Introduction

Rob McGavin is originally from a cattle and sheep farm near Barcaldine in Western Queensland. Rob recalls an early childhood like any other in the bush, until it was turned upside down when his mother Muriel died of breast cancer, aged 39. “We knew she was sick, but we didn’t know it was terminal,” Rob explains over a cuppa. “She and Dad decided it was best we didn’t know because of the anxiety it would create. So we just thought she was in hospital for a little bit, and then Dad came in one morning and said she had died.” Rob was eight, brother Tim was six and sister Sue was 10.

Rob McGavin (second from left) with his brother Tim, sister Sue and father Bob at Jubilee Park, Qld
(Source: Nathan Dyer)

“That was a huge shock, and it was awfully tough, but probably tougher on Dad than anyone,” Rob says, explaining how his father buried himself in work to cope with the loss. “Instead of going to bed,
he’d go down to the shed to organise the ute and sharpen the chainsaw and get stuff ready for the next day. He just threw himself into work.” As their father toiled through his grief, the siblings became
focused on pleasing him. “Often we’d muster a paddock in the morning, then get on the bus and go to school, and we’d come home and be taking away sheep in the dark,” Rob says. “We always wanted to
please him, out of respect.”

The community rallied to support the young family, with a school bus organised for the McGavin children and teachers offering to make their lunches and wash their uniforms. Family went above and beyond. Along with his maternal grandfather, Harry Smith, who would travel from Brisbane to spend weeks at a time helping out, their uncle Selwyn and aunty Judy Smith were an unwavering support. “They swapped their station, which was over 100 kilometres away, for Pegasus next-door to us, and moved there to support us kids and Dad, and I can never, ever be more thankful for that,” Rob says.

Although memories of his mother have faded with time, Rob says her spirit has always remained. “Mum was very religious, and just a beautiful soul,” he says quietly. “Her love was unconditional for everyone, and from her I’ve learnt that being nice to people is the greatest way to get the best outcome.”

Education

By the time Rob was sent off to boarding school in Brisbane he had resilience and a work ethic beyond his years. At school he learnt about the outside world, and it was there, in his final year at Churchie, that he heard about Geelong’s Marcus Oldham College and set his mind on one day attending.

First, though, there was a year back home working side by-side with his father and then a two-year stint in the Kimberley working for family friends Bruce and Sandy Gray, who were managing Liveringa Station, riding barely broken horses from dawn to dusk and chasing scrub bulls alongside good mate Willie Gray.

Breaking in a horse on Jubilee Park in 1988
(Source: Nathan Dyer)

Rob enrolled at Marcus Oldham when he returned to Jubilee Park, but had to wait another year to attend. The delay would turn out to be a blessing. During that year he travelled Europe with the Outback Barbarians, playing curtain-raisers to the Wallabies, and did his first business deal, buying 390 Brahman cattle for $90,000 – two-thirds of which he borrowed – and selling them a year later at a 50 percent profit. He also met his future wife, Kate Muller, while playing rugby at Muttaburra. “She was a governess, first year out of school, and I was 23,” Rob recalls. “I came off the rugby field after playing this mob of Kiwi shearers who were tough as buggery and I saw the most stunning woman and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” Rob says with a grin. The romance quickly blossomed but was put on hold for Kate to attend university in Armidale and Rob to head to Geelong.

By the time he arrived at Marcus Oldham, Rob had his first big business idea: Australian wine. “During the rugby trip with the Barbarians everyone was drinking Australian wine,” he says. “And I just kept thinking when I went to Marcus, there’s got to be money in wine.”

After graduating from Marcus Oldham in 1993, Rob McGavin decided to pursue a career in horticulture, and purchased a small vineyard in the Riverland of South Australia.

Employment & Training

For the first six years after leaving high school, he worked in the Kimberley, WA, on stations mustering, fencing, yard building, horse breaking, crutching and shearing.

(Source: Nathan Dyer)

Studying agribusiness gave him the inspiration to make the idea [of wine making] a reality and, the following year, he and Tim convinced their father to use Jubilee Park as security to buy a 14ha vineyard near Paringa, in the South Australian Riverland. Rob and Kate married soon afterwards, and over the next 10 years the brothers rolled out drip irrigation, planted new vines and expanded their holdings to 240ha. At the same time, the brothers were travelling back and forth to Jubilee Park to help their father, who had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Despite the illness, Rob says his old man remained defiant to the end. “It was a very painful terminal cancer and he was given two years to live, but he said, ‘You bastards won’t tell me when I’m going to die’,” Rob says. “He went for 12 years of six weeks on/six weeks off chemotherapy and radiotherapy and he had a morphine syringe driver in his pocket for the pain.” Bob McGavin died aged 60 in 2001.

When the McGavins sold the majority of their vineyard in 2003, Rob invested his share of the profits in his next idea: Australian olives. Although the wine venture was mostly about money, Rob wanted to farm something that would make people healthier. “And no food comes close to olive oil in the prevention of chronic disease because of the level and complexity of the antioxidants it contains,” he says.

Over three years, Rob and his business partner Paul Riordan raised $15 million, mostly from family and friends, to fund 200ha of olive tree plantings at Boundary Bend, in northern Victoria. They researched everything there was to know about olives, pioneered mechanical harvesting, built processing plants and became the most efficient producers of extra virgin olive oil in the country, at one stage producing 25% of the nation’s olive oil from just 2.5% of the country’s trees.

In 2007, they took on a contract to manage 2700ha of trees owned by managed investment scheme Timbercorp. “At the time Timbercorp had 20% of Australia’s olives and they were producing about 3% of the nation’s olive oil, so they asked us to come and manage for them,” Rob says. When Timbercorp collapsed in 2009, the business partners were left with no option but to keep farming the trees in the hope of recovering the hundreds of thousands owed in unpaid management fees. Two years later, after an intense and often aggressive period of corporate negotiations, Boundary Bend raised another $20 million and bought out all 6500ha of Timbercorp’s plantations and set about rebuilding the failed agribusiness.

Today, Boundary Bend has an annual turnover of more than $100 million, manages 6500ha of Australia’s plantations – totalling 2.5 million trees, about 19% of the nation’s olive plantings – and produces more than 65% of the country’s olive oil. Along with being the world’s most efficient processor, the company is recognised as producing some of the world’s healthiest extra virgin olive oil, consistently taking out Best in Class awards at the prestigious New York International Olive Oil Competition.

YouTube: Cobram Estate | Hojiblanca and Picual Extra Virgin Olive Oil
https://youtu.be/Q2pvOTlZBf0

Asked if he ever considered giving up, Rob’s reply is emphatic. “Never, ever,” he says. “Because I had all my friends’ and family’s money in it, and I knew this was going to be an amazing business, because the product quality was brilliant, the cost of production was amazing, it was just that a lot things had gone wrong. In hindsight, these amazing people backed two guys to achieve something when we didn’t even know what we didn’t know about olives, and they took a big risk. I am forever grateful for the loyalty shown by those investors.”

Tim McGavin says his brother’s success is well deserved and has a lot to do with his balance of drive and empathy. “Rob’s always been very competitive, and he’s always had a sense of duty, and a great moral compass,” Tim says. “And he has a unique willingness to walk away from something no matter how good it is if it’s compromising what he believes in.”

According to Selwyn Smith, Rob has always been inquisitive. “Right from a young age, he always wanted to try to work things out,” he says. “He always asked a lot of questions of his father and others when he was a kid and I think that’s a pretty good sign.” Selwyn says despite the setbacks in his life, Rob has always shown kindness to others. “He’s just a really good person and I’m pretty proud to call him my nephew.”

The first oil of the season comes off the press
(Source: Business Insider)

Experiences & Opportunities

It’s been years since the company was established, and Mr McGavin said his role has changed dramatically. “Day to day, my role is exploring opportunities for new or existing businesses, and talking to staff based in Australia and overseas, trying to help them with problem solving, or strategies, or whatever,” Mr McGavin said.

Links

Cobram Estate	Red Island
Olive Oil Times 6 October 2010	Oil Man by Nathan Dyer [PDF]

YouTube: The Story of Cobram Estate
https://youtu.be/y5sNl7bTDkg

YouTube: First Harvest - Cobram Estate
https://youtu.be/dZdxcgLvFuA

YouTube: Rob McGavin explains why you should buy Australian.
https://youtu.be/NjctjsYvLVg