Meet the Hughes’: The big beefy wagyu family who made their patch near Mackay

Mackay and Isaac are beef powerhouses, but who’s doing the grazing? We spoke with a farmer responsible for Queensland wagyu cattle across an area the size of Hong Kong— but he said you should see how big his brother’s farm is.

Meet Richard Hughes: the scion of a big beefy wagyu family who’s made his patch near Mackay.

While for most Queenslanders the heart of cattle country is Rocky, what they don’t realise is the Mackay-Isaac region contributes staggering amounts of beef to Australia’s supermarkets every year.

After reviewing the top 10 grazing property purchases of 2023, we found that the biggest was wrapped up by a sizeable operation called Wentworth Cattle Company, owned by Richard Hughes and based in Clermont.

Wentworth Cattle Co, run by Richard Hughes branch of the Hughes cattle dynasty, run 30,000 head of cattle across their properties.

Mr Hughes said his family had been graziers for over 100 years.

“My great grandfather bought a station at Saltbush in 1872,” Mr Hughes said.

Growing up at Nebo, Richard and his siblings all learnt the life of the herdsman from a very young age and have all gone on to build their own operations, with his brother Peter Hughes having the most success with his award-winning wagyu operation that encompasses properties in Nebo, Fitzroy, the Gulf of Carpentaria and, most recently, the Northern Territory.

Wagyu is a Japanese breed of cow that has become synonymous with fine dining and like Peter, Richard aspires to have his over 30,000 head herd be comprised entirely of wagyu.

Australia is not only one of the biggest producers of wagyu, but also its biggest exporter, with approximately 80 per cent of this $2bn industry’s product ending up overseas.

“It’s all a part of the cycle,” Mr Hughes said.

Wentworth Cattle CO Facebook page is run by Dyan Hughes and can sometimes get political.

Owning a parcel of land larger than the city of Hong Kong, Richard’s branch of the Hughes family is a formidable operation worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but his brother’s, Peter Hughes, operation is over double his in size.

Peter Hughes is the owner of the world’s largest herd of Wagyu cattle believed to number between 60,000 and 80,000 head and personally owns over 3.9million hectares, almost more land than the entire country of Switzerland.

“We’re not interested in being the largest wagyu operation, we want to be the most efficient,” Peter Hughes said.

Richard’s son Bristow and his wife Ureisha manage Strathalbyn Station, near Bowen, grazing around 6500 head on behalf of Richard Hughes.

With his brother’s cattle, his siblings operations, the operations of their children who either manage tor have begun to buy their own, the Hughes family are one of the largest private landholders in Australia.

Richard’s operation at Wentworth station has an active online social media page run by his wife and daughter-in-law, where they share jokes and sometimes even political views, most notably posting on January 29 2024, “Sorry Day: The Day that people apologise for something they didn’t personally do to people who didn’t personally suffer”.

We asked if this reflected the value of his family in the current day and he said, “there’s too much apologies for things that are long gone”.

“You shouldn’t apologise or get rid of things done previously and use it as a guide post for things you shouldn’t repeat.”

Despite their size and the lucrative nature of the wagyu trade, Richard and Peter feel “unappreciated” by the public and government.

Richard and his wife Dyan Hughes manage properties on the Burdekin, near Moranbah and at Clermont. Photo: Queensland Country Life

“The general citizen does not appreciate us and thinks we’re the curse,” Richard Hughes said.

“Our rates and rents keep going up on land.”

“We’re not understood and put at a disadvantage,” Peter said.

Although it’s unclear exactly how much collective wealth the entire Hughes family owns, in terms of land value it can be estimated to be in the high hundreds of millions.

“There’s a limit on how much you can milk people,” Richard Hughes said.

But while Richard’s worried about rates he and his brother aren’t as concerned about supermarket prices with Peter saying, matter-of-factly, “we’re not forced to sell to them”.

Peter and Jane Hughes on Tierawoomba Station in central Queensland. The Hughes family has built one of the largest privately owned Wagyu beef herds in the world.

“Coles and Woolworths have got to compete in the open market,” Peter said.

“We only deal with them if they give us a satisfactory price.

“They’re not standing over us.”

Peter took the opportunity to point out that the Australian agriculture industry fed “an additional 60 million people worldwide” and that “Australians are particularly spoilt when it comes to food”.

“I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the Australian consumer,” Peter said.

Richard Hughes runs his property in the Mackay-Isaac region while one of his sons administers his property near Bowen.

With a combined wagyu herd reaching into the 100,000s, Peter and Richard will continue farming and doing “the same old same old”, as their ancestors have done before them and no doubt their children will do after them.
“It goes on forever,” Peter said.