Driza-Bone x Bush Journal - Nov 2022
Lucy and Bryce Moore
Most of us love the pungent smell of petrichor: that damp, earthy fragrance produced when fat drops of rain meet hard, dry dirt. But for young graziers Lucy and Bryce Moore in February 2020, the scent didn’t just smell sweet, it smelt like survival. “I am still affected by the memories of that drought,” Lucy says. “It was a real shock to the system and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”
Lucy and Bryce run specialist stud farm Trifecta Charbrays from their property ‘Taemarie’, which sits on 3,000 acres, about 50 kilometres west of Condamine, in the Western Downs region of Queensland. They’re offering 75 bulls for sale next year, and have previously run a commercial operation of 350 breeding females alongside the stud.
The couple both grew up on cattle properties — fourth-generation cattlewoman Lucy in Taroom in central Queensland, and fifth-generation cattleman Bryce in Bollon, 500 kilometres west of Toowoomba, in southern Queensland. Their fathers went to school together, and Lucy and Bryce actually knew each others’ families long before they met and got together.
It wasn’t until Bryce’s family moved to Condamine in 2016 that the pair crossed paths and discovered a shared passion for the hardy Charbray breed. “One of the biggest things we have in common is the fact that we’re both interested in Charbrays,” Lucy says. “So it was brewing for a long time that we would join forces and start a stud together.”
They both also had trades behind them. Lucy was working as a journalist, and Bryce was completing an electrician apprenticeship in the oil and gas industry, while fantasising about a future on his own piece of country. “I spent my whole apprenticeship dreaming of being back on the land, and the day I got my certificate, in the other hand I had a resignation letter,” Bryce says. “All through my apprenticeship, any money I made I poured into livestock, so when the opportunity arose I could have a crack at a place.”
That opportunity came in 2017 when Bryce found Taemarie, and with land finally under his belt, Lucy and Bryce were able to start the stud together in 2019. But the timing was disastrous. After an initial “not too bad” season, Condamine was plunged into a harsh and lengthy drought, along with much of Queensland and New South Wales. It was exactly what Bryce’s family had tried to avoid when they moved across the state. “We brought the drought with us, our neighbours always joked that they wished we would go away!” Bryce says wryly.
When they were in the thick of it, Bryce remembers feeling “a rollercoaster of emotions”. Each day, they’d gaze up at the merciless sky, feeling a mixture of anger, sadness and desperation. All they could do was cling to hope and pray for rain. “It’s incredibly hard to drag yourself out of bed in the morning when you know you’re going to go backwards that day,” Bryce says.
Lucy recalls being unable to recognise the landscape. “I have photos that I look back on, and I honestly can’t believe the countryside looked the way it did,” she says. “There was dust storms, howling winds, there was a constant haze in the air… it felt like it was the end of the earth some days.”
They did their best to sketch out a strategy, an approach that would help them get through what seemed like an impossible challenge. They looked no more than a month ahead at a time, choosing a date to work towards, and buying enough feed to see the cattle through those long weeks. Bryce also zigzagged north western Queensland, clocking up about 10,000 kilometres in the car, door-knocking to find agistment for the cattle on slightly greener pastures. He says the strong community spirit in the region was a life force. “Everyone banded together. If you could help someone else out, you would.”
But with hindsight, they know they waited too long to sell off replaceable commercial cattle, and poured too much money into never-ending road train deliveries of feed. Their biggest takeaway from the experience, Bryce says, can be summed up in eight words: “Sell early, sell little; sell late, sell lots.”
Rather than harbour futile regret or anger at the whims of the weather, Lucy and Bryce share a sense of effervescent optimism. In fact, they consider themselves lucky. “Looking back on it now, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to us,” Bryce says. “The lessons we learnt from that drought really have completely changed the way we operate our business, and we don’t fear drought like we used to.” Lucy agrees: “[We have] more confidence moving forward that we can adapt, and we can push through those tough times. There is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bryce cites improved practices like grass budgeting, the availability of nutritional data on supplementary feeds, and advances in grazing management, as factors that are helping soften the blow of drought for modern graziers. There are also better networking systems emerging, particularly online, for selling cattle, finding agistment and buying fodder. And for those keen to keep up with the latest new industry ideas, there are plenty of educational courses as well. “There’s a real future there now for people in agriculture,” Bryce says.
The future certainly looks bright for the Moores, who welcomed their first child, Heidi, in June. They’re passionate about raising a family on the land, describing country life as “magical”. “We just want to give Heidi the opportunity to develop a love for the land they way we have… and to know that she’s lucky she’s a farmer’s daughter,” Lucy says. With the business, the couple are dreaming big: aiming to eventually hold their own on-property bull sale, and becoming the leading supplier of Charbray genetics in Australia.
It’s raining at Taemarie the day I speak to Lucy and Bryce about the drought. The irony is not lost on us. While we’re on the phone, Lucy gazes out the window at the water lying in big pools around the property. “The weather is too wet in the paddocks [to work], which is a lovely, lovely complaint to have,” she says.
The couple struggles to find words to describe the relief they felt when the drought broke. “It’s just the most soul lifting feeling, that rain falling on the roof, the sound of it… the way the air smells, there’s nothing like it,” Lucy says, with gratitude in her voice. Bryce adds, “When you’re sitting out there having a beer in the rain when it’s first falling… it’s the biggest weight off your shoulders after a tough drought.”
Despite the risks of the fickle forecasts, Lucy and Bryce are committed graziers. “Neither of us could envisage ourselves doing anything else,” Lucy says. With weather extremes becoming more frequent, the threat of flood now hangs over them. But by facing their greatest challenge head on, the couple carries the strength of experience. The impermanence of weather is imprinted on them, and it’s the lens through which they now view their life on the land.
“There’s nothing we can do to make it rain, or to make it stop raining. So we look at what we can do to manage a situation when it arises,” Lucy says. “We just control the controllables,” Bryce adds.
For now, they’re simply enjoying the cool quenching of their land. “It’s a real sense of peace I feel, when it’s raining,” Lucy says. “I relax… you know that life is good.”