While visiting my sister who works as an equine veterinary nurse in Australia, I took the chance to do a bit of an agricultural walk about.

Parts of Australia are in the midst of a record drought and light store cattle prices were on the floor. On one road trip, I met a herd of 1,500 Hereford cows on the road. They were grazing a government stock route. With this, a farmer pays a set fee for use of the grazing but must move a certain distance every day. It turned out this herd had been on the road with four months and was 1,200km from home.

I visited a grain farmer three hours north of Perth who farmed over 50,000ac. Land could be bought at €200/ac, but it was near desert and the price was low as few wanted to live there. His property could almost be considered suburban in an Australian context.

The shire where he lived, their equivalent of our counties, was roughly the size of Co Cork but had the population of about 1,200 people, a little over that of Ardfield/Rathbarry parish.

One drive was over 450km on a dirt road and we met one car against us. It was like driving from here to Letterkenny and seeing a car around Ennis.

What we consider rural isolation here would be laughed at there. There’s no “I’ll run down to the co-op” option if something breaks on farm. You write down what you need and get it next time. It’s the same with food. It requires a bit more planning than it does here.

Healthcare is similar. On one friend’s cattle station there was an airstrip for emergencies.

In remote areas, if a woman is pregnant, she books into a hospital in the city three weeks ahead of the due date and just waits.

Sale of 14,000 sheep

At Ballarat salesyard they sold 14,000 sheep in two and a half hours. I got talking to a sheep buyer there.

Now in his 80s, Michael Hayes just purchased 600 lambs.

With a name like his he could have been from over the road. From what he said, he could have been the farmer in Eric Bogle’s song, Now I’m Easy. Here was a man who experienced the lyrics “of droughts and fires and floods, I’ve lived through plenty” captured by the Scottish balladeers.

In his 63 years working as a commission buyer of livestock, the western Victorian octogenarian reckoned he had brought about 12m sheep.

I also caught a cattle sale which began at 8am and by 2.30pm it was over, with 8,500 animals sold. By their standards, those weren’t even big sales.

What was extremely noticeable at both sales was that despite the large stock numbers there was a similar amount of drovers as you would find in an Irish mart. The lack of sticks and shouting also stood out.

For the sheep, drovers had their dogs who were muzzled and a small hand rattle to move the sheep. For cattle sales, the flow of the yards and pneumatic drafting gates reduced the risks.

There were extreme differences yet lessons to be learned from an Irish context. However, things aren’t always greener on the other side.

Those I met in the more remote areas said the biggest challenge is probably isolation. As farms continue to consolidate and grow, there are fewer people. Some communities are starting to lose critical mass. Their primary schools have less than 20 children and there’s not enough people to maintain local football teams. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?