Home sweet home, 2021

First we were locked down in our homes, we came to love them and then as COVID-19 restrictions dragged on we came to loathe them.

But in a year of highs, lows and uncertainty, I've drawn courage from my home and the people within it. It's come to mean more to me than four walls and a ceiling, that double-brick house with a red iron roof.

Home is in tight-knit rural communities and in those good, kind bush people that welcome us as journalists (and often strangers) into their lives, on to their farms, studs, back verandahs and around their kitchen table.

This time last year I'd just come back from work in western Queensland. Standing on a sweltering tarmac at Longreach one afternoon in mid-December, I was excited to be coming home after a long 12 months of border closures.

But my time in Queensland and that real Channel Country taught me so much. And it taught me a lesson that I hope will serve me well as I start my career in journalism: life is full of stories.

All that we really have is our story. The story of you or I, where we came from, what we're doing. The story handed down to us of our ancestors, where they came from, what they were doing. For all of human history, we've told stories.

I think it was Johnny Cash who once sang, "we're in this together if we're in it at all."

And for too long we've wondered: who is doing it better? Is it the old, seasoned bushie or the young professional, university-educated?

I think they both have a story to tell.

We're in this game together and I think Australian agriculture is so much stronger because of it.

I found Queensland to be a place of real beauty. The stations surrounding Longreach are wide, flat and sometimes eerily empty.

Only, they aren't. To my untrained eye it first looked like nothing ever did or could grow there. But of course it did. Sheep found bits of button grass, there was Mitchell and red Flinders, and Gidgee trees lined watercourses. There are stories everywhere.

And the people are salt of the earth. Expert managers, they run properties, households and bush schoolrooms. Vets fly from station to station, shearers and truckies spin (very) tall stories and teachers lead dance, music and art classes on Zoom for isolated children.

I'd got to Longreach a year after the decade-long drought had busted.

Winton graziers recalled taking stock of the damage from the north Queensland floods and the mounting bill. They'd stood at kitchen tables, looking out the window to see those beautiful, big old Brahman cows they'd nursed through drought hang lifelessly out of trees and off fences.

And at Longreach, graziers stood in feed hip-high until March, when the grasshoppers came through and took the lot.

Seasons can be impossibly cruel and still those people are some of the strongest, most optimistic and most kind I've ever met.

I'm so thankful for that opportunity in Queensland. I found a passion there and it's the most wonderful thing to work with bush people every day in my new job at The Land too.

One of my first stories for the newspaper was an interview with dairy farmers Butch and Robyne Smith at Gwandalan, Scone. Mr and Mrs Smith operate one of only two dairies still open for business in the Upper Hunter Shire.

A mix of drought, deregulation and shrinking profits has seen the sector all but disappear in one of the state's once-premiere dairying regions.

"It's a full-on day and a full-on week but that's a choice we make and it's been good to us," Mr Smith said.

And it's the tenacity of farmers like the Smiths from which I draw courage.

Then there was Clayton and Krystal Leven at The Willows, Coolah.

Over the last year they've added 280 Australorp/ Rhode Island Red and Leghorn/Rhode Island White hens to their mixed cattle, sheep and cropping operation.

With the average bird excreting up to 80 kilograms a year, that's 60kg of manure being spread across the Levens' paddocks daily.

"In the end, our aim would be to leave the land in a better way than we found it," Mr Leven had said.

"I think conventional farming practice tends to be a reductionist approach, where you pull things apart.

"You can do that with an internal combustion engine, you can diagnose the problem by isolating something. But with the soil you have to work with everything as a whole."

I think the future of Australian agriculture is bright with farmers like the Levens in it.

It was a good year to be in the livestock game too - arguably, the best.

Graziers at Brawboy and Kars Springs in the Upper Hunter reported 16 inches of rain through the month of November and like most places, the best grass season on record.

In my first months at The Land, I was there to witness some big sales too. Store weaners clearing $2300 and cows with calves making $5200 a unit.

It's a just reward for the producers who've held on and fed and carted water less than three years ago.

Stud stock reached dizzying heights too.

There was a $280,000 Angus bull, a $160,000 Hereford bull and a $150,000 Santa Gertrudis bull.

There was a $165,000 Aussie White ram, a $41,000 Poll Dorset ram and a $32,500 Border Leicester ram. And of course there was a $35,200 world record-priced Kelpie, 'Hoover.'

Ours is an industry full of optimism and opportunity. And its us who get to call it home, too.

It sure feels good to be home.

I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and all the luck for a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.