In her 1999 emerald-green SUV, Ruby Buchanan travels around the New South Wales outback as a contract musterer. Yet musterer isn’t her only title — Ruby is also studying to become a lawyer.
The 24-year-old started contracting work after deciding to make the move from where she was studying in Armidale to Far West NSW.
“We’d just gone through two years of COVID, and I was kind of getting a bit restless at uni,” she said.
“I wanted to earn some more money and get back into it.”
Since then, with her kelpies, clothes, and swag all crammed into the back of her vehicle, Ruby has been flat-out juggling the demands of a full-time law degree while mustering on sheep and goat stations.
Forging a path in both industries, she says that it hasn’t all been easy trying to meet university deadlines while ensuring she is keeping her station employers happy.
“Sometimes it’s really stressful.
“I don’t want to say no to mustering jobs and I don’t want to put my studies on the backburner,” she said.
“Usually everything is quite back-to-back, it might be finishing a job and then racing back to town to finish an assignment.”
But as she works through the logistics of it all, the two industries are where her aspirations lie.
“I’m trying to make a path in both areas because I’m so passionate in both of them,” she says.
An unusual combination
When first starting as a contract musterer Ruby said that it was hard to get people to take her seriously.
“When I first rock up and I haven’t worked for them, everyone thinks I’m a backpacker who has no idea.
“Also, because I wear a lot of jewellery, I wear pink and I talk a bit differently to everyone else,” she said.
“But once we start working everything is good and everyone seems to be happy.
“You just have to push through that first day.”
Initially, having no network of contacts Ruby had to rely on Facebook advertisements and cold calling.
“Any job I could get, I just took.
“Back then I would just call people, anyone I remotely knew who maybe knew someone who had a station.”
Ruby said that people were often very “surprised” when they learnt of her background.
“Everyone is so taken aback when I say that I am studying law.
“The overlap is that it’s my passion, I love both so much and I don’t want to stop doing either.”
Forging a path
For most people, working one career is more than enough, but Ruby says balancing two passions isn’t always as challenging as people may think.
“I would say it’s so doable,” she said.
“If you’re open and honest about everything that’s going on, like I am with my teachers and with the people I work for.”
A university experience for most would include in-person tutorials and interactions with fellow students, but for Ruby, the ‘conventional’ way of studying isn’t something she misses.
“I don’t think I’d learn as much that way as I’d feel so forced to do it in that traditional environment,” she said.
Doing it remotely like this makes it more enjoyable.
“It makes it not like a chore that I have to do all the time.”
Grazier Rainie Weston, who has owned Marrapina station, 120km north of Broken Hill, since 1989, said finding staff in the agriculture industry had been particularly tough since the pandemic.
So, when Ruby reached out to a job advertisement at Marrapina, Ms Weston was optimistic but puzzled when she arrived with her unusual set-up.
“When she first pulled up, I thought, ‘Oh my god, we’ve got a hillbilly’, but she’s turned out good,” she said.
Ms Weston says that ever since Ruby started at Marrapina she has been an adaptable employee with a “really good work ethic”.
“With our type of family operation, she fills the role really well. She knows where to fit in.”
And since getting to know Ruby and learning of her desire to become a lawyer, Ms Weston said it made sense.
“I thought it was an unusual combination but as time went on, I could see how it all fits together.”
Once Ruby is finished with her studies, she hopes to continue contract mustering while pursuing a career with the Aboriginal legal service.
