The Brett family have learned there are no small bets on big country like Waterloo Station.
The first sign of action is a motorbike flashing between the trees. Above it, two helicopters work low over the timber as a line of grey Brahmans spills from the bush. There are more than 5,000 head somewhere in the house paddock at Waterloo Station, a 189,000-hectare property in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory.
From the ground, much of the muster happens out of sight. Then the cattle start to arrive: first a handful, then hundreds of grey backs packed together, dust swirling above them. The Brett family has owned Waterloo for more than two decades, bought after Hamish Brett spotted it for sale in a small newspaper advertisement. “To be honest, back in the day, I just
thought the NT was desert,” he says.
His father Colin flew north for a look. The family had spent years buying cattle properties, improving them and moving on, but Waterloo presented a bigger project. “It was probably the most rundown place I
reckon we'd ever bought,” Hamish says. “But it had the best bones.”
Today, Waterloo is at the centre of a family-owned cattle business that stretches across Queensland and the Northern Territory, with two breeder places in the NT and a grower/fattening-place in QLD linking the operation together.
Live export remains a major part of the business, with cattle supplying Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. But it’s a market the Bretts have learned not to rely on entirely, after the government banned exports to Indonesia for a period in 2011. “The ban was bloody horrible,” Hamish says. “Everyone still remembers it.”
The Bretts led the legal fight against the Commonwealth, and Hamish says compensation is still being resolved. But the ban also changed the way many northern producers thought about their cattle, and some began introducing softer genetics that opened a pathway into southern markets if live export disappeared again. “They just don’t trust the government not to do it again,” Hamish says.
The Bretts remain committed to their grey Brahman herd, but they’re hedging too, creating other outlets for cattle that don’t suit Indonesia. For Hamish, running a business of this scale means there’s a rarely much choice but to keep moving. “You wake up every day and you've still got an interest bill to pay and 10 or 20 people expecting work,” he says. “You've just got to keep going.” Those people, he says, are the key to making Waterloo work. “Probably the biggest thing to run a place up here is manpower. When you have good staff, you want to keep them forever.”
"If you don't have good staff, what do you have? They're the backbone of it.”
This year the Waterloo team numbers 11, with only three new faces. “You make an environment where they work hard and they play hard and they enjoy it,” Hamish says. “And a home,” Georgia adds. “It's got to feel like home. Green lawns. Good food.” She smiles. “I do get a bit attached to them. I love them.”
Read more about Waterloo Station in our paper. Issue 01 available now in-store and with every purchase online.
The Burton
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All Hands On Deck
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The Long Thread
After 200 years of wool growing, Victoria’s Mount Hesse Station is adapting for a changing future.
Whatever It Takes
Life on a vast Northern Territory cattle station where no challenge is ever small.
Look Westward
Amid ambition and setbacks, is cotton reshaping the future of Western Australia’s Ord Valley?
A Cut Above
Meet the mates who bonded over meat, and saved their local butcher shop.
Bleeding Blue
A county rugby club fights for a home premiership with a town behind it.
The Long Thread
After 200 years of wool growing, Victoria’s Mount Hesse Station is adapting for a changing future.
From Steel
Horses, family and a life on the land inspire a rural sculptor turning discarded steel into art.
Of Salt And Sky
Rare floods transform Lake Eyre into an inland sea, revealing the beauty of Australia’s interior.
All Hands On Deck
Long days, breakdowns and big machinery as as harvest gets underway in Central Queensland.
Whatever It Takes
Life on a vast Northern Territory cattle station where no challenge is ever small.
