Elma (Girlie) Goody
RGGS student 1954-1956
Girlie Goody is a pioneering female grazier, a legend in the Queensland Beef Industry, who has run her beef cattle property solo for the past 45 years. In outback Queensland, she is a bit of a farming legend.
Girlie’s property, Malakoff, is a 3200-hectare tract of land at Mungungo on the western side of the Great Dividing Range. It was virgin forest when her father, Hector, selected it in 1928. He cleared a pad, built a basic house, and with his wife, Dorrie, set about filling it with children. Girlie was the fifth of six. Born Elma Joyce, she was the only girl, which is perhaps how she earned her moniker.
When her father passed away in 1976, ‘Malakoff’ was left to Girlie and her brother. They decided one would have to buy the other out. However, the banks refused to give Girlie Goody a loan to buy the family farm because she was a single woman.
But Girlie wouldn’t take no for an answer. It took two years of wrangling, calls to her local MP and eventually a couple of other brothers acting as guarantors to secure the loan. After just 10 years, Girlie threw a No more mortgage party to celebrate paying out her 30-year loan in full.
Today, this accidental role model is not only a successful cattle producer but one of the industry’s biggest promoters of carcass competitions and has been entering and winning competitions for decades. Girlie’s remarkable tale of perseverance has been memorialised in print, in the book, Cattlemen in Pearls: Celebrating Women in Agriculture, a compelling tribute to 28 Australian women – a compilation of mini biographies of inspirational female graziers whose love of the land and livestock forms part of their very identity.