Ken Vowles, NT Primary Industries Minister:

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to address the House today to pay my respects to Mr Ted Hart, highly respected member of the Northern Territory cattle industry who sadly passed away at his home in Katherine on 29 October this year, at the age of 91.

For 35 years up until 2008 Ted was the owner of Hodgson River Station in the Katherine region. Throughout his long and adventurous life he had exemplified the pioneering spirit of the Territory pastoral industry and it will be hard to find a man so well liked and admired.

Ted was born in Mullumbimby, New South Wales in 1925 and grew up on his family’s dairy farm. Leaving home at the age of 16 he initially worked in outback Queensland and by 1945 he was managing a team of 22 to 28 horses pulling a plough to create firebreaks and drains.

He first came to the Territory in 1948 to work on Limbunya Station as head stockman with Aboriginal stock camp before heading back to Queensland where he had his first attempt at owning a station, only to learn the hard way how difficult a business that can be. He and his partner stocked the station with 500 head and a few years later after one of the worst droughts in memory, Ted gave the surviving 50 head back to his partner and walked away.

Ted did a season on Brunchilly then Alcoota, but he got paid off after walking cattle away to Maryvale in a drought. In 1956 he came to Alice Springs region initially cutting and carrying timber for railway sleepers on Loves Creek and Deep Well destined for the saw mill in Alice Springs.

Ted then got a contract fencing and yard building for Eddie Connellan at Narwietooma and then Hamilton Downs and Napperby. In Connellan’s workshop in Alice Springs Ted developed an automatic fencing machine which allowed him to do half a mile a day in one pass with three or four wires, and 350 wooden posts to the mile. Ted, his wife and three adopted sons and two daughters lived on the fence line.

He then went to Amburla, which was at that time an outstation of Hamilton Downs Station, on share farming arrangements.

There he started his own bull breeding project. He noted that the bulls bought from interstate were finding it hard to survive and breed in the dry years that Central Australia was going through, so he went to Adelaide and for 1000 guineas bought the best Poll shorthorn bull available. He had a few lessons in collecting semen and practicing artificial insemination, and he produced the first calves born to artificial insemination in the Northern Territory.

He fed his bull on Amburla on lucerne, which he irrigated using a pumping system he devised himself that ran on gas produced from a charcoal burner, the charcoal having been made from hand-cut mulga. Again this was pioneering work as he was the first person to grow lucerne commercially in the Northern Territory. He worked closely with Colonel Rose of the Animal Industry Branch as well as Drs Barnes and Jephcott, and he always acknowledged the support the department provided.

The biggest drought on record broke the project however, and Ted sold the cows and went contracting on the Atherton Tablelands to get back on his feet.

In 1968 Ted married his second wife Elizabeth and in 1973 they bought Hodgson River, a 1100 square kilometre station in the Roper area. With their two girls Sonya and Donna then aged three and one, they moved onto the station which, at that stage, had a single shed with no power and water, and they took delivery of the stock which totalled 19 cattle and 17 horses. Using a helicopter they managed to round up a number of clean skin cattle that roamed the station, and so they began. He also purchased some shorthorn cows from Victoria River Downs and some crossbred cows from Ian McBean at Innesvale.

There were five Aboriginal families on Hodgson River when the Harts arrived and in 1974 the beef slump hit the northern cattle industry. The cattle that were worth $200 in 1973 were only worth $30 in 1974. By the following year it was not even worth mustering the cattle as the price on offer would not even pay the freight. The Harts survived through those hard years by running a small store at Hodgson River.

In time the small Aboriginal community at Hodgson River, which was always a dry community, swelled to 70 people including 24 children between the ages of four and 14, so the Harts petitioned the government to start a school. The Harts located a suitable school teacher and the government provided the teacher’s housing and a silver bullet trailer as a classroom. The silver bullet did not quite make it into Hodgson River before the wet, so classes actually started that first year beneath an upturned cattle crate. The close relationship with the Harts and the Aboriginal community remains to this day.

Ted Hart was always keen on innovation. He first invited DPI, the Department of Primary Industries, to conduct trials on Hodgson River in 1982 and, over the next decade, he introduced mineral supplements, vaccination against botulism and dingo control on Hodgson River. He conducted trials in the best way to manage weaners and heifers, and grew hay and mung beans. Ted welcomed the new ideas that came from the department of Primary Industries and reciprocated by providing his practical experience to mentor new researchers.

In time Hodgson River became one of the best-run family cattle stations in the region, running 4000 head of quality cattle.

For many years Ted was the mainstay of the Droughtmaster breed in the Northern Territory. This is a tropical breed developed in Australia which is renowned as a high-quality beef animal with a placid temperament. Ted bought his first Droughtmasters in 1968 and had a small breeding herd in Atherton. The 60 animals he brought to Hodgson River were the first Droughtmasters in the Northern Territory.

In the 1980s and ’90s the herd at Kidman Springs, the Department’s research station in the Victoria River District, was made up of Droughtmasters. Ted helped with advice and breeding and, when in late 1990 herd numbers were reduced to make room for other breeds, Ted helped to choose the best animals to keep.

This herd was later transferred to Alice Springs and became the foundation of the Department’s renowned Droughtmaster herd on the Old Man Plains Research Station. Nowadays bulls from this herd are highly sought after by other Central Australian producers at the annual sales.

In 2003 at the age of 78 Ted had a stroke and, as a result, Hodgson River was sold in 2008. Ted and Elizabeth retired to a small block called New Haven on the banks of the Katherine River and that is where Ted died on 29 October 2017 surrounded by his family.

Ted Hart represented the best qualities of a true Territorian. He was a great bushman, an enterprising and inventive cattleman, and a modest, kind and generous man. He was admired throughout the pastoral community for his integrity and good sense and he will be sadly missed.

(Katherine Times note: Bess and Ted Hart raised more than $22,000 for cancer research through their annual morning tea fundraisers in Katherine.)