Ros Ware
Ros goes in, boots and all
Written after the Girls Talking Ag (GTag) event in March 2024, this article – by participant Nikki Thompson about fellow workshop attendee Ros Ware – appeared in the 15 March 2024 edition of the Maranoa Today.
Ros knows the reality of life on the land, and how to persevere and prosper. Working in different locations and with different people, Ros learned that there were many ways to approach the challenges of life on the land, and these added more to the fertile soil of the inner paddock between her ears. Working in different locations and with different people, Ros learned that there were many ways to approach the challenges of life on the land, and these added more to the fertile soil of the inner paddock between her ears.
The below transcript of the article has been slightly altered to provide locational details and explanatory information, for those of our website readers outside of Queensland, Australia.
Ros goes in, boots and all
Ros Ware is a woman who has been moulded by her love of the bush and her childhood experiences.
Ros grew up on Lorne in the Augathella region of Queensland, a property then owned by her grandfather, Pommy Joe.
The eldest of five children, Ros recalls she and her sister Ali getting her first pair of RM Williams boots when she was 12. The conditions being that they get the milkers in and milk them for 12 months to pay for them. Ros took this seriously, never dodging her responsibility. She recalls Ali often getting out of bed just as Ros arrived with the buckets of milk in hand, so she was likely a shareholder in Ali’s boots as well. Work and the value of money was instilled from an early age, something that has held Ros in good stead for the years that lay ahead.
Being the eldest, she recalls drawing the short straw and often needing to stay at home to cook for the musterers and look after, and teach, her younger brothers. School was via correspondence with papers sent out from Brisbane (Queensland’s capital city) and somehow they managed to fit this in around cattle and station work.
The days Ros did manage to get onto a horse, she often doubled her youngest sister in the saddle. It was beef depression days and there was no money to employ musterers. I recall Peter’s (Nikki’s husband) reflections on those days when a deck of cattle netted the equivalent money as the new shoes he needed for school. Tough days indeed.
Ros headed away to live with her grandmother in Redcliffe on the Queensland coast for three years of her secondary schooling. No doubt a culture shock for a girl much more comfortable in the bush than the city. After school, Ros worked around Augathella and also at a bull stud near Wallumbilla. Working in different locations and with different people, Ros learned that there were many ways to approach the challenges of life on the land, and these added more to the fertile soil of the inner paddock between her ears.
She met her future partner, Tony Horvath, when he was working next door while waiting to return to the Northern Territory after the wet season. Not long after they became an item and started working at Babbiloora Station, near Augathella. Their son Ken was born just days before they took on managing Taylor Plains and later moved to Redford.
In the rougher country on the place, there were a lot of cleanskins and rogue cattle. The skills needed to work with those, at times, dangerous cattle instilled in Ros and Tony the value of quiet, docile well-handled cattle. Something they had as a core value over the years with their own cattle.
While managing Redford, Ros and Tony were also running a small herd on 890 hectares (2,200 acres) at Lorne, which Ros’s parents had offered to them if they fenced and developed it. Over the years, much work went into that block, fencing and putting in water points.
The young couple had purchased an investment house in Roma in 1994, with the longer-term aim that it could help with a deposit on their own block when the time was right.
They had a vision which was truly their guiding light.
In 2001, their vision came to fruition with the purchase of Fairview. Such was their passion, they arrived broke and in the early months, yabbies caught from the creek was often on the menu and the sale of feral goats helped keep the pantry stocked.
Over the years, improvements were slowly made. Working in collaboration with nature was always at the heart of how Ros and Tony worked. In 2006, they became Certified Organic and accredited under the Global Animal Partnership, a whole-of-life animal welfare standard.
Over the years, one of the biggest challenges the couple faced was with kangaroos. Attempting to work with rotational grazing for their cattle became impossible as the roo numbers increased. Mitigation permits were not enough, and the decision was made to exclusion fence the place. An expensive but vital infrastructure.
Purchasing a second property, Cochranes, and with money in short supply, both Ros and Tony have worked off farm over the years to make ends meet. Tony worked three on, three off FIFO (fly in, fly out) with one of the gas companies and Ros commented that it seemed to be on the three weeks when she was running the place that things seemed to break down.
I have no doubt after talking with Ros that she had the skills needed to repair most things.
Over the years they had bred bulls for themselves and sold a few to neighbours. As demand for their bulls grew, they began to use AI (artificial insemination) which meant they could no longer remain certified organic. Fairview Black Simmental Stud has been a natural progression from this and Ros’s pride in how they have built this was palpable when we spoke.
The cattle get a lot of handling and docility is something that is paramount. Son Ken and his partner Chloe have been involved in creating their annual catalogue and designing their logo.
I love how family can be involved in so many ways in rural businesses.
Ros, despite saying she is not creative, is just that. She seems to be able to turn her hand to most things – her barbwire sculptures were exquisite, and she is also a dab hand at nest boxes, macrame and sewing.
Ros and a friend started a craft group a few years ago and women from as far as Roma and St George travel to participate.
As Ros said: “It’s about getting together, the laughter and being there for each other. Taking something away at the end of the day is a bonus and they usually do.”
Ros wants women who want to be on the land to know that they can have a fulfilling life and achieve goals and pass on an asset to future generations that is in better shape and more productive than when they acquired it.
It will take a lot of hard work and you may end up showing a little bit of wear and tear, but the feeling you get and the experience you gain is something to be extremely proud of.
Those lessons from her first pair of RM boots feel to have stayed with Ros and she is such an exemplar on the quiet, creative and capable woman who live in our midst.