of a regional basis.

As a group, we identify where we can give support and where it is needed most, and it is a pretty good job as we are using Rabobank’s money to fund these initiatives…not ours!
 

What are some of the key initiatives your Rabo Client Council has been involved in:

Our group are passionate about supporting our educators in agriculture and this has seen us support the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) conference, when it was held in Toowoomba. And we are looking forward helping fund the travel and accommodation expenses for ten Queensland agricultural educators to attend the next conference in Shepparton.

A big one that the group came up with was the idea of supporting the Advancing Beef Leaders (ABL) Program. Initially supported by our Rabo Client Council, it is now through the Community Fund to help advance young Australians showing leadership potential in their industry, community and region.

We’re really enjoying our involvement with the LifeFlight First Minutes Matter Workshops. It is a really good down-to-earth first aid course focused on the first five minutes before the LifeFlight chopper gets to them or after an accident of an injured patient.

We are also one of the founding sponsors of the Great Australian Charity Cattle Drive, which is currently taking place. The cattle drive from Longreach to Roma helps raise funds for BeefBank, which supplies protein to Foodbank to provide food relief to those experiencing disadvantage in cities and regional towns.

Other initiatives include support to the Royal Flying Doctor Service for guiding lights on airstrips out west, so planes can land on bush strips at nighttime and pick up patients.

And our support for BlazeAid recently came from the Community Fund, to assist the flood victims out west by helping to construct and re-fence some country.  
 

What initiatives have had the most impact?

The LifeFlight Trauma Training Workshops are really popular and have great presenters who know how to connect well with people in the bush. It can be hard to get the males to turn up to some of these things, but they really jump into this one. Held in townships or out on stations, you often have the employees and the employers at the same workshop, learning together. We hosted one of these workshops here at home and it was really successful – with a full house of around 30 people.

Another very encouraging initiative has been our support of the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) conference, as anything we can do to support education of agriculture is just so vital.