INSTEAD of buying feed during the devastating drought last decade, Riverina couple Ian and Camilla Shippen decided to buy properties.
From an outsider's perspective the Shippens admit increasing their debt load at a time of climatic uncertainty might have seemed crazy, but on closer inspection it appears to have been a stroke of brilliance.
They have emerged from the drought with a bigger flock than before and increased the size of their aggregation.
The Shippens are woolgrowers based at Liewah, Moulamein, NSW.
They run about 45,000 Merino ewes across an aggregation of properties at Moulamein and Wagga Wagga covering 97,000 hectares.
"It was cheaper for us to buy country and pay interest on it than actually buy grain and pay agistment," Mr Shippen said.
"We just basically bought more properties and spread our stock thinly to try to mongrel through it.
"It was lucky, we took some risks... but we had lots of sleepless nights.
"We wanted to come out of it at the other end; we had too much debt to sell down and restart.
"It sounds ridiculous but we couldn't afford the luxury of saying 'righto, we're going to cut back to 10,000 ewes and rebuild afterwards'.
"We hit the ground running when the drought finished. That drought could have broken us if we didn't come up with something out of left field, and that's what we did."
The Shippens bought Barton Station at Ararat and Pine Park near Wellington, NSW, to keep their flock alive during the drought.
At the peak of the drought, they completely destocked one of their core properties 43,700ha Baldon at Moulamein and were keeping lambs alive by trucking them to Pine Park.
They have now sold Barton to Hassad Australia and Pine Park to a neighbour.
While Banyandah Pastoral's focus is now almost entirely wool and prime lambs, when Mr Shippen first took ownership of the home block Banyandah, Moulamein, from his father John in the 1990s, the focus was intensive irrigation.
The Shippens lived on the 1700ha Banyandah, where they grew 1000ha of rice, for a couple of years before they married in 1996.
They then bought the 8000ha Chah Sing, where they lived until moving to Liewah on the banks of the Edward River two years ago.
Mr Shippen said now they only used their water allocations for pasture irrigation, as cropping did not allow enough security.
As they bought new properties to increase the aggregation in the past decade, they had traded water, he said.
"We bought and sold a lot of water and it kept our heads above water financially," he said. "We've done a lot of that, buying country and selling water off and using a part of your operation that was a capital cost, converting that to income and making the water a variable cost in your operation on a temporary basis."
So Mr Shippen who ran a sheep contracting business in the 1980s and 90s before taking over Banyandah went into sheep.
The Shippens started with a flock of 2000 ewes from long-time wool classer Bob Simpson, who has been instrumental in helping the Shippens grow and develop.
Mr Shippen said he was not beholden to any stud and was focused on breeding heavy-cutting sheep.
"Our biggest priority is wool cut; we've just got to have wool cut," he said.
"We've ducked down that track of lots of wool and hopefully it pays off. You do what's best in your country, and this is good wool-growing country.
"We wanted some security in the operation. Every day I wake up I know we've cut another six or seven bales of wool."
The Shippens have created a name selling their wool under the Bundy label taken from one of their properties, Bundyulum-blah at Moulamein but Mr Shippen wants to improve the genetics even further.
They have now taken a back-seat role in the day-to-day management of the operation, appointing David Wilson to manage their Moulamein country and Derk Meurs to manage the 5000ha Wagga Wagga aggregation called The Pinnacles.
The Shippens own The Pinnacles in partnership with Mr Shippen's brother Malcolm and his wife Siobhan. The drought drained the couple.
"I just found our workload was getting too much, we were getting exhausted," Mr Shippen said.
"That's why we've moved down here (to Liewah). It just gives us time to have a look at our business, rather than working in it all the time."
Mr Shippen, 46, is determined to retire at 60 and wants to have enough country to break up for children Will, 15, Emma, 13, and James, 10, if they're interested in farming, or sell if they're not.
