Northern Territory cattle producer Fiona McBean remembers the day she and her husband Peter Cogill decided to have a crack at running their own abattoir.
“Peter was off contract mustering, I was home alone, and we’d run out of our own beef,” she said.
“I went to a major supermarket and bought some mince … and it wasn’t great.
“Pete came home and we looked at each other and said, ‘What is this? What are we doing? Surely there’s a demand in Darwin for beef that tastes like beef.'”
The couple soon bought a property 100 kilometres south of Darwin called Old Cameron Downs and started up their own boutique abattoir called Eva Valley Meats.
The abattoir and business has just celebrated its 10th anniversary.
Starting out
Eva Valley Meats faced plenty of challenges in the early days, including convincing people that Top End cattle could be tasty.
When ABC Rural visited the abattoir in 2016 after it had completed its first few kills, Ms McBean said there was a huge misconception that Bos Indicus cattle from northern Australia did not taste as good as Bos Taurus breeds in southern Australia.
“I find it amazing that there’s still such a strong theory amongst the general population that Bos Indicus cattle are a lesser [tasting] animal, and it’s just completely untrue,” Ms McBean said.
Fiona McBean in 2016, showing ABC Rural beef processed in the new abattoir at Old Cameron Downs. (ABC Rural: Lisa Herbert)
Speaking to ABC Rural in 2026, Ms McBean said it did not take long for demand to take off.
“Pete processed those first few animals, and I reckon within three months we needed a full-time butcher because we couldn’t keep up with the amount of demand coming our way,” she said.
“We’ve got so many repeat customers now, which I think proves we can deliver a beautiful carcass.”
The family is still running a herd of mostly Senepol-Brahman-cross cattle and is also processing buffalo from the region.
Going the distance
There have been a lot of abattoirs come and go in northern Australia over the last 100 years, including the AACo abattoir near Darwin, which started at almost the same time as Eva Valley Meats, but only lasted three years before being mothballed.
Eva Valley Meats is a much smaller operation, processing about 15 to 20 animals a week, compared to the AACo facility, which had a capacity to process 1,000 animals a day.
But Mr Cogill and Ms McBean agree that a Top End abattoir reaching the 10-year mark is a milestone worth celebrating.
“We’re still here 10 years later because we’ve matched supply to demand,” Ms McBean said.
“Others have gone too big and perhaps should have started small and worked their way up.”
Looking ahead, the couple said they wanted to get better, not necessarily bigger.
“We want to keep doing the same thing, but better,” they said
“From breeding to packaging, it’s not about being bigger for the sake of being bigger, but if we can see a new market and chase it then we can grow, but being continuously better is what we’re about.”
Using all of the animal
Eva Valley Meats tries to utilise every bit of the carcass from “nose to tail”, which has created an opportunity for the abattoir’s apprentice butcher, Rebecca Francis.
Ms Francis has started her own business, using tallow from the abattoir to create lip balms and other skincare products.
“We like to utilise everything from an animal, so having the suet, which is the fat that surrounds the kidney of a beef animal, is very nutrient-dense and has a lot of potential to be used in skin care, cooking and many other things,” she said.
“So I started harvesting the fat from carcasses and have started my own little offshoot business.”
Ms Francis said tallow was “liquid gold” and she often got requests from local restaurants who wanted tallow for their deep fryers.
“Unfortunately for them, when you harvest suet from an animal you only get a few kilograms, so we’d need to do more to fill all of the deep fryers of the NT.”
Rebecca Francis has been turning tallow into skin care products. (Supplied: Territory Tallow)
More Territory beef on the menu
Despite being known for its vast cattle industry, the Northern Territory spent decades not having any local beef for sale in its restaurants, butcher shops and supermarkets, with Top End cattle primarily bred for the live export trade.
Eva Valley has been changing that over the last 10 years, and there are other businesses now joining the menu.
Products from the nearby Rum Jungle abattoir are available in some butcher shops.
The remote abattoir at Gunbalanya in west Arnhem Land provides beef and buffalo to its loyal customers.
Meanwhile, a family associated with a boutique abattoir in the Katherine region is about to launch its own steakhouse in Darwin this month, which will serve locally produced and processed beef.
“It’s exciting to be at the forefront and seeing others get involved,” Ms McBean said.
“We don’t own the market; there’s room for more [NT beef].
“It goes back to what I said in 2016; Bos Indicus [meat] is absolutely on par with beef from down south, and it can be sold in a steakhouse.”
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