Gumboots were in hot demand and so were cattle as restocking activity ramped-up at the sodden Longreach saleyards on Friday morning.
More than 2000 cattle from Australian Green Properties went under the hammer, with steer prices topping at a strong 314.2 c/kg and heifers topping at 244.2 c/kg.
There was strong local interest from beef producers around Winton and Julia Creek on the back of floods earlier this year and a good soaking from Ex-Tropical Cyclone Trevor.
Luke Scales from Landmark Russell, which represented Australian Green Properties in the sale, said steers had averaged a pleasing $665 a head and heifers averaged around $480 a head.
The sale had cleared 2100 cattle in just under an hour, he said.
Landmark's Andrew Holt said there was strong competition for quality cattle.
"There was strong competition from the Winton area predominantly, some cattle went locally to Longreach and a few cattle went over to Julia Creek," he said.
"We are very pleased with the result. Today's steers topped at 314.2 cents, which was well above expectations, and heifers topped at 244.2 cents, which was also above expectations."
Steers were sourced from Australian Green's Murray Downs property in the Northern Territory, while the heifers had come from Epenarra Station near Tennant Creek.
The cattle were in good condition despite the wet weather creating a challenging environment at the yards in the lead-up to the sale, Mr Holt said.
"With the recent rain, although people won't be able to get cattle in straight away, there is a tremendous compensatory gain. There's plenty of upside.
"These cattle have well been looked after."
While last week's Longreach store sale drew the attention of lot feeders and backgrounders from other parts of the state, Friday's sale was notable for the strong interest from local producers.
Tom Brodie of Brodie Agencies in Winton and Boyd Curran from Landmark Western were two of the notable buyers at the sale.
Mr Curran said he had picked up about 370 steers for a client north of Winton.
"They were very good buying. The cattle are in light store condition and there's a huge compensatory weight gain that you'll get out of them," he said.
The strong prices at Longreach on Friday were indicative of a cattle market that was starting to bounce back, Mr Curran said.
"I still think that if we can get widespread rain, particularly down in NSW and Victoria, that this is only the start of where the market is going to get to.
"What we are seeing is a recovery in the market. Prices today were 15 to 20 cents dearer than last week."
Mr Curran said it was tremendous to see local producers buying stock after a tough eight years of drought.
"Blackall, Longreach and Winton have done it tough over the past eight years, so to get a very significant rain event is going to be good for the whole region," he said.
"We've had such a tough time. I'm hoping that now the rain has started, we'll start to see a return to normal seasons, and we'll end up with people at full production and the economies in our region will boom as a result."
