Planes Threaten To Outdrive Cattle Drovers

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 4, 6 October 1950, Page 3

Planes Threaten To Outdrive Cattle Drovers

Melbourne. Romance will go from droving if the prediction of an airways executive her.e that the aeroplane will take over the job comes true. Value of the plane for spotting water and feeding grounds ahead of mobs in treks across hundreds of miles of killing markets has often been demonstrated.

Newest large-scale development is an airlift of 1400 tons of carcass meat, mostly beef, from Glenro.y to Wyndham, in the far north west of Australia. Mr I. H. Grabowsky, planning and development manager of commercially-owned Australian National Airways, is just back from “Operation Porterhouse.” “Drovers are a dying race in the territory,” said Mr Grabowsky. Young men were not taking up the hard life and an alternative means of handling cattle had to be found. “Operation Porterhouse” was performed to demonstrate that the only way of developing the north was by air transport he said. Building roads would take a long time, be very costly and take a fantastic supi to maintain. With the airlift demonstration across 183 miles instead of 300 miles by drovers’ tracks meat was delivered to Wyndham freezers within two hours of killing and without the need for expensive refrigeration. Ability to kill cattle close to properties where they were bred and fattened meant higher quality and percentage of export grades was higher than when cattle were droved over long distances, Mr Grabowsky said. He did not give the cost figures of the airlift, but said that if air was subsidised by the equivalent of the interest and maintenance charges on a road scheme from Glenroy to Wyndham costing say £1,500,000, planes could handle 7000 head of cattle and do all the back-loading to 50 odd aerodromes without making a charge.