Heidi Millership

Floods don’t guarantee water for stock in far western Queensland

When Queensland’s Heidi Millership takes to the skies as a pilot, she may see an abundance of feed, but knows it’s water that will determine stock numbers.

Her experience working in extensive cattle production including her current role near Windorah, has given her a first-hand understanding of the problem, but says the experience is the lens for the research rather than the scope of it.

In extensive beef businesses, water can be the limiting factor in turning available pasture into productive carrying capacity. She says making the most of a good season and an abundance of feed isn’t possible if water infrastructure isn’t capable of capturing, storing and distributing water effectively.

She’s passionate about finding solutions, on how producers decide what infrastructure they need for extensive beef operations, both in Australia and overseas.

Heidi will use her scholarship to address “How extensive beef businesses make practical decisions about water harvesting, storage and distribution to improve drought resilience.” That might mean bores, pipelines and troughs, or it could be dams that are built smarter and catch more water.

Her focus will be on countries with similar climates, like South Africa, or similar scale, like the United States and South America, aiming to return with a practical decision-making framework that helps businesses invest in water infrastructure that builds capacity and improves drought resilience.