‘I’d be in jail right now’: How life on the land changed Quentin’s future

Quentin Skeen’s bright eyes and wide smile fade when he’s asked what his life could have looked like.

“Most likely I’d be in jail right now,” he said.

“That’s the honest truth.”

Instead, the 17-year-old is part of what he calls a family of people living and working on a cattle station near Broome, in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.

Quentin’s life was on a very different path last year.

“I was in a real rough patch back at home, getting caught up with … bullshit,” he said.

Quintin says he has thrived since moving to Roebuck Plains Station. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

Home for Quentin is Halls Creek, a town of about 1,500 people with some of the Kimberley’s highest youth crime rates.

But now he lives on Roebuck Plains Station at Gumaranganyjal, a cattle property near Broome.

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“You’re always on country, you smell fresh air, peace and quiet, no loud music, no police sirens, no people arguing,” he said. 

“You’re just peaceful and all you can hear is just the animals.”

Quentin is one of 11 young people who were this year’s cohort of pastoral trainees at the property. 

He completed a pre-employment training program facilitated by the Broome-based Nyamba Buru Yawuru, a development and investment company of the Yawuru people, the traditional owners of the Broome area. 

Lexie Mourambine helps trainees settle in at the station. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

Learning a basic skill set

Lexie Mourambine is the Warrmijala Murrgurlayi (Rise up to Work) program’s youth training and employment coordinator.

She said the pastoral trainee program was designed to give people from a range of backgrounds with no experience or skills in the pastoral industry a basic level of training to find employment. 

“It’s an eight-week intensive program where we get them out on country, working in the yards, working with horses, cattle or any industry skill set that is implemented on stations,” she said. 

Roebuck Plains is a working cattle station near Broome. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

The program attracted a record 37 applicants this year.

Some graduates have found work on stations in the Kimberley while others have continued employment at Roebuck Plains. 

Trainees have also completed personal development work and accredited training, and were mentored after the initial training period. 

Roebuck Plains crew Chris Mandigalli, Ben McKenzie, Patricia Edgar Bartlett and Luis Matsumoto. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

The Roebuck Plains workforce is 70 per cent Indigenous people with all staff at some point having completed an industry training course. 

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Worker Chris Mandigalli didn’t have much experience with cattle before he came to Roebuck Plains about three years ago. 

His home was Balgo, an Aboriginal community near the edge of the Northern Territory border. 

Now he’s well regarded in the yards as able to move cattle easily, in line with the property’s focus on low stress stock handling. 

“My dad, he did a lot of cattle work when he was young, so maybe it’s in my genes,” he laughed.

“When I came into the traineeship, Ben and the crew and everyone taught me different ways, and the people they bring over from different countries to teach us, give us more skills to move cattle safe and calm.”

He said he loved the lifestyle of the station and enjoyed rodeo riding around WA’s north. 

Luis Matsumoto looks after a pet joey he found abandoned on a roadside. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

A vital support base

Head stockman Ben McKenzie is a key part of the training program’s peer support group.

“We teach them everything, everything about life lessons, how to treat cattle,” he said. 

“Most of the time they come in as kids, and they leave more responsible, better.

“Most of them who want to change, they end up good. And some who don’t want to change just quit straight away.”

Quentin Skeen says the crew at Roebuck Plains have become like family. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

Quentin Skeen said the program had changed him. 

“I feel very proud. And what I’ve accomplished and how far I’ve come,” he said. 

“Back home, like there’s no opportunities, I just got caught up. 

“I just was waiting for someone to give me that chance, this traineeship gave me the chance.”

With media reports highlighting the social problems in communities such as his, Quentin said the biggest problem for young people in his home town was a lack of a sense of purpose. 

“They’re having meetings and stuff about it but they’re not actually talking to the boys one on one [or] communicating with them,” he said.

“They’re just all assuming, ‘Oh, it’s the housing problem, it’s alcohol’, all that.

“But I can tell you right now, it’s not all of that.

“It’s just it’s nothing, you know, no life, no anything.”

Roebuck Plains Station has a herd of about 18,000 brahman cattle. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

Roebuck Plains was purchased by the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation in 1999 to benefit Yawuru Traditional Owners. 

The station remained under the corporation’s management until early last year when Nyamba Buru Yawuru took over management. 

It carries a herd of about 18,000 brahman cattle across its 276,000 hectares. 

A considered management structure and board was put in place to ensure the station’s ongoing profitability and that all operations considered cultural and environmental values. 

Tony Lee says the property’s values extend far beyond economic ones. (ABC Landline: Chris Lewis)

Yawuru Holdings chair Tony Lee said the station was a main economic driver for his organisation, a subsidiary of Nyamba Buru Yawuru. 

“It has enormous values, not only … economic ones, but also in terms of where it’s positioned, in terms of the broader impacts that it has on the environment, the culture of Yawuru as well as in terms of the environment, the ecosystem in and around Broome,” he said.

Mr Lee said the property would continue to be developed, and he could see its potential as a centre of excellence for pastoralism, using Aboriginal and western sciences for best practice in land management.

Mr Lee said while the beef herd would continue to be carefully developed, there was potential to branch into eco tourism, irrigation and carbon sequestration. 

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