Bush Summit 2024: Warren Brown’s road trip hits Texas Longhorn Tours

The whole experience is like Jurassic Park: You’re given tea in an enamel mug, shown a brief documentary and then climb aboard a train of side-by-side vehicles for a safari.

At first glance you’d swear Mick Bethel is someone who’d sprung from Dodge City or the OK Corral.

His resemblance to moustachioed western movie star Sam Elliot is undeniable – his blue eyes

crease when he speaks, a deep mellifluous voice emanating from behind his grey, wild west

whiskers.

This story is part of News Corp Australia’s Bush Summit series celebrating rural and regional Australia and championing the issues that matter most to those living in the bush. You can read all our coverage here

Mick is simultaneously engaging, good-humoured and charming – in his enormous stetson and red wrangler’s shirt he embodies a true, old-time, wild west showman – and with a gathered audience of 31 at Leaton Park Ranch, that’s precisely his role today.

About 135km southwest of Townsville, Leaton Park Ranch is the home of the famed Texas Longhorn cattle – critters you’ve probably only seen in a western – these majestic, giant creatures with their Cadillac-wide horns have made the venue a must-see experience for tourists visiting Charters Towers.

Mick Bethel with some of his Texas Longhorns. Picture: Toby Zerna

Mick and his also-Stetson-wearing wife Linda run a truly unique, niche tourism business, Texas Longhorn Tours – “Australia’s Texas in the Outback” – where you can get up close and personal with this spectacular American breed.

In an outback rife with Hereford, Angus and Holstein cattle the striking Texas Longhorn stands out almost as if it’s another species of animal altogether – unusual to find in Australia these cattle originated in Spain where conquistadors brought them to the Americas – initially in Mexico and gradually migrating north.

For the next two centuries the Longhorn remained largely feral, the species saved from near

extinction in the 1920s by enthusiasts desperate to preserve the breed.

“They’re a historical breed, they’re an evolved breed,” Mick tells me.

“The Texas Longhorn is the result of centuries of natural selection breeding rather than human selection breeding.”

The whole experience is something like a bovine Jurassic Park – on arrival, you’re given tea in an enamel mug, treated to an introduction from Mick, shown a brief documentary about the property and the history of the Texas Longhorn, Linda explains and walks you through the breeding program and then climb aboard a train of Polaris side-by-side vehicles to embark on a Longhorn safari.

Visitors get up close and personal with a Longhorn. Picture: Toby Zerna

Mick leads the expedition out into a sun-bleached paddock where these extraordinary creatures

with their gigantic handlebar horns sit languidly for the flurry of photos taken on everyone’s smart phones – and to my surprise there are other exotic breeds of cattle as well including the distinctive North American Bison.

I ask Mick where his fascination for these breeds came from.

“I grew up on a cattle station and I’ve always had a fascination and love for the Old West, and it doesn’t get any more Old West than the Texas Longhorn. We have the longest horned cow in Australia – almost 100 inches from tip to tip,” he says.

Indeed, one of their Longhorns was a Guinness World Record holder with horns spanning 3.5m – some of the best Texas Longhorns in the world have been produced through the artificial insemination breeding program at Leaton Park.

“But it all happens in the Longhorn Loveshack” Linda instructs me.

“And what goes on in the

Longhorn Loveshack, stays in the Longhorn love shack…”