Growing up on her family’s irrigation farm in Finley, it is no surprise Gabrielle has devoted her life to agriculture, water policy and contributing to the water conversation that has enveloped the area for the past few decades.
Recently appointed to the Murray Irrigation Limited (MIL) board, Gabrielle has had a diverse career in agriculture, spanning the breadth of Australia.
Her successful career aside, she cites being close to family and growing food and fibre as the two things that are most important to her.
After initially starting a degree in computer science, Gabrielle soon realised she didn’t want to spend her career behind a computer screen, and enrolled in an Associate Diploma in Applied Science (Wool Marketing) at the Melbourne Wool School (now RMIT).
“There were a number of options I thought of taking at this stage in my life, but I chose to go down the wool marketing avenue because of my grandparents Lochie and Betty Brunt," she explained.
"I’d spent a lot of time with them on Coree Station between Jerilderie and Conargo, and sheep and wool became a great passion for me.”
After completing her diploma, Gabrielle took on a trainee position at Wesfarmers Dalgety as a wool technical officer, then moved to Jamestown in South Australia as a wool area manager.
“This was an incredibly eye-opening experience," she said.
"Hundreds of kilometres from home and building relationships with farmers from across outback South Australia was a great adventure.
"The trust my clients showed in me to assist market their wool, using new marketing tools and assisting with clip preparation highlighted to me the importance of listening and being available.”
After two years travelling around South Australia as a wool area manager, valuer and auctioneer, Gabrielle returned to the Riverina as the deputy director of the Ricegrowers Association.
“RGA was a completely different opportunity for me, but it utilised and honed my communication skills and opened my eyes to the world of farmer advocacy," she said.
"Of course, I always loved agriculture and was proud of what we do, but the work of advocates in their attempts to create an appropriate economic and regulatory framework for farmers to get on with the job of farming was exciting and valuable."
After meeting her husband Mark, Gabrielle moved to Brisbane, where she used her time to undertake further education, including completing a Masters in Business Administration and upskilling as a farm succession facilitator.
After years of a rewarding career working in several other agricultural fields including financial education in Brisbane, grain protection in Western Australia and as a succession planning facilitator in NSW, the opportunity arose for Gabrielle and Mark to return to the family farm at Logie Brae with their sons Max and Jock. It is from here that Gabrielle relaunched herself back into the world of water advocacy.
“Water is the lifeblood of our region and to see perverse outcomes from poor policy was infuriating my family and I, so I decided to put my skills and experience to use and started going to water meetings."
Appointed chair of Southern Riverina Irrigators (SRI) in 2017, she is proud to have been part of the Basin-wide lobby for the 605 gigalitres of SDLAM projects that has significantly reduced the amount of water that will be purchased by the federal government in buybacks.
Through relationships built during her time at SRI, Gabrielle was selected to be a panellist for the then Department of Agriculture, Water & Environment to participate in the allocation of funding to environmental projects throughout the basin.
She says this provided her valuable insight into "what other stakeholders want to achieve for our waterways and the innovative ways it can be done”.
Water use innovation is indeed a deep-rooted concept for Gabrielle, which harks back to the first time she saw a lateral move irrigator in action on her family farm when she was just 11 years old.
"It was incredibly exciting and weird looking at the same time," she recalled.
"It used around 30 per cent less water than flood irrigation which meant we could use that water on 30 per cent more land thereby improving efficiency and productivity per megalitre.
"The irrigator was quite a novelty for some time, but now lateral and pivot irrigators are common through the region.
"All irrigators want to achieve maximum efficiency in what we do; some use laser levelling and some use overhead or drip tape irrigation. It's innovation that sees us continue to thrive in our challenging environment.”
Gabrielle has recently been awarded a scholarship to attend the Australian Institute of Company Directors ‘foundations of directorship’ course in Canberra.
“Being a director comes with significant responsibilities and challenges that we don’t really appreciate until we are in the role," she said.
"Our region needs Murray Irrigation to be led by a board who completely understand and respect their governance duties and I’m committed to doing everything I can to ensure our organisation is stable and sustainable for future generations of irrigators.”
