A CHALLENGING and versatile environment and having an office on-farm rather than in the city are key attractions for Kerrie-anne Hughes in helping to run a livestock business.
Mrs Hughes is the Westbrook Agriculture finance manager, a family business owned by her parents near Loxton.
The farming operation involves cattle feedlotting, transport, pastoral (station property), broadacre cropping, pivot irrigation and a large lamb feedlot with a capacity of 45,000 lambs.
Thirteen years ago after the birth of her first child, Mrs Hughes was offered a part-time book-keeping job by her parents.
"At the time I lived in Yankalilla so I commuted to Loxton once a month for a week to do bookwork," she said.
"In 2008 my husband Jason and I sold our real estate business in Normanville and moved to Loxton.
"I commenced working on a full-time basis as the workload had increased quite significantly and Jason was studying to be a paramedic."
Mrs Hughes works on an almost full-time basis with the help of an assistant.
Her role includes book-keeping, payroll, cashflow projections and management, preparing taxation records, assisting in funding requirements, maintaining stock, grain and trucking records and creditor-debtor management.
She balances her workload with her role as mum to Erin, 13, Zoe, 10, and Abbey, 6.
Mrs Hughes attended Loxton's primary and high schools then went on to Flinders University where she completed an economics degree.
She is not the only woman working for the business with five others in the team including an administration assistant, a full-time farmhand, a casual farm hand and rousabout, a wool classer and a shearer's cook.
To survive and thrive in what is traditionally a male-dominated industry, Mrs Hughes said one could not be a princess.
"You need to tolerate swearing," she joked. "It smells a lot and there are a lot of flies and dust.
"You need to be fairly tolerant and thick-skinned with a good sense of humour.
"With financial institutions and stock firms, another fairly male-dominated industry, they are sometimes surprised when a woman is on the other end of the phone.
"So you need to be forthright and confident in your ability, especially when dealing with large organisations."
Mrs Hughes says one benefit of having more women around is "improved language in the office".
"The office runs a lot more efficiently," she said.
"I am naturally self-motivated, have a love of working with figures and being a high-achiever, so whether male or female doing my job, I think it is more to do with personality than the sex."
General challenges included the "enormous" amount of paperwork.
"There is a lot of it, so making sure information from the stock agents-markets is correct and that we have all the paperwork we need is important, as it usually goes through a few channels," she said.
"Regulation requirements and paperwork can be challenging, especially with 100,000 lambs a year going through the feedlot.
"There are also a lot of levies which need to be paid."
