Sir Graham: recollections of a big life

As he nears his 92^nd birthday in August, spending only a couple of hours with the man who pioneered the Brahman industry in Australia, doesn't do his story justice.

Living a much quieter and simpler life these days at 'the Bush Camp' on his 834-acre cattle property, Bondoola Meadows outside Yeppoon, Sir Graham is, without doubt, one of life's gentlemen.

And, while he has been knighted for his contribution to the beef industry and rubbed shoulders with Prime Ministers and Premiers, he remains gracious and very much down-to-earth.

The stories he could tell would fill a book and the 400-page Roads in the Sky - The Life of Cattleman Sir Graham McCamley, compiled by Jenny and Nick Mountstephen, chronicles many of those yarns.

Softly spoken, Sir Graham said he runs 153 commercial red Brahmans and 100 registered red and grey Brahman stud cattle with Tartrus bloodlines at Bondoola Meadows.

He said the commercial red Brahman cows were crossed with Seifert Belmont Red bulls to produce progeny that was sent as weaners to the Gracemere saleyards.

Switching from stories about flying and a helicopter accident from which he was lucky to escape alive to anecdotes about his time in agripolitics, it's clear Sir Graham has been a master storyteller and garnered support for his ideas - some of them quite revolutionary at the time - through considered eloquence, strength and humour.

With fond memories of growing up on the family property at Dululu, Sir Graham said he and his wife, Shirley, bought their first property, Tartrus Station, west of Marlborough, in 1954 with a herd of Hereford cows as part of the purchase.

He said the reason he switched to Brahmans was because his father, Ted, who had a poll Hereford stud, said he could not compete at sales against his son's Hereford cattle.

"So I said 'I'll get out of your breed then...I will give them away and I did," he said.

Also, in 1954, at what is described as a turning point in his life, Sir Graham travelled to the United States with his sister, Mavis, and another Queensland cattle producer, Clare Langmore, on a three and half month study tour to inspect the quality of American cattle breeds and where he was first introduced to Brahmans.

"I had 14 years experimenting and seeing the difference between British cattle and the Brahmans because Brahmans had a bad name then," he said.

"They were a dreadful breed (back then)...they were pure breeds out of India."

Over the years, together with CSIRO and the department of primary industries, Sir Graham worked on breeding an animal that would give him a calf every year and had good weight gains.

Sir Graham recalls how they held a field day at Tartrus in 1971 to showcase three generations of Brahman females, and a new blade plough, where they expected about 200 people and 760 turned up.

That was the moment, he said, he knew he was on the right track and had succeeded in breeding good cattle.

At another field day in 1980, where they had 3000 head in the yards for people to see, 3500 attended.

With his staunchest supporter, his wife, Shirley, by his side and three children, Sir Graham took a risk during the cattle depression of the mid 1970s to open two butcher shops in Rockhampton to give the public a fair price for meat.

At the same time, when a lot of cattle producers felt the United Graziers' Association's decision making and policy was dominated by wool producers, Sir Graham agreed to head up a new lobby group on one condition that they had to get "1000 cattle producers together on one day and in one room".

More than 1100 cattle producers turned up for a meeting at the Leichhardt Hotel in Rockhampton on May 11, 1976, to form the Cattlemen's Union of Australia, with Sir Graham stepping up as its inaugural president.

More than 20 years later, Sir Graham was quick to see the benefits of one farm lobby group in Queensland, unlike some other CU foundation members, lending his support to the merger of the CU with the UGA and the Queensland Graingrowers Association in 1999.

"They were surprised I would go along with (the CU) going in with everybody," he said.

He is, however, concerned with the current direction of AgForce because he feels it's not looking after members anymore and is too reliant on government funding.

Sir Graham's accomplishments are too many to list, but he was an early adopter of Breedplan; gave the go ahead for the CU to start up its own newspaper; flew his own plane; was one of the first to use helicopters to muster cattle; and up until his early 80s was still mustering cattle by chopper.

Some of his peers in the industry have described him as someone who thought "outside the box", was a "can-do man", a leading cattleman and did a lot for both the commercial and stud beef industries.

For the past 70 years, Sir Graham has written in a diary every day just like this father, but, unlike his dad, put an index in the back with headings like family, politics and weather so he could find things which helped when his life story was written and published in 2018.

Reflecting on his life as a cattleman, he said he used to love horses and mustering big mobs of cattle.

"My daughter (Jacqui) tells me...I lived about nine lives, that I lived far longer than anyone should have lived for what I was doing," he said.

For him, his biggest achievements include the introduction of Brahmans to the north Australia cattle herd and breeding Brahmans that have the size, weight gain and fertility he's always wanted.