Beryl the brahman spent one of her first nights in the world alone — motherless and hungry.
"It was August 2015 and I remember having her in the yard and thinking 'This poor thing, she's lost her mother and God she looks thirsty'," said Sally Webster, whose family owns the Webster cattle station in Georgetown, Queensland, where Beryl was born.
From the get-go, Beryl was a fighter, Ms Webster said.
"We didn't have any calf milk, so I started feeding her instant milk and straight away she was wolfing it down which … for anyone who knows poddies, it doesn't work like that."
Since then, Beryl has survived the hardships of country life including floods, starvation, drought, and two "horrendous" calf deliveries, Ms Webster said.
Her story mirrors many of those living in the outback, and now it has been told in a children's book, Beryl the brahman, paying tribute to the life and characters of Beryl's world in the bush.
A quirky calf who's 'survived a lot'
It was Beryl's eccentricity and appetite for the unconventional that captured hearts around the world and transformed her into a social media star.
"At first it was her personality that made her so special," Ms Webster said.
From running and playing with the farm dogs, to camping out in the living room and getting up to mischief on the property, Ms Webster and her husband Jake began to document Beryl's antics and share them on Facebook.
It was not long before videos were racking up in excess of 19 million shares, including interest internationally.
"I get messages from people in America who absolutely love brahmans, and they're so passionate and very interested in her," Ms Webster said.
"She's been through a lot of experiences that many of us on the land share."
In 2019, Beryl was one of the few cattle that survived devastating floods in north Queensland.
More than 500,000 head of stock died and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage was caused.
"We lost the majority of our stock," Ms Webster said.
The now six-year-old cow also endured two brutal births.
Beryl's story
After years of developing a bond with Beryl, the Websters put pen to paper to pay tribute to their favourite cow and the country she's been raised in.
"Someone suggested we do a children's book and I thought that was just a lovely, personal way to tell her story and bring to life the land and the characters we have out here,' Ms Webster said.
Illustrated by Kate Rutter, the book follows Beryl and her farm friends as they undertake adventures in the bush.
Beryl has since moved with the Webster family to Balootha Station, near Julia Creek.
"It's a marriage between the Julia Creek area and the Croydon-Georgetown area. There's the downs country, but also the rocky hills where Beryl spent a huge part of her life," Ms Webster said.
"All the characters in the book are real living animals or people.
As for Beryl, the star cow is "living the life of Riley" with her new calf, according to Ms Webster.
"She's not too far away from us and we spend time with her every day. She's a great mum," she said.
"Her little heifer, she's got a bit of red on her head and she's a bit wild, a bit of a little monster. Just like her mum."
