Twin organic cattle operations in Central Australia are working with nature instead of against it.

Words & Photography: Jessica Howard

Willy Brown lurches through thigh-high buffel grass with steps as long as his legs. “See there?” He points to a shorter feathery patch waving in the breeze. “Cooch. Cattle love it. Very sweet.” We walk a few more strides. He plunges his hand into the dense greenery and presents a tuft of stalks topped with seeds that look like rain drops on a spider’s web: native millet. “Cattle really like to browse,” he says, “and if they’ve got a few different varieties of pastures they do a lot better.”

This bovine buffet is deep inside the boundary of Napperby, one of four properties in the Narwietooma aggregation, 200 kilometres north west of Alice Springs. Along with his wife Amanda, Willy manages the swathe of pastoral leases spanning 1.1 million hecatres (11,082 square kilometres) for Hewitt, the world’s largest supplier of organic red meat.
“I’m not local to the Alice Springs area, but a few blokes have told me that it doesn’t get much better than this,” he says, referring to the string of good seasons that’s left parts of Central Australia resembling the lush east coast.

*Willie Brown, manager of Narwietooma Aggregation.*

The aggregation stretches from the rocky West MacDonnell Ranges, with its mix of creek flats and flood plains—to downs flats where native grasses flourish. It carries 35,000 head of mostly Santa Gertrudis-cross and grey Brahman cows—in enormous paddocks up to 1200 square kilometres in size.

“We’re trying to be as sustainable as we can and stock our paddocks accordingly so cattle can graze for a full year without worrying about the feed,” Willy says. “In this area, cattle aren’t really lacking in a lot of vitamins and minerals. And because we don’t have the big rainfall, grass doesn’t grow as big and as rank; it holds onto its nutrients.” And so organic grazing is a natural fit—cattle mostly have everything they need in the paddock without supplementation, while lower rainfall means parasites aren’t an issue.

*Charlotte, Amanda and Summer ride towards Mount Chapple on Narwietooma.*

There are subtle differences in the landscape too, if you’re in tune with it. “You see all the different types of marsupials at night time and a lot of birdlife and goannas,” Willy says. “That’s because the country’s not getting degraded and there’s good cover, so native animals can coexist with cattle.”

The operation is committed to low-stress stock handing, and much of the twice-yearly mustering is done on horses and motorbikes. “Quiet cattle are fat cattle,” Willy says. When young animals are removed from their mothers, they undergo training that involves yard work, long walks and a trip on a road train. “Once they’ve been part of that, they’re calm and come off the trucks and can go straight onto feed. They’re in a good frame of mind and can start putting kilos on straight away.”

The stony tracks of Napperby give way to long stretches of red sand as we near Narwietooma homestead, where Mount Chapple looms over a vast paddock dotted with golden tussocks of Mitchell grass. At 1200 metres above sea level, the mountain is only slightly smaller than the Northern Territory’s highest peak, Mount Zeil—also on Narwietooma.

“I was pretty blown away by the view,” Amanda Brown says. She recalls feeling non-committal ahead of their job interview in late 2021; they were happy in Western Australia, and in no hurry to move on. But as they flew into Narwietooma’s airstrip, something changed. “I was just so impressed with the beauty of the place.”

It’s a long way from her Canadian upbringing in the suburbs of Calgary. “There couldn’t be a greater contrast in where I came from, to where I am now. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Read the rest of this story in Bush Journal Issue 07.

When the Desert Blooms

Hand Made: Olivia O’Connor

You’ll Find Me There, Always