Pat and his wife Kerrie are well known in dairy circles for their contribution to the industry over many years, with Pat holding many roles including a stint as chair of Holstein Australia.
Pat said his involvement in the dairy industry had been rewarding, not just from a financial perspective but also from a personal perspective, allowing him to forge many great relationships over the decades.
Pat and Kerrie’s dairying journey together began in 1983 when they were working for wages on a dairy farm at Tatura. They then moved in to sharefarming at Timmering for seven years, before leasing a farm at Rochester.
Three years later they bought that farm. Unfortunately, that was just before the millennium drought, which resulted in a pretty tough period.
“We bought a run-off block in 2002 and it was 15 months before we even saw a blade of grass grow on it,” Pat said.
Both Pat and Kerrie came from farming families in the north-east. While they found it hard enough to have to pay for irrigation water, when they didn’t receive any allocation at all due to the tough drought, they thought they might as well go back to what they knew — dryland faming in the north-east.
“In 2005 we bought 350 acres (142 hectares) in the Kiewa Valley and we were milking about 240 cows at that time,” Pat said.
“Over the years we slowly expanded and milked 550 cows in our peak.”
Today, their son Brendon and his wife Sarah have bought the farm and now run the business. Pat and Kerrie spend their ‘retired days’ chasing a few beefies (600 head) around.
Succession planning was always important to Pat and Kerrie and rather than retire with millions in the bank, they were always about setting up the next generation of their family.
“We used our own wealth building the dairy farm to set up our kids and that has been so rewarding because they haven’t had to work as hard as we did to get started,” Pat said.
“Even though we went through many tough years, we always had a cash flow and with financial guidance from Ian Gibb we were able to set up a super fund and officially retire at 63.”
He said dairy farming was a tough gig, particularly the mental strain of continual decision-making.
“Before you get out the door in the morning you have probably made five decisions and then when you get the cows up probably another five more because the weather was wet and you have to change the paddock and it just goes on and on,” he said.
“The energy and time spent making decisions can wear you down and you need to be prepared for that.”
He said the Dare to Dairy dinner was a great night out and he was honoured to receive the award from Ian Gibb and John Mulvaney, two men who helped him enormously in his own personal dairy journey.
“Ian and John really helped guide our wealth creation over the years and to have them present this award was really humbling and made it even more special,” he said.
Alpine Valley Dairy Inc has a long history of supporting the region’s farmers for the betterment of the industry and Pat was involved from the early days.
“We put a lot of work into getting agriculture into the local secondary school and we led the way in a climate adaptation program which was picked up by Dairy Australia at the time,” Pat said.
He said the dinner was another great initiative.
“The original purpose was to get people off the farm and talking to each other and the dinner did that so well, people were still talking two hours after it finished,” he said.
Pat said while he had stepped away from a lot of industry roles, including attending discussion groups, he realised he still had a small role to play as a mentor.
“Young farmers can certainly do with some help, especially when it comes to tough seasons to challenge their thinking and talk about business decisions,” he said.
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