FORGET any notion of a big country, casual management approach that might be expected on an extensive 4455 hectare (11,000 acre) property in a district better known for its smaller blocks and closer settlement.
Although one of the biggest grazing properties in the Glastonbury region west of Gympie, Phillip and Bettina Carr's Myravale holding is as tightly managed and carefully pasture improved as any rural business trying to make ends meet on a much smaller area.
Success of the cattle operation at Myravale is based on two main input elements - Droughtmaster cattle and high value improved pastures, both targeting the outcome of consistently high quality, grassfed Japanese Ox specification bullocks.
Carr family ownership of Myravale goes back to 1960 when Phillip's father Ted took over the place, then a badly run down, sprawling block of unimproved forest country with some small patches of natural grasses.
Since then the property has undergone some different endeavours including a large-scale deer program based in wild deer trapped from the surrounding bush and fenced and housed on the place, until falling economics forced the sale of the breeding stock and its inevitable closure.
This country was grim when Ted arrived to find no fences at all on the lower country and a scruffy 'all sorts' cattle herd principally based on run out Herefords.
The Carrs' first push of property improvement was to bring in a permanent ring barker who stayed there for eight years, often assisted by a few other casual workers, to ring and kill off the dense timber stands of ironbark, gum, bloodwood and Moreton Bay ash.
The next essential step was to develop a decent cattle herd to better utilise the increasing paddock areas of native pasture coming away among the ring barked trees.
The Carrs were quick to choose the then relatively new Droughtmaster breed, with their first bulls coming from Attie Sullivan's Spring Valley property, Gympie, before he switched over fully to Brahmans.
The young Phillip became more heavily involved in improving and running the property up until the time of his father's death in 2000 aged 95, when as Phillip puts it, "he was still as alert as ever and looking to buy new land".
By that time Phillip was well under way with an ambitious and successful land clearing and pasture improvement program that now has transformed up to 1820ha (4500ac) of his country to dense improved pasture in a gentle, park like setting, with former ringbarked dead timber long removed to achieve clear grazing paddocks.
He also continued to introduce what he considered to be best Droughtmasters suiting his country, the latest consignments being from the Hicks family's Billabong Stud at Moura.
At the last Billabong sale he bought another 10 bulls from that stud because, as Phillip puts it: "They have a bit more Brahman content that suits our country and environment better."
"We won't change from Droughtmasters because the cows calve well, they don't get overfat and the end product steer is ideal to fatten for the Japanese ox market," Phillip added.
Before switching to Billabong bulls, Phillip used sires from Cungelella, Winfield, Minlacowie and a few other sources with great success.
In recent years Phillip has undertaken an ever more aggressive pasture improvement program by clearing and cultivating small blocks of about 8ha (20ac) at a time.
Not satisfied with the equipment available for the job he contracted to have a special heavy duty, offset disc cultivator built by Montville engineer Jim Hooper.
This massive seven tonne behemoth, pulled by his front wheel assist wheeled tractor, has allowed the working of even steeply sloped hill country without the machine 'creeping' downhill.
Far heavier and higher specified than any other equivalent disc cultivator on the market, this unit has Caterpillar seals and double tapered roller bearings that contain a litre of oil.
For his pasture mix Phillip has used Callide Rhodes grass combined with glycine tropical legume on his better country above the frost line and creeping blue grass for poorer country, combined with wynn cassia legume as well as auxillarius - now very hard to get.
His favourite grass is Callide Rhodes which seems to thrive in harmony with legume mixes, unlike the creeping blue grass which tends to choke out any companion legume.
Included in the Carrs' 4455ha aggregation is a property named Elliots at Widgee and two paddocks at Woolooga called Picketts.
In previous years and in better seasons the spear grass at Woolooga could fatten bullocks faster than the country on Myravale.
But since big advances in improved pastures the situation has switched, with faster fattening and high gains at home, especially on the best of Callide Rhodes and glycine.
Phillip and his wife Bettina - whose day job is school teaching in Gympie - now run a total herd of 3000 Droughtmaster cattle, including breeders, calves and fattening bullocks.
Bulls are put into the breeder herd in the last week of September or the first week of October and taken out in the first week of April. This in theory gives a calving spread of six months, but because of the prepotency of Droughtmaster bulls, few calves are born in the last two months.
All calves are weaned in one hit over a three-week bracket and are put onto good pastures of the former deer paddocks, then shifted to other well grassed weaner paddocks.
All fat bullocks are sold no older then four tooths and three years on a weight and grade basis to Teys Bros' Beenleigh works, going off mainly from the end of March and through April.
With Japanese ox prices now quoted at around $3.10/kg dressed, the Carrs' returns might not equal the halcyon days of high prices about two years ago, but with a very high quality product and fast gains on rich improved pastures, the cash flow will still be sufficient to justify the costs that advanced Myravale to its present highly improved status.
Another standout feature at Myravale is the very high quality of Quarter Horses and Australian Stock Horses used for all the cattle mustering.
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