Carly Earl, Riley Swanson (PEOPLE 2025)

A younger generation of drovers in rural Australia is exposed to a world without screens, without social media and without a sense of what day it is. This gruelling job sends drovers (stockmen and women who move livestock over long distances) out for months at a time on the road, in sharp contrast to what many teenagers are experiencing in the modern day. They wake up before dawn after sleeping in the back of a horse trailer, sometimes in the same clothes they had on the day before, then saddle up the horses and prepare for a 12-hour day on horseback. Slowly pushing thousands of cattle a dozen kilometres a day along decades-old stock routes. Often pushing up against main highways, cattle have been run over by large semi trailers, disappeared from the holding paddocks overnight and injured beyond repair with a loss of $2000 per head at the end of the journey, the imperative is to keep the animals safe. Sometimes the job can take up to four months, with nothing more than a large trailer following the herd. The drovers might not see another town or another person outside the team for the entire journey – unless they are delegated to get more supplies. Many drop out after the two-week mark. Seeing the intense impact on their bodies and the repetitive nature of the job can be too much to bear. The horizons are forever and the sunsets are to die for, but what appears as the romantic Australian dream is a task only suited to a few – and Riley Swanson appears to be one.

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