by Sue Williams
But she was always a delight, says her mum, Terry, becoming a second mother to her younger siblings, as well as to her great mate Patrick, and entertaining them at play ‘smokos’ with mud cakes and drinks made from Sunshine powdered milk, surrounded by an audience of poddy calves and kiddy goats. ‘Her birth was very significant for us, coming after we’d lost our first-born son at nine and a half months to leukaemia,’ says Terry. ‘So she came straight from heaven, a gift from God. She lit up our lives from that very first day and her attachment to the land was ingrained and inborn and has always been a part of her.’
Going off to boarding school in Sydney at the age of 11 was a huge wrench for Marie. She missed home and her family terribly but, as a bush kid, she’d grown up knowing that the day would come. ‘I hated leaving home and when Mum and Dad left Sydney after dropping me off, it was awful,’ she says. ‘But I knew it was just a part of life, and I had to deal with it. It was very strange after being with just my brothers and sister in the schoolroom to suddenly being in a class with lots of kids the same age. But I knew it was also an opportunity.’
One of the first friends she made there was Emma Mactaggart, another country boarder far from home. ‘I remember seeing Marie on the very first day at school – and saying her eyes were wide is a huge understatement!’ she says. ‘She looked so surprised at everything but she also had the biggest, hugest smile on her face. She was absolutely, completely engaged. In turn, we were all fascinated by her and by the fact that she’d never been in a classroom before. But nothing stopped her. She looked at what it involved, and then took it all in her stride. And she’s exactly the same today. She looks around a room, assesses what’s going on, and then gets on with things.’
On leaving school, Marie didn’t know what she wanted to do, but a friend offered her a job working at Sydney’s Hilton Hotel, so she did that, and found she loved it. Then she went back up to Darwin, and worked at the Beaufort Hotel there, scoring a traineeship and studying at uni for two days a week. ‘I liked people and realised I really wanted a career in hospitality,’ she says. A stint back down in the Hilton in Sydney followed, working on the executive floor, looking after VIP guests.
Keen to travel further, she visited a friend in Singapore – and ended up staying there five years, starting her own event management business. It was great fun, organising functions, like new product launches for the car company Jaguar at the iconic Raffles Hotel, and plenty of corporate functions, but eventually she found she missed Australia and the Territory too much, and returned.
She then got a job with Paspaley Pearling Company, the largest and oldest pearling company in Australia and the producer of some of the world’s finest pearls. ‘I’ve always loved pearls,’ says Marie. ‘I think it’s that they’re just so beautiful, and the fact they’re the only gem made by a living creature. South Sea pearls are so incredibly rare. When you are fortunate enough to actually go out to the pearl farms and see what goes into producing them, you become even more acutely aware of how precious they are.’
Marie worked in the Paspaley showroom for a few months, and then in the pearl room, learning how to grade pearls. Marilynne Paspaley, the youngest daughter of the family firm’s founder, came across her early on. ‘I was responsible for retail at the time and my husband, who was working in the IT section on a project, came back and said if I were looking for somebody to really make a difference in an area of the business, there was someone in the pearl room who’d be ideal,’ says Marilynne. ‘That was Marie. I wanted to improve the performance of our store in Darwin and was putting in a few standards and all the staff but one resigned, which was a blessing, and I asked Marie if she’d be interested in being manager of the store. It all started from there.
‘She just embraced the challenges. She had a great willingness to learn, a great outgoing personality that enables her to mix superbly with people from all walks of life, and she was a natural leader. She was the perfect balance for me. I prefer to be reclusive and she’s wonderful at dealing with people. It became a fabulously productive period.’
Marie made such a success of the Darwin showroom, she was soon put in charge of the Broome and Sydney stores too, and became retail manager for Australia. Then she and Marilynne together created a special events department. ‘It was a really incredible experience,’ says Marie. ‘Marilynne was one of the leading women entrepreneurs of the world and every year the women would go off to a different location and we would go and take a little showroom with us, to places like Bermuda or Venice or Madrid. We’d also attend other great events and create a Paspaley experience for people from all around the world.
‘Another wonderful part of that job was taking some of their clients out on a seaplane and onto their purpose-built ships to pearl farms for a three- or four-day visit so they could actually experience the harvest first-hand. Each trip was special and breathtaking in so many ways. Apart from the cattle station where I grew up, I think that’s the most spectacular place in the world. The farms are in some of the most untouched places, with warm, absolutely pristine water, and with that stunning aqua sea, ancient red cliffs and blue, blue skies as their backdrop, I felt very, very fortunate each time to be there.’
The two women worked well together for the next 10 years. Marie saw Marilynne as a mentor and loved her strong work ethic – so closely aligned with her own – and both believed in putting good people around them, and motivating them well. Marilynne was very clear how a business should be run and saw in Marie someone hungry to learn. ‘Marie has always been someone who’s very grounded and comfortable in her own skin,’ says Marilynne. ‘I think it’s a reflection on how she was brought up and who she is, and her wonderful attitude. She understood my vision and was excited by it and we had common values. I’ve always placed a very high value on integrity and honesty and excellence, and we worked together well towards goals.’
And then something completely unexpected happened.
Marie, at that stage aged 32, had returned to Riveren for a big family birthday bash in December 2002 to mark her brother Michael’s 30th, and sister Becky’s 25th. She was in charge of catering for the 120 guests staying over. At one point, she noticed a man she didn’t know, but as she looked at him, she noticed – horror of horrors – he had no belt on his jeans and, even worse . . . she shuddered to see what he had on his feet. Marie rolled her eyes. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked her sister. ‘The guy with no belt and double-plugger thongs?’
A couple of hours later, she bumped into him again. This time, they had a chat. His name was Chris, and he was a stock and station agent originally from the New South Wales Riverina but now based in Katherine, visiting Riveren to do business with Terry and John. After a while, Marie realised that, apart from his dress sense, they had a great deal in common. They began dating and gradually became more and more serious about their relationship. Finally, they realised they wanted to be together, and then had to decide where to settle. Marie was yearning to return to her roots and, to her delight, Chris said he’d be very happy to live in the Outback with her. Paspaley also said she was fine to continue working for them from home. ‘I suppose I’d always hoped I’d end up in the bush,’ says Marie. ‘But I knew it would only be with the right person. You can’t expect some bloke from the city to be happy running a property. It’s only a certain kind of bloke who can do that. And I feel so lucky: Chris was that man.’
Getaway TV reporter Catriona Rowntree, who’d become a close friend of Marie’s since meeting her at an awards evening in Darwin, was delighted for her. Catriona had fallen for a country boy too, and the pair frequently chatted about how to combine city careers with one day possibly settling down in the bush. ‘So with her meeting Chris and me marrying my farmer, we were both living these extraordinary lives,’ Catriona says. ‘She was one of the greatest publicists and the Paspaley family would do anything for her, but I admired so much how she put love first.
‘I also loved how caring and respectful and understa
nding a friend she was – always coupled with a warped sense of humour! There’s something about the glint in her eyes that indicates a very, very spirited character and, even though she was always decked out in the most beautiful pearls, you could tell she could ride a horse like no other and loved adventure. I remember once going riding with her and we rode like wild women and, I swear to God, even though our faces were covered in red dirt, you could see our smiles for miles. She loved the land, and she loved Chris, and was determined to put them both first, and I liked that.’
Marie and Chris married in 2005, and then went to run a property Terry and John had bought the year before: Midway, 3000 hectares of rich red earth in the Douglas Daly region, 200 kilometres south-west of Darwin. The property was to play an integral part in the family’s cattle business, with herds brought up from the 300 000-hectare Riveren and their nearby 250 000-hectare Inverway Station to be ‘finished’ – getting them to sale weight – on their way to market for export via the wharves at Darwin.
For the first 12 months, Marie still continued to do some work for Paspaley from Midway. Part of her day would be spent racing around on a quad bike or horse, helping Chris with the cattle, inspecting cattle troughs and working the garden. Then, covered in dust and sweat, she’d sit in her little home office, talking to people around the world about pearls. Often, poddy calf Stella would wander through and join in.
‘Home has always been where Marie’s heart is, but it’s extraordinary how she can live in two worlds at the same time, and still with the same self-assuredness and elegance,’ says her old schoolfriend Emma Mactaggart. ‘She’ll never treat anyone from any of those worlds differently, either. She’ll be exactly the same to a station owner as she would to the manager, to royalty or to a rouseabout. That’s a very endearing trait of hers. She can also adapt instantly to any environment, but she’s not a chameleon; she always stands out.’
Catriona Rowntree agrees. ‘She’s just so adaptable,’ she says. ‘She’s as comfortable in her R.M.s [R.M.Williams boots] as she is in Jimmy Choos. It’s a credit to her parents that she has this wonderful duality. She can fit in anywhere.’
A year later, in 2007, Marie and Chris’s first child, Jock, was born, and Marie worked a couple of days each week for Marilynne’s personal hotel business, Pinctada Hotels & Resorts, with properties in Broome and in Kununurra. Two years on, their daughter, Elizabeth, came along and Marie this time gave up outside work in order to devote all her focus to her family and the cattle station. Everyone thought it would be hard for her to leave the business, finally, but she didn’t find that. ‘Funnily enough, because I was leaving for the baby and for my family, it wasn’t so difficult,’ she says. ‘I have very fond memories of it and I look back at the photos and I think, Wow! What a life!, then I look at myself in my trackies and realise, No I don’t miss it. It was a great time of my life but there hasn’t been a day when I’ve ever asked myself, What am I doing here? I love being back on the land. I love the sunrise, the sunset, the solitude. It’s wonderful to have so much space around us, especially with our gorgeous, young family.’
Marie then worked hard with Chris on all the pioneering improvements to the property he’d been undertaking. They became the first pastoralists in the Northern Territory to fully introduce cell grazing, dividing half their land into 30–50-hectare paddocks fenced with solar-powered electric fences, and moving around their 2000–3000 head of cattle between them daily, mostly with the use of kelpies. It’s a process that allows the pastures 30 days of rest and recovery before they’re grazed again, improving the health of the soil, preventing erosion, allowing native groundcover to flourish and dramatically cutting the need for herbicides and fertilisers. The couple’s efforts were praised nationally, winning the inaugural 2009 National Farmers’ Federation Innovation in Agriculture Award for Sustainability, as well as recognition in a whole battery of industry prizes for land care and rural development, including representing the Territory at the National Landcare Awards in 2012. They’ve also had acclaim for the low-stress animal welfare management techniques they practise with their cattle, and were one of the few in the Territory to sign up for a new research program into reducing the methane emissions of cattle, both to improve bovine health and to help the environment.
‘It is humbling to be recognised for the work we do, but we’re proud to be surrounded by other really dedicated and hard-working farmers, doing the right thing by the land in terms of sustainability, good management, best practice and longevity,’ says Marie. ‘I feel strongly that the message should keep going out to fellow Australians about how hard people work in the bush and how innovative and smart they must be to survive. It’s very frustrating that many people in towns and cities have a poor understanding generally of farmers and people in the bush.’
Naturally, there has been the odd setback. In 2010, with a strong family history of aneurisms, Chris went for a check, and it was discovered he had one too. He and Marie, together with the two children and Terry and John, relocated to Sydney for a month for treatment at St Vincent’s Hospital – where Terry had been working when she met John all those years ago – staying in Marilynne Paspaley’s house, which she gave them on loan. When the surgeon had finished repairing Chris’s aneurism, he came out of the operating theatre to tell Marie they were very lucky as it had turned out to be major, and would have been a ticking timebomb, but had been caught in the nick of time.
In 2011, Marie gave birth to the couple’s daughter Isabella, but soon after, on 30 May, came a massive shock: ABC TV’s Four Corners program aired appalling footage of cruelty inflicted in Indonesian abattoirs on some of the 500 000 Australian cattle shipped every year via the live export trade. Immediately, the Australian government suspended the live trade to Indonesia for four weeks, with the number of permits cut sharply afterwards. Marie was horrified by the TV images and said she supported a ban on the supply of Australian cattle to rogue operators unwilling to meet international animal welfare standards, but argued that most abattoirs in Indonesia processing them already met those standards.
Throughout the suspension Marie faced radio, television and print media to expound the point of view of cattle families and the devastating impact on their lives and businesses. ‘Of course, we care about what happens to our cattle after they’ve left our care,’ she says. ‘We want to make sure the treatment of our livestock is improved, but we won’t do that by cutting off all ties with our customer. We need to be involved and working with them to lift standards. Australia is a world leader in livestock production and a lot of families, like ours, are dependent on that industry, and it’s important for us to work with developing countries to improve their systems.’
Marie Muldoon. (Photo by Chris Muldoon)
Today, with Chris out doing fencing chores, Marie is sitting teaching her daughter preschool – but from the property opposite Midway. Their cattle are still grazing quietly in their familiar paddocks and Chris and Marie are still looking after them, but the family were unable to refuse an offer in 2012 from the world’s largest producer of sandalwood for their land, especially with the proviso that their cattle could continue to have grazing rights for the next two years.
It’s all part of the grand Underwood dynasty succession plan, with Terry and John planning to retire to make way for the next generations of their family to forge their own paths in life. Riveren and Inverway have also been put up for sale, in a decision made by the whole family.
‘I guess years ago, we thought they’d always stay in the family, but as the family has grown, and more people have become involved, we all decided that was the best way to continue moving forward,’ says Marie, now aged 43. ‘We’re now five families – Mum and Dad; Michael and his wife Georgia and their kids; Patrick and Shona and their children; Chris and me and our children; and then Becky and Andrew and their kids in New South Wales. Mum and Dad need to retire and we’ve all decided together that this will be the best opportunity for us to restructure. It’s g
ut-wrenching to leave the properties and it will be sad to see them sold, but it’s also a very positive move for us all.
‘We all feel we’ve been blessed to have been a part of them for so long. They’re beautiful properties, we’ve got good cattle and while the live export market is difficult at the moment, there’s been a lot of progress since that initial ban. The future for our family and agriculture is challenging but with predicted food and water shortages looming, Northern Australian pastoralists understand their responsibility and ability to provide protein to neighbouring South-East Asia and other markets. I think we’ll all end up back on the land.’
Marie and Chris certainly hope to stay in the Outback with Jock, now five, Elizabeth, four, and two-year-old Isabella, be it with cattle or transport work. Terry and John have now just moved to an apartment in Darwin and will visit their family, wherever they might be, and perhaps do a little overseas travel with friends. ‘They are incredibly strong,’ says Marie. ‘They just amaze me with how tough and resilient they are. Dad’s always been a rock, and Mum is a rock too. She’s always been loyal, hard-working and loving. Mum is a fabulous grandmother to all our little ones. They all adore her.’
Terry, in turn, believes Marie will never be far from the land she’s grown to love. ‘She’s always had a strong connection and that will be lifelong,’ she says. ‘Leaving Riveren will be emotional for us all but a part of us will remain entrenched in that sacred place.’
As for herself, Marie doesn’t imagine she’ll ever be too far from her beloved Outback. ‘I feel like I’ve come a complete circle, from the land to the city and back on land again, bringing my own kids up here,’ she says. ‘I feel like I’ve seen the best of both worlds, and I’m more passionate than ever about the land.