REGGIE Tomkins can remember buying a pen of cows and calves in the high country for $31.
The veteran stock agent from Benambra has ridden the peaks and troughs of the East Gippsland livestock industry since starting out just before the cattle market took the tumble of a century.
"I started just before the big crash in 1974," Mr Tomkins said.
"It happened in '74 and just got worse until '78, and then about 1980 it gradually started to come good again.
"Steer calves made $38 one year here, that was the top price. And it took a really good fat cow to make $40 – it's hard to believe but it's true."
Now 81 and verging on retirement, Mr Tomkins is a well known figure in the High Country.
He notched up over 400 games at the Benambra Football Club, including a good stint as captain-coach, and was an active member of many community organisations.
Mr Tomkins and his wife Norma still run a small number of Hereford cattle and superfine Merino sheep at their Benambra property, which overlooks a currently-parched lake.
The pair can remember looking on as a speed boat regatta was held in the lake in years with enough rainfall to fill the bowl a few metres high.
But a lot has changed since then, including the climate, according to Mr Tomkins.
"With the top steer calves back when I started, the first row would weigh 300 to 350 kilograms. Now, the top steer calves would go between 350-400kg, and that's because of better genetics, better feeding and earlier calving," Mr Tomkins said.
And he had seen the colour palette change too.
"Twenty-five years ago you'd hardly see a black calf anywhere in Gippsland, and now there's just as many blacks as there are Herefords," Mr Tomkins said.
Getting the cattle off the mountain has also evolved in his time.
"One of the greatest changes is the rate at which they shift them after a sale, with the advent of B-doubles," Mr Tomkins said.
"Years ago we'd have to hold the cattle for a week sometimes, but nowadays they get rid of the cattle in two or three days."
The annual calf sales have also expanded their client base since starting about 75 years ago.
Mr Tomkins recalls in recent good years the air strips at Benambra and Omeo routinely landed light aircraft of cattlemen hailing from countryside far removed from East Gippsland's iconic mountains.
"It's only been in the last 15 years or so people have started to come from interstate really," he said.
While 2014 didn't see a many cattle go north, recent rain in NSW and Queensland may see the alpine airstrips come online again this year.
