Tag: fred brophy

Beaver Brophy is propped up beside an open campfire with no distractions but a glimmering sky, lazy conversation, and the intermittent grunt of a well-nourished camel named Barry.

“You can actually see the stars out here,” she says.

“I can’t stay in the city for too long. I need to get out.”

Brettlyn Neal, as she’s named on her birth certificate, has a CV that reads like a handful of darts thrown at a careers handbook.

She’s been a jillaroo, personal security guard to rock star Pink, political candidate, youth worker, bush cook, Australian representative rugby league player, and currently works as self-described personal assistant to Pauline Hanson.

The 38-year-old is best known as a travelling tent boxer with leg hairs so sharp “they could spear a rat”, but by a quirk of fate she can now add the title of champion camel jockey to her life story.

Desert destiny

Beaver has just pulled into town for the Boulia Camel Races – the Melbourne Cup of the dromedary derby circuit, somewhere between Mount Isa and Birdsville in the western Queensland outback.

She already won the coveted Bedourie Camel Bash cup a week earlier, and before the month is done she will have scored a silver medal and beaten Makybe Diva’s rider in a camel race in Boulia, and been named most successful jockey at the Winton Camel Races.

Not bad for someone who only got on the back of a camel through a chance encounter.

“A couple of years back I was actually fighting in the Brophy tent, and I fought against a jockey,” she explains.

“She thanked me for not hurting her too much because she was riding [the next day].”

Intrigued, Beaver moseyed down to her opponent’s camp to find out more about this camel racing malarky.

That’s where she met Rod Sansom, a veteran cameleer who runs Oakfield Ranch at Anna Bay, near Newcastle, in NSW.

They were peas in a pod.

Beaver’s bumpy ride

It’s almost a week since the Boulia Races when Rod Sansom gives his version of events.

He’s just pulled up outside Winton with Beaver in hot pursuit behind the wheel of his second camel truck.

“She definitely puts some enthusiasm into the camp,” he says.

“I’d love to have the energy she has.

“I do a lot of stuff, but she’s just willing to give everything a go.

“That’s what people don’t want to do these days – but if you want to be good at something, you’ve got to give it your best shot.”

Rod recalls a couple of years ago at the Bedourie Camel Bash when a strange-named stranger strolled into his camp and started asking questions.

“We said, ‘How about we put you on a camel, just to try it?’,” he remembers.

“And she got pretty competitive up there.”

The weekend wound up and they went their separate ways.

Rod returned to his camel ranch and Beaver landed a job as an electorate officer with Senator Pauline Hanson, whom she met during her unsuccessful 2020 Queensland election campaign for One Nation in the seat of Cook.

But once the stink of an outback camel’s urine-soaked flanks burrows deep into one’s snout, it can be very difficult to forget.

Cabin fever in capital

Beaver loves her new job, even if it means spending more time in the city than she would like.

Running after a federal senator invariably requires an element of hobnobbing with the political class in Brisbane and Canberra — a long way from the Aboriginal community Doomadgee on Cape York, where she’s spent recent years working in the local youth hub between fights.

“Not that I ever thought I would be in the political arena, but helping people is definitely a passion of mine …” she says.

The stars were aligned, and the reek of camel was thick in the air.

Rod and the team from Oakfield Ranch heard their mate Beaver was keen to ride and decided to put her to the test.

“It’s not easy. Not everyone can do it,” Rod says.

Rough and ready

Beaver scored her spot in Australia’s only remaining boxing tent while working security at the Birdsville Races.

She entered the ring as a challenger and scored a draw on the first night, then came back the next night with a win.

When she turned up for a third night, legendary tent boxing promoter Fred Brophy told her, “You work for me now.”

So began the legend of her rat-skewering leg hairs, as frequently spruiked by Fred in the moments before combat.

That was more than a decade ago, and during that time she has only lost two of her 278 fights. She has also played rugby league for Australia and rugby union for England – both her parents are British – although there was little sponsorship for women’s team sport in the early-2000s.

“I had to pay to represent my country,” Beaver says.

“It’s great to see that it’s become a professional sport.”

It all adds up to someone with a huge competitive spirit, and the athleticism to back it up.

“I like to try anything twice, just in case the first time was a bad experience,” she says.

When she pulled on the red and blue diamond-chequered racing silks for the first time, Beaver was always going to give it a hundred per cent.

Lo and behold, she won the cup in Bedourie with $3,000 prize money to help Oakfield with the fuel money – and notched up podium finishes in both Boulia and Winton over the following two weekends.

A vet was on site at the events as is protocol and no animals were injured during the events.

“And I beat a three-time Melbourne Cup-winning jockey in a race – not too many people can say that,” Beaver says.

“[Makybe Diva rider] Glen Boss’s camel didn’t want to go for him.”

Rod quietly hopes she might be back next year – and something in her post-race reflections suggests his wish might be granted.

“I honestly would not have got to see as much as I have throughout Queensland if I hadn’t been part of these things like the Brophy tent and camel racing,” she says.

“It’s definitely an honour.”

But for now it’s goodbye to her breakneck beast of burden, who emits a parting grunt and a flatulent farewell to his strange new stablemate.

She’ll be back.

With the pungent ghost of Barry’s musk earning compound interest in her olfactory memory bank, how could she possibly resist?