Big honour for Texan cattle pioneer

Like a true Texas cattleman he also has a love of the wild west, big belt buckles and is never seen outdoors without a wide-brimmed hat.

Statues of legendary film actor and star in 83 westerns John Wayne on his horse and three-time world champion steer wrestler Harley May in action take pride of place on his Perth living room table.

Mr Fletcher has a connection to both.

"John Wayne wanted to come out to Australia and make a movie about our exploits here in the Kimberley," Mr Fletcher said.

"It was going to be called 'Cleanskins' (a term for unbranded cattle) and there was even a script written, I've still got it.

"Unfortunately, he died before he could do it."

One of the first college-educated rodeo riders, May attended the same university as Mr Fletcher, Sul Ross State University, Texas, where Mr Fletcher was inducted into its Hall of Fame, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences, in 2011.

Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright in the long-running Bonanza TV series, was another classmate.

"I dated the girl he married before he did," Mr Fletcher boasted with a chuckle.

His attempts to transfer big ideas from Texas to the West Kimberley in the 1970s and 80s, when parochial State and Federal governments were not prepared to listen to a man with a Texas accent and wearing a cowboy hat, earned him his OAM.

With an agriculture engineering degree from Sul Ross, Mr Fletcher brought his young family of five sons to Australia in 1964.

Along the way he discovered the world's largest artesian basin in Libya in 1960 with the water ultimately piped 4000 kilometres across the Sahara Desert to Benghazi and Tripoli.

Using irrigation to grow fodder and cattle feedlotting were common practice in Texas in 1965, but not in WA when Mr Fletcher first visited the Kimberley and recognised the potential.

With a business partner back in Houston, in 1967 he formed Australian Land and Cattle Company (ALCCO) and was its managing director through to 1985.

At its peak in the 80s ALCCO operated Mt Jowleanga and Kilto stations between Broome and Derby, Liveringa station on the Fitzroy River between Derby and Fitzroy Crossing and Kimberley Downs and Napier Downs to the north, as well as Bohemia Downs on Christmas Creek and Louisa Downs on the Margaret River between Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek.

It controlled 1.7 million hectares running 100,000 cattle and 1500 horses.

For more than 20 years ALCCO was responsible for 37 per cent of all Kimberley cattle exported through Derby and later Broome ports - Mr Fletcher was instrumental in the deep water port developed at Broome in 1980.

"They say $1 in every $3 in circulation in the Kimberley at that time was due to ALCCO," Mr Fletcher said.

In 1972 he annexed 6000ha from Liveringa pastoral lease for Looma Aboriginal community which provided a workforce for ALCCO stations.

He later helped pioneer heli-mustering and use of portable stockyards in the Kimberley to "overcome a shortage of Aboriginal stockmen on horseback - they're easier on the cattle - after 'sit down money' made it difficult to hire them".

In 1970 Mr Fletcher built the first feedlot on Liveringa where his ALCCO operation was based.

"It could handle 35,000 head a year and no one else was doing it back then," he said.

Liveringa was also the site of an irrigation project dating back to 1952 which had grown rice and trialled sorghum, oats and cotton crops.

A barrage across the Fitzroy River and a dam on Uralla Creek had been built in the 1950s to retain wet season water - from when the river can be up to 70 kilometres wide - to irrigate crops.

ALCCO took over Camballin irrigation project from original instigator Northern Developments Pty Ltd in 1969.

As an engineer Mr Fletcher said he could see a levee bank and a dam were needed to control and retain sufficient water and he proposed to build a dam 250 kilometres upstream at Dimond Gorge.

His proposal received State planning approval and he convinced the then Shah of Iran to invest in the project, with food grown in the West Kimberley to be exported to Iran.

He and the WA deputy premier flew to Canberra to meet Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and former treasurer and Minister for Overseas Trade Frank Crean to seek federal support.

"He (Crean) was openly hostile to the idea that somebody other than an Australian should be putting up such a proposal - maybe it was my Texas accent he didn't like," Mr Fletcher said.

"I had the Shah of Iran signed up for multi-million dollars but foreign investment in agriculture wasn't welcome back then, particularly during the Whitlam years.

"They thought I was Charlie Court's (WA premier 1974-82 Sir Charles Court) show pony," he said.

"Whitlam was alright, he came back to me later and said he was happy to support the project provided he got to open it."

The WA Public Works Department (PWD) then decided a dam was not needed because it could design a levee bank on the north side of the river to protect the Camballin project.

The project went ahead with ALCCO funding the $3.75 million, 8.5 metre high 17 kilometre long levee protecting 25,000ha of cleared and laser-levelled floodplain irrigated by a pumping station and drainage channels.

Grain and feed sorghum crops were grown successfully until a major flood in 1983 breached the levee in a number of places.

"We had a $2 million sorghum crop - it was our best crop yet - and it ended up under 30 feet of water," Mr Fletcher said.

"They PWD designed the levee to withstand a one in 100 years flood, they should have designed it for a one in 150 years flood.

"It wiped us out, we couldn't recover from that."

He said ALCCO had invested $28m in the Camballin irrigation project and, over the years, spent a total of $62m developing primary industry in the West Kimberley.

Since then Mr Fletcher has been involved in developing agricultural projects as a consultant, in Australia and overseas.

He has been a director of Derby Meat Processing Company since 1991.

Mr Fletcher has written two books about his efforts in the Kimberley titled To Dam or be Damned: the mighty Fitzroy River and Texas Jack's Australian Outback Dream: a pioneering investment journal.

Asked what he thought of being awarded the OAM in recognition for his work in the Kimberley, he responded deadpan in his slow Texas drawl: "Well, it's about time."