ROB Cook wants to get injured farmers back into the workforce. And by injured, he means really injured.
In 2008, Mr Cook was riding in a mustering helicopter on his family's remote Northern Territory property, Suplejack Station, when the chopper lost power and fell from about 60 metres.
Despite the accomplished efforts of the pilot, who walked away unscathed, the chopper flipped on impact and crushed Mr Cook's neck.
At 28, the former pro rodeo bullrider was left a tetraplegic with no feeling or movement below his neck, apart from some slight movement in the index finger of his right hand that he uses to operate an electric wheelchair.
"Most people with my level of injury want to go and live on the coast and watch the waves come in," Mr Cook said. "I just want to back to the desert and watch the cattle come in."
During 12 months in hospital, he trained himself to come to terms with his changed circumstances while he grappled with acute pain. He's now using that same determination to redefine the notion of "disability".
With some extraordinary effort from his wife Sarah, a rotating team of family and friends, and Mr Cook himself, he last year embarked on a Nuffield Scholarship that took him and his supporters around the world for 16 weeks. He was supported by ANZ and the NT government.
He was searching for ideas and technologies that will help him amplify his limited range of capabilities - movement in a finger and his head; his voice and mind - in ways that allow him to reach way beyond his wheelchair.
His goal: returning to Suplejack, a million hectares on the edge of the Tanami Desert, 735 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, and once more being part of the team managing the station's 8000-head of cattle.
And along the way, he hopes to help some of Australia's legions of injured farmers. Statistically, among every 1000 Australian farmers, between 200-600 acquire some form of injury each year.
In Armidale, NSW, last week, at a session dedicated to reports from returned 2011 Nuffield scholars, Mr Cook outlined some of the ideas he encountered.
In the US he met Len Dalton of Dalton's Cowdogs, who breeds muscular, fearless dogs that are seven-eighths Border Collie or Kelpie, one-eighth Pit Bull/Mastiff.
These bruisers could earn the respect of Territory cattle, Mr Cook thought, and allow him to influence stock movements out of all proportion to his own capacities. But how to control a dog?
He found a possible solution in Oklahoma, in the form of Tom Hynes, who was left paralysed and mute by a stroke in 1977.
Mr Hynes demonstrated total control of a cattle dog from a wheelchair, without uttering a sound, by using a touchscreen device that had various commands mapped across the screen. When tapped, a command issued from an amplified speaker system on the wheelchair.
Mr Cook also has a plan for getting into the paddock with working dogs. He's been part of a project to replace all the controls on a John Deere Gator all terrain vehicle with a panel of minimalist switches and joysticks that allow full control from the tiniest of movements.
Mr Cook thinks he could also contribute to the station's workforce in other ways.
Pneumatic and hydraulically-operated cattle yards that require no physical effort are already a reality. The missing link is being able to voice-operate the controls.
Mr Cook said he took that dilemma to an IT guru in Alice Springs, who within a day had modified some software in ways that allowed him to voice-operate the pneumatic gates in the Alice saleyards.
And then there is the fast-evolving area of precision livestock management, which mashes together electronic livestock tags, GPS, satellite imagery, telemetry, wireless networks and software in ways that allow stock management from a remote computer.
By employing these technologies, Mr Cook foresees a time when he could be making decisions about paddock movements or automated remote drafting from his voice-activated computer at home.
Currently, there are questions of costs versus benefit of employing these technologies, but thanks to a worldwide push for automation and remote control, costs are plummeting.
"Being able to work in agriculture is a privilege," Mr Cook told the Nuffield gathering.
"It shouldn't be regarded as just a job.
"By combining modifications and new technologies, we can retain our injured farmers and keep experienced producers on the land."
