‘They are the future’: Jackaroos and jillaroos ride on
Some of Australia’s most successful agribusiness leaders are championing the return of young people to the bush.
IT’S early morning at Wyvern Station in the NSW western Riverina, and Sophie Hamilton is perched atop a post and rail fence during smoko, surrounded by sheep.
Behind her, a mob’s coming into the shed for shearing, and in the front yard, dozens of ewes are feeling the crisp autumn air on their freshly shorn hides.
The 22-year-old, with her kelpies, Huey and Joey, at her feet, has recently been promoted from jillaroo to overseer, at the sprawling 50,000-hectare sheep property that borders the Murrumbidgee River, and one day hopes to take those skills home to manage her family’s NSW Central Tablelands farm.
“I love what I do,” Hamilton says. “This morning I’m just rousing about in the shed while the shearing is going on. Many of the shearers here today are people I’ve known since I was a kid, which is nice. I’ve always loved working with animals and my long-term plan is to go home to the farm, but Mum and Dad are really encouraging of me learning as much as I can from other places, to work my way up the ranks.”
There was a time, not so long ago, when stations and properties across Australia were bursting with school leavers like Hamilton, coming of age in the bush. But in recent years, numbers of jackaroos and jillaroos have dwindled, particularly around NSW and Victoria, where the absence of youngsters is being noticed not just on farm, but in the communities they once supported.
Determined to buck the trend, a group of former jackaroos in the NSW Riverina who are now some of Australia’s most successful agribusiness leaders, are championing the return of young people to the bush.
“If we don’t have a pipeline of young people coming through there’s an impact on agriculture and the community,” says former jackaroo Richard Cannon, principal of Cannon Grazing and chair of Hay Inc, a community-led rural education program that is giving kids from all walks of life a taste of life on the land. “There’s always a bit of charity about having jackaroos and jillaroos on farm because they come quite green, but the time and effort you invest in these young people you get back in spades, because they are the future rural leaders,” he says.
ACCORDING to the Australian National University, the earliest known use of the term jackaroo dates back to around 1880, with jillaroos coming into our lexicon after World War II.
Becoming a jackaroo or jillaroo was something of a rite of passage for young Australians, a unique apprenticeship that inspired a love of the land and instilled life skills that were highly prized in big-smoke boardrooms too.
Media mogul Kerry Packer famously sent son James off for a year at Newcastle Waters Station in the Northern Territory, while Lachlan Murdoch cut his teeth at Boonoke near Deniliquin in NSW.
In 2003, Prince Harry spent time on Tooloombilla Station in Queensland, describing it as the nine best weeks of his life – until the Fleet Street paparazzi arrived.
“This wasn’t merely work,” he wrote in his memoir Spare. “Being a jackaroo required stamina, but it also demanded a certain artistry. You had to be a whisperer to animals. You had to be a reader of the skies, and the land.”
For generations, jackaroos and jillaroos have been up at the crack of dawn, and will have fed and watered sheep, cattle, or horses long before most of us have had our first morning coffee.
A typical day can be anything from sheep drenching, mustering, repairing saddles and horseshoes to helping in the kitchen, fixing fences or troughs, or any other task required to keep the farm running smoothly.
But a perfect storm of ag college closures, Covid, volatile commodity conditions and the corporatisation of family-run farms, along with the ever-flowing tide of young people away from the regions, has led to a shortfall in young people cutting their teeth on the land.
“We must do a better job of selling how good a rural job is, especially in this time when cost-of-living and housing issues are common. As a jackaroo or jillaroo, you get paid well, you get housed, there’s a lot of fringe benefits, it’s a great start in life,” says Cannon, who recalls his time as a jackaroo, first on TA Field Estates’ Wyvern Station then the Australian Agricultural Company’s Brunette Downs in the Northern Territory, with enormous affection.
“There wasn’t a week that went by that I didn’t learn something new. I think I did a certificate in working hard, a certificate in common sense!” he laughs, “I just loved it.”
Today, Cannon owns and runs a grazing and irrigation property 12km south of Hay, with a full-blood Wagyu seed stock herd, commercial Angus, and Merino, as well as cotton and cereal. In his spare time, he is the chair of Hay Inc, a group of local beef and sheep producers, managers, and owners, who’ve developed a program of short courses for school leavers, run by expert volunteers, to give kids a taste of life on the land and build their confidence and rural connections to take the next step on farm.
“Hay Inc came about because there was a growing concern in the community that there weren’t enough young people coming through, and we needed to do something about it,” Cannon says. “Over the years, there’s been a demise of the jackaroo and jillaroo system in the Hay area. At one time we supported a lot of jackaroos and jillaroos, but we’ve seen a lot of corporate investment into ag, big companies that have soaked up large properties and amalgamated them, and that scale has demanded efficiency to meet the bottom line. I totally respect the need to run properties lean and the corporates simply don’t have the time to train people from the ground up, they need experienced staff straight away, but the loss of young people has had flow-on effects.”
ACCORDING to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 1981 there were 97,200 male and 22,800 female farm workers and farm foremen in Australia.
Over the years, jackaroos and jillaroos have been officially classified all manner of ways, as rural trainees, farm apprentices, station hands, drovers, shearing shed hands and pastoral labourers, according to the Census, so it’s difficult to track precise numbers, But by 2021, the Census paints a starkly different picture with the number of ”livestock farm workers” in Australia plunging to 28,700 – and of those, just 15,300 were under 35.
A recent study from the University of Melbourne found that between 2011 and 2016, some 180,000 regional Australians aged between 20 and 35 left the regions and moved to capital cities, which they dubbed the “youth outmigration”.
Cam Munro, general manager at Egelabra Merino stud at Warren NSW, says more needs to be done to highlight the skills learnt as a jackaroo or jillaroo, to entice young people back to the country. Now 57, Munro was 17 years old when he became a jackaroo at the famed Boonoke Station near Deniliquin, a long way from his home near Roma in Queensland.
Today at Egelabra, Munro runs 45,000 prized Merino ewes and 2000 cattle across 55,000 hectares of prime grazing country. It’s big business, and he says jackarooing gave him the best-possible start to his career.
“If you work hard, the skills you learn as a jackaroo can set you up for life. You learn discipline, you learn how to listen and how to learn. I’ve run into people from all walks of life and all sorts of careers who’ve told me that they put their success down to jackarooing, it’s given them an edge,” he says. “But most of all, it was a fantastic upbringing, the most fun days of my life. We worked hard during the week and looked forward to Friday nights at the Conargo pub catching up with all the other young people in the district, and being involved with the local rugby, cricket, and tennis.”
Egelabra is one of a cluster of stations around NSW actively encouraging young people into a life on the land. They run a two-year program for jackaroos and jillaroos and at any given time have four young people learning the ropes in first year, and four in second year with added responsibility.
“We have a lot going on here – sheep, cattle, and cropping. By the second year, they start to work out their areas of interest and we can guide them into the things they are passionate about. The hands-on experience is crucial; it’s things that can’t be taught in a classroom,” Munro says. “When you’re on farm getting your hands dirty every day, you learn a different way. Agriculture is like plumbing or building, there’s a role for formal education, but you’re a lot better at your trade if you’ve learnt hands-on.
“I like to say to young people that in their first few years out of school, it’s not what you earn, its what you learn that counts. If you’ve got a great mentor, someone who invests time and effort into you, you’ll do well in life.”
RAISED on a sheep and cattle property at Lightning Ridge, Justin Campbell began his ag career at Longreach Pastoral College in Queensland, before becoming a jackaroo at nearby Muttaburra then Uardry in the Riverina, famous for its prized stud Merino genetics. He worked his way through the ranks to overseer, and assistant manager.
Today he is the general manager of Australian Food and Agriculture’s Wanganella and Poll Boonoke Merino studs where he actively employs a crew of jackaroos and jillaroos.
He laments the closure of agricultural colleges such as Dalby, Longreach and Burdekin in Queensland which were 50 per cent classroom and 50 per cent on-farm learning, and says they have had a big flow-on effect to agribusinesses across the nation.
“It was a big mistake for the Queensland government to close those schools. When I went to Longreach it was a great college and highly regarded. We learnt every skill and it covered every aspect of ag life but it’s a dying art and we are losing the skills because we don’t have the next generation coming through to learn what’s going on out in the paddock.
“Kids finish school and go off to uni, but we need boots on the ground to do the work first. You need to get your hands in the dirt and live and breathe a farm to really know it. Ag is big business, there’s a lot of opportunity and a lot of money at stake.”
Campbell currently has four jackaroo/jillaroos on farm and says having young people in the region is not just good for farms, but vital for the social fabric of the area.
“I volunteer for the Hay footy club and we struggle for numbers, we used to have three grades of rugby at Hay, now we struggle to scrape one grade together,” he says.
“There’s a long tradition to jackarooing and jillarooing and it would be a great shame to see that go by the wayside. We know other farms would take kids on; it’s a matter of finding the kids to give it a go.”
TO DATE, Hay Inc has had 144 young people come through the program and many have gone on to become jackaroos or jillaroos, or look for other paths in agribusiness. As an alum of the Hay Inc program, Sophie Hamilton is now paying it forward, showing two jackaroos and two jillaroos the ropes at Wyvern. She encourages young people from all walks of life to give it a go.
She’s up before dawn every day and can be found at the workshop by 7am most mornings, ready to take on whatever task the day holds, whether it’s mustering, fencing, cleaning water toughs or running pipelines to checks for leaks and breaks.
“What’s so amazing about this role is that you learn how to do everything on the farm and there’s someone here to help you all the time. You’ll end up with so many skills you never imagined, and you’ll make friends for life. It doesn’t matter whether you come from the city or you’ve grown up on a farm, no one is there to judge you and everyone wants you to succeed, and you learn from the ground up. It’s hard work but it’s a really encouraging environment. I thought I knew everything when I arrived, but I learnt that maybe Dad’s way wasn’t the only way!” she laughs.
It’s the hands-on learning that Hamilton loves most.
“You can tell someone how to drench a sheep all day, but you really don’t learn how to do it until you’re in the race with sheep coming at you from every direction. You can’t learn how to hold a sheep’s mouth in a classroom, you have to figure out how to hold it and do it yourself. ”
Richard Cannon hopes other communities will follow in Hay’s footsteps. “It’s a great little program, but it works because the community is behind it, they’re the driving force,” he says. “And it doesn’t really matter what your career path is, whether it’s ag, or law, or banking or whatever you want to do in life, a gap year working and learning on the land provides a fantastic environment.”
Cam Munro agrees, and says the current generation of ag leaders have a responsibility to bring the next up behind them. “We need to take time to identify the next generations coming through – not just think about the here and now on our farms and businesses, but do a little bit extra to see if you can get a young person involved, even if its casually or you share them with another property, just to give them a start, because in the long term it rewards everyone.”
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