Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Famed Australia ranch to be sold due to export ban

Australia’s best-known Outback cattle ranch has been put on the market by an owner who on Wednesday blamed the country’s ban on livestock exports to Indonesia for destroying her livelihood. The decision to sell iconic Bullo River Station in the Northern Territory is the latest evidence of the economic hardship gripping tropical Australian cattle country since the government announced on June 8 that livestock exports to Indonesia were banned for up to six months because of animal cruelty concerns in Indonesian slaughterhouses. The 40,000-acre (160,000-hectare) family owned property was made famous by matriarch Sara Henderson, who wrote about it in six books including her best-selling autobiography “From Strength to Strength,” published in 1993. It told of her family’s struggle to manage the remote and expansive ranch – known in Australia as a cattle station – after her American-born husband Charlie Henderson died in 1985. Sara Henderson retired from ranching before she died in 2005, aged 68. Her daughter who now owns the ranch, Marlee Ranacher, said Wednesday that the ban was the last straw for her and other ranchers like her in northern Australia. “I wish for a miracle, but there aren’t many of those around at the moment, and this is definitely the last straw because the government, I believe, is legally and morally negligent to have done what they have done,” she added. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of livestock. Many ranchers rely entirely on the 330 million Australian dollar ($350 million) per year live cattle trade with Indonesia because there are no large-scale slaughterhouses in northern Australia – and the southeast market where most Australians live is too distant...more

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