We established the “Farm Skills” experience to help people, very often backpackers, looking to work on an Australian cattle or sheep station have the basic skills required for the job and that ranchers like us can find workers who have the basic skills needed to be productive on their first day on the job…this suits everyone.[modalsurvey id=”126857307″ width=40% align=centre style=”flat”]
We have owned cattle properties in the Tambo / Charleville area and have been employing and training backpackers for farm work in Australia over the past 20 years. As a result, we have first hand, real world insights into the skills and workers attitudes graziers need Backpackers to have.
We have also come to understand the possible challenges and issues backpackers sometimes have working on an outback cattle or sheep property thousands of miles from home!
Our home is Halton station and this is where we hold “Farm Skills” and “Advanced Horse Skills” experiences. Our property holdings totals 85,000 acres (34,000 hectares) and usually carries approximately 2,000 head of high quality Certified Organic, pure-bred “Santa Gertrudis” cattle.
We have two children, Mitchell (Mitch) and Bonnie. Mitch plays a big part in assisting in management of operations and Bonnie is a Beauty Therapist living in Brisbane.
Scott and Adma (your hosts!) winding down after a hard day
Our son Mitch plays a key role in daily operations
Scott is a 2nd generation grazier from a family with a long history in the local area. We traveled internationally and are comfortable interacting with people from other cultures and nationalities.
We decided to set up the ” Farm Skills” experience because we observed that:
- Ranchers need temporary workers who have a good understanding of basic farm tasks/activities and the skills to complete those tasks with minimum supervision
- Backpackers want to work on genuine Australian cattle ranches, at least for 88 days in order to satisfy 2nd Visa requirements so they have to able to complete basic tasks
- Many Backpackers we and Rancher friends of ours employed over the years did not have the basic skills and understanding of work on a real outback cattle ranch and this resulted ranchers becoming frustrated due to their having to spend time re-training people
Testimonials - What clients say about us
What a life changing, eye opening experience. We loved every minute of our 3 month seasonal work with the Sargoods! We loved it so much we visited again a year later before we went back home to the UK. Scotty and Adma are the most down to earth couple you will ever meet. They are open minded, funny and caring they welcomed us as a same sex couple.
I found multiple providers when I was researching how to have the correct skills for a farm hand position in Australia. I’m very happy with my decision to take the Farm Skills training with Scott and Adma as I use the knowledge gained every day in the farm job I now have.
The Farm Skills course provided by Adma and Scott was a blast! It also gave me the basic skills my current employer who is also a cattle farmer needs me to have for the tasks he gives me. He seems quite happy with what I do and I’m pretty comfortable doing them…happy days!
