The Steward

In this episode of Stockyard Sessions, Victoria Lawrance sits down with Andrew Mosely, who runs Etiwanda Station near Cobar, New South Wales, a 50,000-acre operation in the Western Division that his family has called home since 1949. When Andrew returned to Etiwanda in the late 1990s, he inherited a landscape that had been pushed hard. Soil that barely held water, scrub encroachment, a collapsing wool industry, and a business that wasn't set up to survive the decade ahead. Guided by the principles of holistic management and a growing understanding of soil health, Andrew began reshaping Etiwanda from the ground up. Over the following decades, alongside his wife Megan and their daughters Emily and Jess, he rebuilt the property around rest and recovery, fencing infrastructure, and a deliberately diverse livestock mix of White Dorpers, goats and Red Angus cattle. The result: carrying capacity more than doubled, perennial grasses returned, and a system that can now grow cattle feed in the same rainfall event where neighbouring properties struggle to produce sheep pick. "It is fragile country, but it just needs the right management and it responds." The conversation covers what it really took to turn that landscape around: the role of fencing, the logic behind running three livestock enterprises, how epigenetics is shaping their breeding decisions, and why Andrew sees soil carbon not as a distraction but as a natural extension of what they've been doing all along. Andrew also reflects on what it means to be a custodian of country. The droughts, the hard decisions, and what keeps you going when the land is tough. His answer is as honest as you'd expect. This podcast is brought to you by Atlas Ag, the team behind Atlas Carbon and Atlas Grazing. Find out more at atlasag.com