Strictly Family Business

Bando Station, Lightning Ridge, NSW

Farm succession is a highly involved process that can takes years to formalise. Just like business succession in the city, it requires piles of signed documents, a possible trial period, a reassessment of long term goals and plans, but insuring the happiness of the family unit is the untested variable; the crease in the ideal plan.

Stations in Lightning Ridge seldom change hands. They're predominately family owned so the only real change they experience is through succession but it still stays within the family. During this journey of exploration into farm succession, horror stories became a dime a dozen in my notebook.

The question that has me thundering down the Lightning Ridge Road is the spark to this investigation.

Is the traditional succession practice of handing the family farm to the eldest male still pertinent?

The turnbulls

“Over here Amanda!” comes from the shed across the way.

Robert Turnbull appears from behind a tractor, hands covered in black grease. He’s a tall man, at least 6”2, with a set of eyes that have looked into the sun far too often.

"You must be here to see the museum, just over here."

He shows me over to a row of sheds absolutely bursting with all sorts of things. You name it, Robert has it. There are rows upon rows of different bottles, cooking implements, engines and varying tools all dating back to when people started to settle in the area.

He can convincingly tell me the backstory of each item with such gusto you'd be forgiven for thinking he was actually 100 years old and had just aged well. Surely no person can contain such information in spades. He has traveling trunks, hat boxes, a sword from an English officer, an unopened 40 pound can of flour and my favourite, a black and white photograph of his mother holding a 5ft snake found in his bed when he was only a little boy.

Although the collection is beautiful and absolutely vast, that isn't what strikes me the most about this tour. It's Roberts tone of voice when he's explaining items passed down through his family, or what his ancestors achieved in the area as settlers. He loves these stories and loves telling them even more. Eyes wide and hands in full motion like we're on a ride and we're getting to the good part.

Therese Turnbull rides over on a quad bike, half a dozen dogs in tow. She wears the same eyes as Robert but is maybe 5ft'7 with short blonde hair. It is only in recent years that the stereotype of the 'farmers wife' has been challenged. It's been challenged by women like Therese Turnbull who farms alongside her husband every day. Mending fences and birthing stock are all in a day's work.

The Turnbull home is warm and filled with little trinkets. Family photos dot the walls, show ribbons hang loosely from hooks and half-finished restorations projects dominate the wrap-around veranda.

We settle at the table with tea and slice. We chat about the ridiculous climate of current politics before Therese says "I'm sure Amanda's here to ask us some questions Robert, what can we tell you?". Curious eyes go between my face and notebook. "Tell me about succession."

"If it comes down to leaving it to the eldest, and say you've got 2 or 3 children, the chances are and I know it's a hard call, but if you leave it to the eldest the farm will survive. It won't survive if you leave it to everyone, it'll collapse. Every year we've got to get more and more country to make sure our business is viable. In the first instance round here, when the big stations were cut up back in the late 40's early 50's after the war, they were called Solider Settler blocks. A big property like Gundabloui (pronounced Gun-da-Bluey) got divided up after the war to give the returned fellows a bit of opportunity. They cut it up to roughly 10,000 acres for each person or family that won a place by ballot.

Of course then the 50's wool boom happened and people couldn't spend the money they were making out of sheep because wool was worth a 'pound for a pound'. People survived on those properties fairly comfortably right up till 20 or 30 years ago. The family farm as it was known, the 10,000 acres, all of a sudden was no longer viable. Up until the late 70's or 80's, they had someone working for them, they had a holiday every year, they educated their kids at boarding school, bought a new car every couple of years. They survived fine. But now you've got to have 3 or 4 properties to get that same return, so in another 2 or 3 years, due to the price of inflation, Robbie's going to have to buy another place to make it viable. It's just got to get bigger and bigger and bigger to survive."

Robert and Therese have two children, Robbie and Hannah.

Robbie and Hannah

Robbie married his long term partner, Natasha, a few years ago and have a beautiful daughter that Robert and Therese adore. Framing it as tactfully as possible, I ask if they have any measures in place to protect the farm in case of a divorce. There is no assumption here that there will be one but I’m curious as to whether it’s something they’ve considered.

Therese explains that a couple they’re friends with had a terrible succession experience. Their son married a woman from an agricultural background and brought her back to Lightning Ridge to live. The woman expected the parents to move off the land and out of the main homestead to make way for husband to take over. This caused a terrible rift in the family and the parents had to sell farming equipment to buy their sons share of the farm out. The newly married couple moved away off the property due to being so unhappy. Plenty of people have lost land and family when faced with this reality of succession.

This is where leasing your land to your children comes in – a safety switch I had never heard of.

Robert explains that if the parents remain the principal owners, the farm and whatever equipment they own can never be lost to such a dispute. Regardless of how sour a relationship gets in divorce or between generations, no one can come looking for a sum of property because technically the children don’t own it, they’re only leasing it. I ask if this is what they have in place for Robbie and they nod in agreement.

They lament that it might sound selfish but after working your whole life for something, the last thing you’d want is to see it being spilt with someone who may have contributed nothing.

“So is Robbie your heir?”

“He will be.” Robert says.

Therese is quick to say “And his sister Hannah is just as capable, they both want to be on the land.”

“We pushed Hannah out, she was working here and she was better than any bloke we would have. It sounds rough, but we gave her the opportunity to go after other things. I released her. There are no young people around here. She followed the love of her life down to Yass but she wasn’t happy. She eventually broke it off. We said to her that she had to get her life back and needed to go somewhere where there are young people. She loves her job, loves being a midwife. And she loves being in Dubbo because it feeds all this western area, she said it’s just like being at home. But both kids want to be on the land.

But whether she comes back here, I don’t know. But Robbie has done the hard yards, he’s been here the whole time. But he loves the farming side whereas Hannah loves the stock side of it. They complement each other.”

The Turnbulls are lucky to have two children that want to be on the land and who both want to farm. But the notion of, as Therese put it, pushing Hannah out towards new opportunities lingers. A study being conducted by the University of South Australia has revealed that only 10 percent of successors are female with many of the females interviewed expressing sympathy for their male relatives due to their lack of choice in the matter.

I look over at a pair of glass doors and tapped to them are two A3 laminated maps of the different paddocks on Bando. Every paddock is labelled in red and green whiteboard maker. At the very centre, Robbie is written in green pen. It’s obvious that both parents are proud of their children and their achievements but it’s hard to reconcile the facts. Both children are capable, both are hard workers and both want to be on the land but only one will get the chance. It can only be met with a puzzled look.

Therese was kind enough to elaborate further on Hannah’s story.

Hannah was at a crossroads in her career, whether to stay in Canberra or go. And it was simply fortuitous that the midwife job came up in Dubbo, a mere four hours from home instead of nine from Canberra.

“Hannah has since met a bloke off the land who has a passion for agriculture – so this has added a new dimension to our planning. We certainly are in the initial stages of planning everyone’s future. A lot of ideas have been thrown around and nothing is set in concrete, however we do know that if we all stick together and work together as a team this will be the key to our long term success and viability.”

The Turnbulls are warm and inviting and incredibly helpful but like all parents, they're guarded when speaking about their children and choices made. With the knowledge that Robert believes the family farm can only survive succession if passed to one child instead of spilt, there’s a possibility that Hannah has missed out on being the next Turnbull to make her mark on Bando. And there’s no assumption here that she is any more deserving than Robbie or vice versa, but with all our advancement over the last century, we still employ traditional social protocols.

Robert and Therese see me out, wish me good luck and give me a hug.

They melt into the horizon, waving arm in arm, as the Bando gates rise up through the sun mirage and send me like a slingshot, thundering back down the Lightning Ridge Road.