Graham and Jana Pickles purchased Burrawang West Station in June 2000 while living, working and raising children in Sydney. Although Graham has always had a passion for the bush, his training as an accountant led him in another direction. Following 25 years of very busy corporate life during which he built his own business and ran one of the largest trading conglomerates in South East Asia, Graham changed careers in 2005 to become a full time farmer. With an extensive career as a Commercial Banker in the entrepreneurial and agricultural midwest of the US, Jana was well prepared for going bush after the boys finished high school.

Historic Burrawang West Station comprises 14000 acres on the Bumbuggan Creek in the Lachlan River valley, approximately 30kms east of Condobolin. We run three businesses on the station; a white dorper sheep stud, a prime lamb operation based on white dorper sheep, and a private retreat which caters for leisure and business groups.

We bought the Burrawang during a great season when the paddocks were deep in feed and the creeks and rivers often overflowed. One of the first improvements we made to the property was to install a centre pivot to take full advantage of the property’s potential productivity and of its water rights. Drought was the furthest thing from our minds.

Less than two years later, someone turned the tap off. By 2002, we had cattle on agistment. The centre pivot was nothing but an oversized coat hanger, sitting like found object art covered in dust. About that time, Graham’s Uncle Edgar, now 87 years young, came to visit us from his farm in Deniliquin, where he’s been farming for 55 years. He shared some free advice, as only relatives over 80 can provide, when he said “Sonny, remember Australia is the driest continent on earth. It occasionally has good seasons. Run your farm accordingly.”

Well, every year since then, we’ve been very thankful that we paid attention to Edgar’s words. We started researching animal breeds which are well suited to Australian conditions and came across these things called Dorpers. They seemed to be doing very well in the Karoo in South Africa where average rainfall is 10 inches. That seemed fairly interesting to us as our rainfall averages 16 inches.

Dorpers first arrived in Australia in 1997 and moved into NSW by 1999. Few people across the country were involved during those early days. We began serious research, evaluation and planning in 2002. In 2003, we bought our first white dorpers and started the process of building our full blood flock, as well as establishing our commercial flock.

The more we learn and understand the breed, the more convinced we’ve become that dorpers are the ideal sheep breed for our area. The economics of running dorpers, rather than cattle, provides compelling support for our decision. So much so, that, as of July 2009 we’ve reduced our herd of cattle to only 100 heifers and after they calve down, they’ll be gone. We’ve built the dorper stud up to 300 full blood producing ewes. A further 300 full blood ewes that do not meet our stud standards, have been added to the 3rd, 4th and 5th cross ewes to make up our commercial flock of 3000. We aim to build the commercial flock to 5000 breeding ewes.

Our full blood stud has been built with quality foremost in mind. We’ve set very high standards for the ewes that are used in the stud. We are total devotees with no apologies for our commitment to the South African Dorper Society Breed Standard. This commitment is based on our appreciation of the fact that dorper is the fastest growing meat sheep breed in the world because the very clever founders of the breed set the standard and established a great educational system to support the progress of the breed.

We’ve become passionate about breeding high quality dorpers because we understand the contribution this breed can make to the success of Australia’s meat sheep industry. Our commitment leads us to choose to spend 70% of our time developing and working on the stud. The stud generates only 20% of the station’s agricultural income, however, we see the results of our effort in the stud reflected in the quality of our commercial flock each year and we find this very satisfying. The stud also provides us with an opportunity to introduce other farmers to the dorper breed so they can realize the economic advantage of choosing dorper sheep as a grazing enterprise.