Page 90 - Hereford Magazine 2021

From Central Desert Shire

to Central Otago

Mt Riddock Station doesn’t need a lot of rain to see good grass growth; it just needs it at the right time.

ork continued as normal for many Northern
Territory farmers in the wake of the initial
Covid-19 lockdowns, just as it did in New
Zealand.
W “We thankfully live in a very isolated part
of Australia and I almost feel as though I was in training for
this pandemic for the past 20 years, as I home-schooled all my
children till they went to boarding school,” Bec Cadzow said in an
email after returning home from the World Hereford Conference.
“All the girls are now home and we have been loving having
them around and enjoying no social outings; it has been pure
bliss here in our bubble, and business as usual with the cows.”
Bec and Steve Cadzow from Mt Riddock Station, along with
their head stockman Abbro Woolnough and his partner Fran
Cooper, attended the five days of the WHC in Queenstown and
Wanaka, returning home with no illness (or Covid-19 tests).
“We went into isolation when we got home and then it was Only 50mm of rain fell on Mt Riddock station in 2019.
business as usual, although we did have to get an exemption
for our stock truck to cross the border [with South Australia]
and get a Covid test every seven days,” Steve says.
Mt Riddock Station is north of Alice Springs, about 200km
by road travelling east to the Stewart Highway then south to
the city. It’s in the Central Desert Shire, which runs from the
Western Australian border to the Queensland border. The
Harts Range runs east to west on the station, which rises to
460m above sea level.
The station itself is 2700 square kilometres – or 270,000ha –
in a long, narrow block, with a distance of 150km from corner
to corner. Due to dingo attacks on sheep, it has carried only
cattle for more than 70 years, although the dingoes can also
kill young calves.
It carries a 100% Hereford commercial herd, previously a
registered stud. Between 10 and 15 bulls are bought each year
from Andrew Mackay’s Merawah stud in New South Wales, and The Harts Range, rising to 460m above sea level.

88 HEREFORD MAGAZINE Year 2021