Diversify or die: Tipperary Station's journey from cattle to cotton, carbon and lemons

Typically, the first option will go hand-in-hand with having a crack at what others say can't be done.

These are the learnings of former stock agent David Connolly on the back of running the iconic large-scale cattle backgrounding and breeding operation Tipperary Station, in the Douglas Daly region of the Northern Territory.

The third big lesson he would pass on is to have an end market in sight before taking on anything.

The Tipperary Group of Stations, consisting of Tipperary, Litchfield and Douglas West stations which encompass 4000 square kilometres, or about a million acres, has a wonderfully colourful background and has blazed trails since it was settled in 1914.

Today, however, those trails are likely going to be followed by many and lead to long-lasting change in Australian agriculture - mostly because they are profitable, sustainable and come with the built-in protection of not being reliant on any one market.

From live cattle to Indonesia and steers sold on the domestic market to broadacre farming, a cotton gin, horticulture, carbon abatement, tourism and environmental management, Tipperary has a iron in many fires.

It always been an operation of immense interest to wider Australia and one that has trialled the unusual.

United States money was poured into the country in the late 1960s when the Tipperary Land Company invested and planted swathes of corn and sorghum fields.

Without an end market secured, much of those crops ended up fattening wallabies or being pushed with bulldozers off the wharf into the ocean.

Tipperary was then owned for some time by Sir Frederick Walter Sutton, famed for his used car dealerships around the country, and shot to fame again in the late 1980s when entrepreneur Warren Anderson paid nearly $16 million for it. Not only did he undertake a massive development program, he established a private sanctuary to breed rare and endangered animals.

Barrister Allan J Myers and partners purchased Tipperary in 2003, agisted it for some years to Australian Agricultural Company and hired Mr Connolly in 2015 on a remit of diversification, sustainability and profitability.

Tipperary was destocked of livestock, people and equipment when Mr Connolly wandered in.

There was a long list of things he was told could not be done. It included growing cotton, growing citrus trees, running cattle that weren't high-grade Brahman, selling animals into southern markets, getting rid of gamba grass, creating an Internet Of Things to connect everything on Tipperary virtually and building a cotton gin.

All those things have now been done.

"As a group of people who manage properties and the things upon that land, we must diversify," Mr Connolly told the Droughtmaster Society conference held during the Royal Queensland Show in Brisbane this month.

"Our doors could be shut tomorrow on live exports, we have to have something else."

Tipperary has a carrying capacity of 55,000 head but is understocked and breeding its way back after dry times.

It has about 10,000 breeding females and buys in between 25,000 and 30,000 head to background.

Typically, live export is really the only profitable option - by the time stock are trucked anywhere else, it's unviable.

But the skyrocketing cattle market of the past 18 months changed that and for the first time ever, Tipperary shipped stock 3000 kilometres south and sold steers at Roma saleyards.

"Apparently that's not the done thing but that was how we could achieve the highest price at the time for those stock," Mr Connolly said.

He'd do it again if circumstances pointed that way.

Tipperary has also ventured into Droughtmasters, purchasing 800 breeding females.

"We are long on Brahmans in the Top End but if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got and we wanted more weight-for-age and fertility," Mr Connolly said.

The females have so far handled the conditions and were proving successful, he said.

A small number of Droughtmaster bulls have now been purchased, put in with a good line of Brahman cows, and the watch is on to ascertain how the calves will handle the heat, humidity, biting insects, climate and protein drought.

Broadacre farming, irrigated and dry, also happens at Tipperary, mostly corn silage to feed weaners.

The 2700 hectares of dryland cotton production is on track to be 10,000 hectares by 2025.

Home-grown cottonseed to feed the cattle was a big driver of that move but the managed growing of cotton has proven immensely beneficial in thwarting gamba grass, which Mr Connolly said was a big fire risk.

He has declared war on gamba - a species originally introduced in the north as a 'miracle pasture' but now a weed of national significance.

Meanwhile, Mr Connolly said it became obvious 'we can't do cotton without our own processing facilities due to freight costs' so a gin is currently under construction.

And Tipperary has horticulture interests too: 4000 mango trees and close to 11,000 Eureka lemon trees due to be harvested for the first time next year.

Along the way, the operation has become a great user of technology: solar power with bores, IoT, weed identification with drones, weather stations, moisture probes, vehicle tracking and walk-over weighing.

Tipperary is also home to one of the biggest live export yards in the NT, Honeymoon Export Yard, licenced for 15,000 head.