By Jenel Hunt
Bill Gross’s whole life has been cattle.
Well, family and cattle and cricket, to be a little more exact, but cattle have taken up most of his working life. And before it, too.
He has lived and breathed it since he was a kid. And even though he’s looking down the barrel of his 85th birthday, the cattle patriarch of the family still loves it enough to brave a bit of travel and the heat of one of Stanthorpe Show’s hottest days in the hope that he would be there in person just in case he got to hear that his grandson Ben Gross had taken out the Grand Champion Grain Fed Beast of the show.
He did.
“He’s a chip off the old block,” said the proud grandfather.
Some people call the Grosses ‘cattle royalty’ in Warwick, and that description is clearly not far off the mark. Bill is the Patron of the Warwick Show and Rodeo Society and has been a member of the organisation for 58 years. Prime cattle was always his main section of interest and he worked hard to build it up over the years. He also helped out at the prime lamb section for a while. Plus he ran the cattle carcase competition for 50 years. That competition stopped about four years ago during the drought and hasn’t got going again.
Bill has had a long and illustrious history with cattle and his family is carrying on the tradition.
“We’ve been coming to the show for three generations – coming for 40 years – and winning awards too.”
He remembers ‘cleaning up’ everything in 1992 in Stanthorpe with a Grand Champion beast and first place in the carcase competition as well. He has many happy memories from other shows too – Grand Champion Led Steer at the Brisbane Ekka against 300 other entries, Champion Pen of Six for poll hereford at Toowoomba Royal Show in 1969, Champion Carcase at the Rockhampton Show and a Grand Champion there in 2000.
“Cattle has been me life,” he said.
Nancy, his bride of more than 60 years, gets a big thank you from Bill because she has been ‘the backbone of the establishment’.
Bill and Nancy live in town, but there’s still 1000 acres to their name and Bill goes out ‘occasionally’ … by which he means, most days.
And the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in this family. Sons Howard and Angus have carved their own path in cattle.
They have Gross Wholesale Meats, plus Angus has developed his own property at Mountain Station at Graymere. Howard and his son Ben – the one who did so well at the show! – run Risdon Park Feedlot as well as doing a lot of the work on the senior Gross property because as Bill describes it, “I’m getting a bit steady.” And a bit unsteady too, which you’re allowed at nearly 85.
Daughter Kim lives on a sheep property west of Warwick and their other daughter Linda is a journalist with the Queensland Country Life.
“They’ve all stayed in the country. I’m proud of them all. Howard’s son Ben is 22 and he has already been involved for a long time.”
Bill said he could remember his own passion for cattle from childhood when his father and uncle had cattle in Maryvale.
“I can remember being 12 and wagging school for a fortnight when we drove a mob of weaners to the McDougall weaner sale all the way from our Maryvale property. McDougall Saleyards were located where the Horse and Jockey Hotel now stands,” he said.
“It’s all I ever wanted to do. That and drive trucks. I was mad on driving trucks when I was a young fellow.”
He had his chance to tick that off his bucket list too. It was during the 1957 drought and it was so tough to make ends meet that he went to work for Frasers Transport driving cattle trucks for his uncle, Charlie Fraser. That saved him then, and in another more recent drought, the family feedlot kept them going.
Bill’s cattle career led him into limousins then he crossed them with angus cows from about 1992 – the dates can be a bit hard to keep straight – and he said his crossbreeding program had led to a big boom in his career. He summarised his lifetime with cattle in three short sentences.
“It don’t just happen. You have to know what you’re doing. You’ve got to have good breeders and good bulls.”
So, to get back to Bill’s passions – family, cattle and cricket. We’ve touched on the first two and haven’t really said much about the cricket side of the story. In a nutshell, he started playing cricket as a young’un. Back in the day, he used to ride to school on his pony; 14 miles a day. He remembers playing cricket at school He only ever went to one school – Maryvale. And at home he even made his own cricket pitch.
One of the highlights of his cricket ‘career’ was when he was playing an A Grade match and opening the bowing at Warwick. In his first over, he got three brothers out.
“I was a fair bowler in my day,” he said modestly.
Later he and Nancy supported the sport of cricket in so many ways, including taking a team of Under 16 Warwick Junior Cricketers to New Zealand in 1988.
“And I’ll tell you how they thanked us – they put me in the New Zealand team to play in the Golden Oldies in Canada. I was about 54 then. There were 40 teams from all over the world. I didn’t make many runs, but that’s one of the highlights of my life.”
These days, he’s an even more of a golden oldie, content for the torch of ambition to be carried by his children and their children.
“I’ve had a wonderful life. A happy life,” he said.
