Not a farmer’s wife
As agriculture grows up, brute strength is no longer the prized trait.
Instead, technical skill, ambition and a level head are in demand and
it’s women who are proving very good for business.
Jane Sale is a farmer in her own right.
Her work and life are not balanced, but instead purposefully stitched together.
Metres from the home office is the children’s School of the Air
classroom, and while the cattle have millions of acres to roam, they’re never far from Jane’s mind.
That’s the deal when you move from the city to outback Australia to build and run cattle stations.
Jane, 43, and her husband Haydn, 45, manage the Yougawalla Pastoral Company,
covering Yougawalla, Bulka and Margaret River stations in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.
“I came out here, but I didn’t marry into this.
This is a project that Haydn and I have built together and both want,” Jane said.
From Perth, the journey to their homestead is a three-hour flight north,
then a seven-hour drive on bitumen before another four hours off it.
Stephanie Coombes, 32 (pictured left) and Gemma Somerset, 17 (pictured right) bring up
the tail of a group of cattle they are drafting at Bulka Station.
Recruiters and managers say stock teams are increasingly diverse because having qualities inextricably linked
to being a female within them isn’t just good for progress, but fundamentally good for business.
They say a female presence helps keep their herds calm, still and heavier, and those kilos are worth thousands.
Women have always had a presence on cattle stations, but when handling the herd is
about someone’s nature and not just their brute strength, the opportunities open up.
“There’s potential for women in every role that has previously been male-dominated,” Jane said.
Helicopter pilot Nina Hardie, 34, prepares her two-seater Robinson Beta II for a
day's mustering at Margaret River Station.
It's an interesting story and much more then presented here.
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