Voice across outback
Cattle Council Rising Champion a new industry innovator
ROLEY James is a young cattleman with a sense of determination, experience, innovation and initiative that belies his 25 years.
Roley has been selected as the Northern Territory participant in the Cattle Council’s NAB Agribusiness Rising Champions initiative, a program offering professional development activities and mentoring, and the opportunity to network with some of Australia’s key beef industry leaders, that will contribute to the participant's career progression within the beef industry.
As an assistant manager on the family property, and running his own import business around a quality phosphorus breeder herd feed, Roley recognises that there is a need for strong young advocacy voices to emerge in the cattle industry.
Hailing from Hidden Valley Station, some 700km from Darwin, Roley comes from entrepreneurial stock, his father having bought and sold his way through increasing scales of cattle property across Queensland and the Territory to achieve the family’s home station of Hidden Valley.
“When we came here in 1994, there wasn’t a lot here, it was largely undeveloped, with a small shed and an old homestead, we did a lot of work to convert pasture over the years and build the place to the point we are at now,” Roley said.
Hidden Valley today runs 15,000 head of cattle across 2800sq km, and at age 16, Roley found himself running the property while his father was in a coma in hospital, discovering within himself a capability for leadership, but also, having left school two years earlier, a need to extend his education.
“When I was young, and left school at 14, I couldn’t see a lot of use for what I was learning at school, in a real world application,” he said.
“At 14, I was doing a leading hand role, and occasionally probably what a head stockman would be doing. I was also driving a road train
with triple trailers on the property.
“In 2009, Dad went into a coma, and I had to run the property for three months. We hadn’t started the cattle mustering, so we really had to get in and get the weaners off.
“It was also the driest year we’d had for quite some time. It was a hard year.
“During that time, we sold our first sale cattle for the year without Dad, which had never been done before, the bores broke down, and I was the only one who knew anything about bores; we put fences up and water squares and just kept going.”
Once his father was back on his feet, Roley set out to learn more about his industry, including study and work on a variety of properties, including a sheep property in Queensland where he began to learn to fly and become interested in the applications of aviation in remote station work.
He has built and maintains a light plane and single seater helicopter as a means to traversing the large property. The construction process of the two craft represents over 3000 hours of work.
In developing his sideline business, RJ Imports, Roley has researched the benefits of phosphorus feed for breeder herd and offspring health, and on-property trials have shown some excellent results around health, milk quality and energy transfer in cattle. Recognising that phosphorus imports come from Asia, and that Darwin is the closest port to Asia, he
❝ We need to get people trained in our industry, to step into those roles and take us forward.
has identified an opportunity for business development, substantially increasing turnover over recent years.
He has sourced a quality product and imports this for his and other NT cattle businesses, and is working to develop his skills around marketing and networking.
Roley was visiting Canberra in the past week to attend the Cattle Council National Gala Dinner as part of the Rising Champions program, alongside attending leadership workshops, getting a sense of the political environment in Canberra, and working independently on a directors training course.
“There is a lot of leadership content in the program, and it is looking really promising, for personal development” he said.
“There is training that will give us an understanding of how Cattle Council works, and some of the other industry bodies, and that will give us the skills to be able to step in and work with industry bodies, like NTCA (Northern Territory Cattle Association).
“Every state has its cattle associations, but what is lacking is the skills among producers to be able to step in and take these roles, so a lot of those are being outsourced.
“At the moment, the NTCA is looking for a CEO. Our last CEO, he was from another industry, not the northern beef industry: so we need to get people trained in our industry, to step into those roles and take us forward.”