Gyros get the goats

Paul and Michelle Mannion run the 42,087-hectare Nundora Station near Packsaddle, off the Silver City Highway in the far west of the State.

While they had always opportunistically harvested feral goats on their properties, towards the end of the drought last decade, they decided to get serious.

The couple won a contract to harvest goats, for a fee, out of the Mutawintji National Park.

It was no easy work. With sons Nick, 22, Denis, 24, and Phil 25, they would go into the national park on weekends and, using the rudimentary network of roads, drive until they spotted goats.

“If we got 100 goats on a weekend we just thought it was it and a bit,” said Michelle.

“And we used to slog it for those 100 goats, we’d chase down every bloody goat, tie them down and put them in the ute on foot and with dogs.”

Yet from those humble beginnings, the Mannions have been able to ride on the back of the rangeland goat industry to transform their business and bring all three sons back into the family business.

Realising an opportunity, Nick, Paul, Denis and Phil started training for the gyrocopter licences in 2010.

They no longer work in Mutawintji National Park, but now harvest the animals out of Paroo-Darling National Park near White Cliffs.

In addition, they also work with fellow landholders across a region spanning about 1.2 million ha, capturing goats and splitting the profits with the station where they are caught.

They also sell young goats to landholders with hinged-joint fencing as breeding stock.

The Mannions’ method of capturing the sometimes elusive creatures is simple, but incredibly effective.

Nick and Denis go up in two gyrocopters, spotting goats in the hills, working them in a line into a mob and directing the troops down below.

Those who remain on the ground will build a set of portable yards and ride motorbikes with two working dogs astride each, while Michelle keeps replacement dogs in a ute, where they will wait patiently until called by name to join the fray.

Phil Mannion helps his son Rebel start his motorbike. Click on this image to see more photos in our online gallery, Life on Nundora Station.

The strategy saw them harvest about 24,000 adult goats for slaughter in the 2010-11 financial year, and even more in the following 12 months.

It helped them to fund the purchase of the 54,632ha Lake Wallace Station further towards Milparinka in early 2012, which Denis and his fiancee Tahlei now manage.

“What it’s done is kept the boys employed here, and given them an extra income,” Michelle said.

Nick said during the previous three wet years, producers who had built infrastructure to trap the goats on watering points were having no luck as there was so much water lying in paddocks.

“It exploded,” he said.

“Everything was breeding up. The price was so high, because no one could get them – except for the people that were mustering.”

The Mannions have lived on Nundora Station for 14 years, and last month sheared about 14,000 Merinos across both of their stations. They also run a herd of about 1200 mixed breeding cattle, however during the drought their domestic livestock plummeted to 13 cows and about 300 sheep on “Nundora”.

“Everything else was on agistment. We had cattle 12 hours north at Bollon (Qld), we had cattle 12 hours the other way at Mt Gambier (SA) and sheep all over the place,” Michelle said.

While Michelle and Paul currently still own both properties and employ their sons – both by paying them a daily wage for station work and splitting the profits from harvesting goats – they have bigger plans.

“The aim is eventually to get a place for them all and we get a nice little farm further east – where it rains,” Michelle laughed.

“The only way we can get ahead, and the reason we’ve gone as far as we’ve gone, is to work as a family partnership.”

Like many families in the far western reaches of the State, aircraft have become an essential part of the Mannion family’s operation near Packsaddle and Milparinka.

Michelle and Paul Mannion own Nundora Station and Lake Wallace Station and in 2010 Paul and his three sons Nick, Denis and Phil studied for their gyrocopter licences.

Now – in addition to being used in their highly successful goat mustering operation – the Gyroscopic Rotorcraft are used in the day-to-day running of the stations.

On the 54,632-hectare Lake Wallace Station, Denis – who manages the property – has built short landing strips to aerially check water points, a job which would have previously taken hours in a ute.

After Michelle randomly asked Nick, 22, (pictured with girlfriend Amy Rhodes) if he had thought about flying one day, it set the ball rolling.

“Paul said if Nick was going to learn, he wouldn’t mind learning. Then I was talking to Denis one day and asked if he would be interested in flying,” she said.

“He said ‘I thought you’d never ask’.”