The Women of Arden

First published in Spotlight On for Rare Medium December 2020

Until 1994, no Australian woman was allowed to list their legal status as farmer. Women on the land were officially defined as unproductive silent partners, domestics, helpmates or farmer's wives. Betty and Maria Roche – two generations of farming women showed me the diverse, innovative and at times heartbreaking role that women play in Australian agriculture. They are a living repudiation to everything that stands in their way. 

Arden Angus homestead sits on a small round hill just above Yaven Creek, 60 kilometres from Tumut NSW. The property climbs up out of the valley by almost 300 metres onto a plateau from where you can see the storied cattle country of the Snowy Mountains and their highest peak, Mt Kosiosko.

Covered year round in pasture and heavy snow in winter, Betty Roche has lived most of her 85 years amongst these steep, rock strewn, hills which can be it can be abundant and harsh in equal measure. In her time she has almost single handedly transformed the property from subsistence farming into an enviable and viable financial model. Physically more frail now than she would admit to; this slight, fiercely laconic, 5ft tall woman has weathered the physical and emotional hardship of this pioneer country with a fierce intelligence and pragmatism. 

The original 3000 acre property was purchased by her father and uncle in 1934 where they ran Merino wool cutters on the briar covered, unimproved pastures. Later the brothers divided it in half along the steep ridge with her father purchasing a neighbouring property to expand Arden to 3000. 

“They had to clear the briars to build the original house, a four room fibro cottage. They were as thick as the hairs on a dogs back. They used to go out and cut them with an axe throw them into heaps and burn them. Our job was to paint the stumps with roundup.”

Betty pushes back against the idea that it was tough life “I don’t know. You don’t really think about it and you don’t know any different”. Her mother was ‘totally crippled’ with rheumatoid arthritis and died when she was 18. She doesn’t discuss it any further as is her habit. Her recall of the solid grind of duty was more readily discussed. 

“A lot of people say to go back to good old days - no way. They weren't good. We didn't have power here, but we had a kerosene fridge and you had to put it on the veranda because every now and then it let fly with a belch of black smoke or else catch fire - one or the other. Once I had a canary in the refrigerator box, and this brown snake came and got in the box somehow. I went out and it had that canary halfway down its neck”

Out of comfort and necessity she still keeps a bolt action .22 and a long handled shovel near the back door, “snake relocators” she calls them.

Even before her mother’s death Betty would return home on weekends from boarding school in Tumut to cook and clean.  The technology of the time meant doing the laundry by hand. “We had one of those glass washing board things. I'd go back to school, and I wouldn't have any skin left. They used to torment me "what did you do to your hands?” Then we got a washing machine with a roller to put the sheets through. You had to keep your fingers out of it, but that was a big help”

 When she was a girl, together with her father and a drover they walked their sheep 95 miles along rough, dirt roads to sale in Wagga Wagga. The fat, high plains, sheep were fed and watered along the road as they found it and the drovers slept in the open. The river plains were going through a severe dry spell and drought affected sheep were next to nothing; with good profit in hand her father bought 2000 more to take back. Betty said "what are we going to do with them?" and he said, "Well, you work it out. I'm going to the Melbourne Cup”.

While mostly concentrating on merino wethers and the wool trade, the Roche's also ran the first Angus cows in the valley which they joined with local Hereford and short horn bulls.  It was a small herd limited to the creek frontage flatlands they had cleared and improved.  

“We would muster the cattle on horseback and ride from here nearly to Tumbarumba [about 40 miles] to  another place we had up there. There was no roads. Along the way my father used to buy up milkers calves, So we might start off with 100 head of cattle, but you'd finish up with a couple of 100 by the time you got to Adelong where the sales were.” 

Betty’s father remarried about a year after her mother died whether through romantic attraction or pragmatic arrangement it wasn’t mentioned.

“I wasn't going to stay here after all that. I'd managed the place, cooked, cleaned and everything else. So I left and stayed with my gand not long after met the service station man and married him. That was Maria's father.”

Not long after that her father moved off the farm and went to live in Adelong with his new wife. Betty and her father came to an arrangement and she took over the property  

“I was living in Adelong and hated it, I hated town. So I say to him, "can I go back and live out there?" And he said, "Oh, yeah, If you want". Then he handed me the place. It was the 50s 60s and I was about 30 with one child”

By the 80’s Betty and her husband had more children and where going through a divorce. The financial settlement was a testing time for Arden with the courts awarding 40% of the property’s value to Betty’s ex husband. Maria Roche characterises her father as ‘a dreamer’. Betty was more forthright on her husband and the fairness of the system. Her resentment is understandable. 

“the law is wrong and you can quote me on that because I owned the place. He came here after we'd been married and I had to pay him out 40% value of the property.  He didn't do anything but send it broke.”

Her loan application to their longterm banker was denied. 

The manager of Dalgety's [Stock and Station Agents]  knew Betty commercially and offered to guarantor the loan, her existing debt and a line of credit on the strength of their relationship and her burgeoning reputation. 

“after that every bale of wool that came off this place went through Dalgety’s. He didn't ask for it but that was his payoff, and all the insurance as well. It was the right thing to do. In those days you were able to establish those relationships. He was a good fella, got me out of trouble a number of times.”

Maria and Betty Roche, Arden Angus Homestead - Image Mark Best

“There were very few women that successfully managed properties in those days so most women fitted that [legal] definition and ran around the cattle yards in white shoes”

“I’d go to a sale, and because I was a female they would ignore me and wouldn't even acknowledge my bid  I used to have to yell at them. It was because I was a woman but also about reputation. I had none. So I built one and now I only have to do this [lifts a little finger]”

“I built my reputation by being successful running the property. I always bought the best I could afford because I figured that a bad cow will eat just as much as a good one so why not have a good one?” 

Arden paid its way during that time due to the high price of fine merino wool. Betty as a small child wasn’t allowed into the sheering sheds but ended up becoming a registered wool classer 

“I used to have trouble with the shearers and the wool classer’s because I was female. So I went and did classing and did my own. I'm still registered a [wool] classer’

“Shearers were a problem they play up and carry on. I only ever sacked one man in my life and he was a shearer. He was playing up like you wouldn't believe and I said "well don't come back". He thought I was joking for a while.”

In the mid 80’s Arden was forced to transition out of wool due to the collapse of the ‘Wool Reserve Price Scheme’. The scheme, funded by growers, was established as a hedge against the  inconsistencies of international wool pricing. The scheme worked well for a while until a bullish reserve price met the collapse of the Chinese and Russian wool markets. 

By this time Betty, with some foresight, had started improving Arden’s alpine pastures by the advent of aerial spreading of superphosphate. Native grasses were seasonal and didn't have the nutritive value of perennial clovers were sown giving the farm far greater capacity to run cattle. 

The purchase of a line of about 10 females and a bull and was the beginning of Arden Angus and for a short period of time it ran it as a stud selling stud heifers at a value price point with the young bulls sold as a sideline. 

More recently, Arden has moved towards a larger scale bull operation selling commercial Angus bulls to commercial breeders

“What, what we do is purchase the best genetic bulls that we can afford. We breed bulls that commercial breeders afford to purchase. For a stud bull from a stud  you will be paying quite a lot of money. We provide bulls to those small commercial breeders, high quality genetics at a very reasonable price. This has been very well received by the commercial breeders and even by the stud breeders because they know year in year out, we're going to come and buy the top bulls at the sales we go to”

Betty’s daughter Maria has recently taken over day to day management of Arden due to her ill health

“I always wanted to come home, Mom said I had to get a career off property. So I went nursing and I worked throughout Australia and then came back and worked in the local area, managing a number of hospitals. In July 2019, mum became very unwell, so I took leave from my job to look after her and also the property. So really, my dream has always been to be here”

“I’ve watched mom and her ambition and her dream of achieving, the perfect breed, which you'll never achieve, but you always strive towards.”

“My aim is the same I suppose, to achieve that perfect cow or the perfect bull. One of my other aims is to not only be able to breed enough bulls for the demand but to be able to sell a female line of cattle every year as well”

“Over a number of years mum has established a reputation as someone who does go out and access the best genetics she can” Sometimes at a high cost. But it pays for itself because it builds confidence in the commercial breeders. They know that they can come here and quality is  guaranteed.”

In 2019 Maria and Betty outbid everyone at a packed auction to purchase Milwillah stud bull Nardoo N155 smashing previous auction records at $62,500. “Nardoo allowed us to take the next step and really push our program. We loved his balance and great temperament" 

 Betty has always trusted her “eye appeal” when it comes to the purchasing and breeding of cattle “It's about experience and intuition and you either have an eye for it or you don't. You have your perfect animal in your mind, and let that inform you. Above all, you never let anyone else grade your cattle. See that one with the white tag?  He's flat on the back, he's got good legs, looks neat, tidy, well muscled. That's what you aim to breed.”

Maria agrees  “The genetics, we have here would equal many of the studs within New South Wales. [What we are trying to do here] is make some of the best genetics in beef production more widely available.”  

In January 2020 like much of the East coast of Australia, Arden was devastated by fire. The property had not seen anything like it for 80 years. Tears well up in Maria’s eyes as she talks about the loss and trauma 

“One of the biggest challenges that we faced here at Arden has been the bushfires. The Dunn's Road fire that burnt the entire property except for the houses and a small section around the front. We lost 208 head of cattle and 146 kilometres of fencing.”

 “It’s that realisation of just how close to death we came.  How, at any moment, you know, we could have become really unstuck. It was quite a frightening experience. But at the time when we were in it, it wasn't [frightening] you were running so hard, you didn't really realise. It wasn't until later when you looked back and saw the devastation.  We still live it every day here. You go out and there's burnt trees, there's burnt fence lines, there's animals that have been burned, that you find that have got burned udders that you missed.  I suppose working on my own without a lot of people around doesn't help you work through that process as well as it should. It hasn’t even been 12 months.”

“I think the difference between mom's response to the fire and my response to the fire is the fact that she was sheltered. She was ill at the time and inside the house, so therefore was not as impacted by the actual brutality of [the fire] when it hit on so many fronts and for so long. I think the other is mom's stiff upper lip. With Mom, you just don't show emotion in that generation. It is a sign of weakness. Whereas when it came to my generation and my son's generation, I suppose we're all way more emotional people and show emotion and aren't afraid of it.”

Maria planted oak trees where she buried 200 of their herd.

Along with her 14 yo son AJ, Maria has been working at a feverish physical pace to re-fence the property and get it back in working order. To eradicate evidence almost of those fires and getting it back to where it was. The burnt outlines of the large gums which had marched up the steep hill facing the homestead were a graphic reminder of those days until recently removed by contractors.

“I’ve always worked hard all my life and it is so important to get this back up and functioning. I don't think it's about me being frightened by facing feelings or about labels like PTSD. It's about achieving, achieving a goal.”

Betty was characteristically pragmatic “The smoke was horrendous and the fires were terrible - but then again, you look in front of you, up there we had 200 acres of scrub which they [the government] wouldn't let us clear then the fires burnt it and now we've got pasture” 

The beautiful Arden is neat and functional and well thought out. The pasture is thick, fences straight, machinery functioning and the gates all swing. Cattle dogs that served their duty well can look forward to domestic dotage. The cattle are stunning. 

It is a female response to a series of problems where intelligence and sensitivity took precedence over bravado and brawn - where good temperament is the most desired genetic trait. Things must be fit for purpose - especially men. I have been reluctant to interpolate myself into their story because like most males in it I seem superfluous. The two days spent with these incredible women left me fundamentally affected by their acuity, energy and their tireless human endeavour. However, it was their indomitable emotional and physical courage, their firmness of purpose that will leave the most lasting impression on me.