Hello there, I’m Annabelle Coppin.
Thanks for taking the time to see the real side of the live export industry; how important it is to my family and how interesting, responsible and answerable the industry really is!
I’m 22 years old and work on our family cattle station in the Pilbara, North West WA. It’s beautiful country up here, very unique, gets a bit hot in summer and sometimes very dry. My brother and I grew up here - there’s no better way to grow up, we had all the freedom in the world and learnt the responsibility of caring for all types of animals at a very young age. We did get sent off to boarding school in Perth for the last five years of our education, mostly to see the other side of life and give us the chance to become a Doctor or lawyer if we wanted! However that option didn’t burn inside me and my brother and I are now both part of the family business. My dad and his dad and his granddad also grew up on the place and my mum next door, so as you can gather we love the place and strive to keep it alive and viable.
The best thing about my job is that it is focused around animals - and the lifestyle’s not bad either! The responsibility of caring for 10,000 head of cattle is motivating and the sky is the limit in terms of the skill I can gain with animals. Working in Australian agriculture is exciting and innovative, as well as very challenging. It is a career and a profession that I certainly won’t be swapping for anything.
I also get a lot of variety with my work, some days I work with cattle, others I may be spending time on our horses, flying a plane, working on the computer, putting up a new fence or fixing watering points. Not all of my day to day jobs are highly exciting or overly romantic, especially when its 45 degrees, has not rained for a long time and you are fighting with a rusty old bolt at the top of a hot windmill tower. But when the sun goes down, job satisfaction is always at its maximum and for that I believe I am very fortunate.
The cattle on our station are our income. The majority of them go live on ships to Indonesia, some also to Malaysia, and some to the Middle East (mainly Israel). I actually went with some of them as a stockperson on a cattle ship from Broome to Darwin and then up to Jakarta in July last year. There were 16,000 head of cattle on board, and some of these were from our property.
During the journey my responsibility, along with 4 other Australian stock people, was purely to look after the welfare of the cattle. We were all trained and experienced with cattle and knew when they would need assistance to make them more content. The cattle were kept and maintained in quality conditions, and had 24 hour access to food and water and enough room to move around and lay down.
I could write a whole blog on this but for now to keep it straightforward and simple; the live export industry would not be viable if the cattle were not content and well cared for. The cattle have to maintain and even put on weight during the export process for this whole trade to be worthwhile, it is not profitable otherwise. I might give you a more detailed look at my voyage experience in another edition if you are all interested.
So, as you can see, I have seen the live export process with my own eyes and I have no trouble stating that I have great faith in the high standards of animal welfare that are set in Australia’s live export industry; these ensure that our cattle are kept under some of the best conditions in the world.
That’s it for now, but I’ll be keeping in touch with you from time to time, updating you with a few more stories and photos. Next time I’ll tell you more about why the live export industry is so important to my family and the people who buy the cattle overseas.
In the meantime, feel free to email me here: stockman@liveexportcare.com
Cheers,