Silverton Goats depot owner's outback ingenuity

When there was no competition for selling goats in Broken Hill, he started his own depot on his station Belmont, a 48562 hectare (120,000 acre) property at Silverton.

But that's not the only form of ingenuity he's used to diversify his farming operation.

Mr Blore is constantly adapting with the fickle nature of the extreme weather conditions that occur in the arid outback terrain from the prolonged droughts to flooding rains.

He's also a Merino producer, goat harvester, tourism operator and civil construction contractor, and he's been a contract muster, fencer, crutcher and kangaroo shooter.

But Mr Blore started the Silverton Goats Depot in 2014 because he was looking for a revenue stream that would "not steal" from his father's general production on Belmont, and could then sustain two families on the property.

"With many people harvesting goats in the area, there was a need for more competition to where they could sell them," he said.

"We began a pick up service that was lacking in the area, so we had four of us working as it got busier where we would pick up 100 to 500 goats at a time to make up a load."

At the time, Mr Blore had paddocks to store the goats so he didn't have to feed them hay and the operation just grew from there.

They now source goats in a 400km radius around Broken Hill, north to Tibooburra, east to White Cliffs and as far south as Mildura and west to the South Australian border.

He buys goats from producers at an average liveweight price, which are brought to the depot where they are drafted into billies, nannies and underweights.

He currently runs 3000 Merino sheep and is undertaking exclusion fencing of his property's boundary.

"That is to run whatever species is most profitable at the time," Mr Blore said.

"Our type of country doesn't hang on through the drought.

"If you don't have good vegetation cover, the wind causes massive soil erosion with the dust storms we have here.

"You need to be able to destock quickly and restock quickly. So I'm not looking at classing and building a herd I fall in love with."

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In 2017, when the Silverton Wind Farm was being built, Mr Blore started a civil construction company as another revenue stream in the drought.

"We started it as we are so reliant on the weather here, we had some of the gear like most stations and it grew from there with water trucks, graders, flat top trucks and loader excavation equipment," he said.

He was able to scale up to nine employees in that period.

In 2021, the organisers of the Birdsville Big Red Bash approached Mr Blore to allow access to hold a similar event on the Mundi Mundi Plains near Broken Hill.

With two successful events now completed, Mr Blore has now signed a contract to host the Mundi Mundi Bash on his property for a further five years.

This year's event, which will see close to 12,000 intrepid travelers rock the iconic red earth plains in August has already been sold out.

Then in May 2022, some of the movie Mad Max 5 : Furiosa was filmed on Mr Blore's station, starring Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy. It is due for release in 2024.

Where to next? Mr Blore simply says "it's time to have a rest and wait for the next opportunity, something will come up, it always does."