Farmer Kathy Gabriel is not shy of a challenge

Kathy Gabriel rode to prominence through social media’s Experience Australian Agriculture. Now she’s again taking on one of the world’s toughest races.

Kathy Gabriel with her horse, Memphis, on her farm near Benambra in the Tablelands Valley. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Kathy Gabriel doesn’t strike most people as an introvert.

After all this is the woman who rose to fame promoting remote farming – in shearing sheds through to cropping paddocks and outback beef stations – through her Facebook page Experience Australian Agriculture.

Kathy then took on one of the world’s most gruelling horse races, the 1000km, 10-day Mongol Derby in Mongolia in 2018.

She’s again planning to take to the saddle again for the punishing event in 2022, which involves riding 28 semiwild horses.

Throughout it all, the now 30-year-old has shared her personal pain publicly of losing her partner in 2015 in a freak accident and the trauma and depression that followed.

But sitting in an old “shack” “chewed by termites” on her 65ha Hereford property in East Gippsland’s Tablelands Valley, Kathy says she has now found her place in the world.

“I love it here,” she says, looking across the valley, near Benambra, surrounded by state forest.

“It suits me perfectly. I like going to events but I am an introvert and I’m content doing my own thing, minding my own business.

“I love living on my own in a hut in the middle of nowhere.”

Having said that her partner Tim Dyson drops by when he is not travelling to various compass points as a mechanic.

Not that she has much time for a personal life, she adds.

Her own property has 20 Herefords (“it’s always Herefords for me”), five horses – used for her campdrafting competitions – and six dogs.

Kathy also manages the 485ha neighbouring Tablelands Pastoral, which has 150 breeders.

She has a home gym and is in constant training to ensure she’s fit for next year’s Mongol Derby – which runs for a month in July and August – and she’s also planning to fundraise in coming months for two local Mongolian charities.

“I tore my shoulder muscle and ligaments in the 2018 race and had to finish half way, so I want to make sure I’m 100 per cent prepared for next year.”

Yes, she says, the shoulder still hurts, but so does her hip, which she broke while working on a bore run in a station up north.

Her knee, too, causes her problems, after she put her leg down a rabbit hole while working on a sheep property and twisted a ligament: “it has plagued me ever since”.

“If I can get to 50 and not have any major joint replacements I’ll be lucky,” she laughs.

So what is it that drives Kathy? Is it fearlessness, confidence, or ambition?

“I’m not a fearless person and I’m not overly confident or brave. Doing the Derby I was petrified the whole time.

“It’s more that my determination is a stronger emotion than the fear. You can be scared but still determined.

“I always wanted to get somewhere in the agricultural industry and being a female in that industry I have had to try hard to prove myself.”

Kathy grew up on a hobby farm in Yarra Glen and then Yea, riding horses from age four. At five she was the youngest competitor at the Victorian Schools Championships at Werribee.

It was while at boarding school at Hamilton, in the Western District, that she immersed herself in friend’s farms and knew she wanted to work in agriculture.

Her first job (found flicking through The Weekly Times) was 110km north of Oodnadatta at Hamilton Station, where she first fell in love with Herefords (for their placid temperaments).

She then worked the length and breadth of the nation in about 15 different farms for about five years.

“I wanted to know what all the industries were like, each in depth” she recalls, adding the focus was less on horticulture and more on livestock and cropping.

“I wanted to understand shearing, fat lambs, Merinos, beef backgrounding, contracting and feed lots.”

When one boss told her she’d have to wait five years longer than her male counterparts to secure a farm management position, in 2011 she created Experience Australian Agriculture (now her Kathy Gabriel Facebook page).

The page, which ended up with 8000 followers and featured her own photos and stories, was a middle finger to that “discrimination”, a determination to “prove myself”.

“Older people who followed the page said they wished they’d have done what I was doing when they were younger, and then the younger generation at school asked me a lot of questions about ag.”

Despite the discriminatory comment, Kathy says agriculture is probably no different to any other industry in that it has “sexist pigs” through to champions of women.

“It’s complicated. Everyone is a product of their environment and so a 70-year-old man who grew up in an era when women were at home with the children sees me as a younger rebel, not someone with intellect and ability, but that’s not their fault.

“I’ll probably be a cranky 80-year-old saying ‘that didn’t happen in my day’.”

With her 20s a jam-packed decade, what next for Kathy?

“Instead of earning enough money to get to the next town, now I’m settled here on the farm I want to push the boundaries to the world. After Mongolia, I’d like to see Russia and Patagonia.”