Kristy O'Brien
Kristy O’Brien, a farm girl from Queensland’s Darling Downs, began her television career at 16.
She fell in love with Northern Australia when she moved to the Northern Territory’s Darwin newsroom in 2009.
Kristy is an accomplished documentary producer with a 2012 digital series called Cattle Scars about the fallout of the live cattle export trade to Indonesia.
She was named Screen Producers Australia’s One to Watch for her documentary Tough Ride about the issue of brain injury among young people in regional Australia.
In 2017, she was awarded Best Current Affairs Journalist in the Northern Territory and followed up in 2018 with the South Australia/Northern Territory Rural Journalist of the Year and Best Television Broadcast Reporter for her coverage of regional issues.
Latest by Kristy O'Brien
How these brothers turned a modest family farm into an agricultural empire, changing the future for rural families
Mick and Ben Hewitt often do business in boardrooms, but it is clear the brothers are truly content in the dust and dirt.
Indigenous rangers team up with scientists for project SpaceCows, the next frontier in feral pest control
First Nations rangers and the CSIRO embark on a groundbreaking, space-based surveillance project to track and manage 1,000 wild bovine in remote northern Australia.
As a place for big dreams, this Kimberley cattle station shows how conservation and pastoral goals can combine
Bullo River Station on the edge of the east Kimberley is a cattle station with its gaze firmly fixed on nature. Working with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, they are demonstrating conservation and pastoral activities can coexist.
The brothers behind Australia's biggest meat industry biodiversity study look to the future
Scientists and environmentalists are given unique access to measure and report on how cattle giant Hewitt has been refining its production practices and land management with a greener focus.
The 'data cowboy' transforming cattle yards in the Northern Territory
In Australia's Top End, Munro Hardy, a modern cattleman, combines traditional ranching with cutting-edge technology. Managing data, targeted nutrition, and carbon mitigation are key focuses for the success of his small cattle station.
More than $1m pledged to support fishers as industry's mental health crisis revealed
Industry members say mental health support is as crucial as physical first aid, after revelations fishers are experiencing mental health issues at twice the rate of the average population.
Arriving in Australia with only a box of possessions, Muy Keav Ma's family would build a thriving business
Muy Keav Ma escaped Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge as a child with her family. Australia offered her refuge, and decades on, despite seemingly insurmountable setbacks, she is now a successful mango farmer.
Without cutting down old growth forests these men are loggers — but with a twist
For Andrew Morgan and Dave Wise, a chance meeting at a university bar led not only to a long friendship, but also the creation of Australia's first drowned timber company.
Underwater vino: Is the ocean the ultimate cellar?
These Margaret River winemakers take the plunge with an experimental batch of wine, naturally stirred by the currents of the Southern Ocean, 10 fathoms down into Flinders Bay.
Meet the family building a desert dynasty in the Red Centre
Angus and Kimberley McKay are quietly building a cattle empire in the desert, making bold purchases and adopting a prudent cattle management plan to look after their land.
'We're making massive jumps forward': New research into croc skin disease could reduce waste and improve skin quality
In a market where crocodile skin products command a premium price, fashion houses will reject skins that have even the slightest mark — but new research is hoping to change that.
Could feral Northern Territory buffalo be our new beef?
Is it possible Top End Buffalo could be our next wagyu? One Northern Territory producer says they have all the ingredients to be top-notch eating meat.
'This isn't just about motorbikes': Bikie entrepreneur creates safe gear for women
Leah Samson found not only a niche market, but also a major safety issue she was hell-bent on addressing.
'Say yes to everything at least once': Couple uproots glamorous lifestyle to milk camels
It's a trading of tools that few of us can fathom: from manning the wheel of mega yachts cruising around the French Riviera to where Warwick Hill is today, kneeling under a giant, cranky camel named Honey, attempting to attach a milking device.
From roadhouse cook to training empire: The NT 'blow in' who has transformed catering
Darwin cook and businesswoman Karen Sheldon is a bit like a cyclone; you have the feeling she could plough through anyone or anything if she needed to.
'She's breaking down those stereotypes': This tourism operator wants you to see the real NT
Tess Atie, a Marrathiyel woman, runs the only 100 per cent Indigenous-owned tourism company in the Litchfield National Park area.
How much do you know about NT superfood, the Kakadu plum?
While we're fond of looking to the Amazon for our açai berry smoothies, and Peru for our maca powder protein balls, many forget we've got our very own potent superfood back home: the Kakadu Plum.
Farmer creates world-first lamb bacon from unwanted offcuts
A farmer swaps high-flying finance for sheep farming and creates an innovative new product on the way.
'Just be brave': Lawyers build an online legal empire from the bush
They were high-powered Sydney lawyers climbing up the corporate ladder and making their mark in their legal careers, but the rat race was wearing thin.
Why are massive, mostly empty blocks of land in the NT selling for multi-millions?
The dream of owning a cattle station in the Northern Territory is becoming harder to achieve for young people, as land prices steadily rise.
Meet Vicki — she's the early warning system for the health of Australia's bees
Vicki Simlesa is quite simply the most important beekeeper in the Northern Territory.
The long, lonely journey of infertility in the bush
Regional folk may be happy to spout volumes about the fertility of their livestock, but find it much harder to talk about their own battles to conceive.
Thousands of culled camels are rotting in the desert. Is this an answer to the wastage?
Pastoralists exhausted from shooting hundreds of feral camels a day would like to see the otherwise wasted meat commercialised.
As a quarter of the world's pigs are wiped out, Arnhem Land rangers fight the risk posed by ferals
There are an estimated 23 million feral pigs spreading across the country, wreaking havoc on the environment and posing a huge threat when it comes to transmitting a dangerous disease to other species.
Five people killed in Kakadu car crash
NT Police are working to identify five people who died when a vehicle travelling on the Arnhem Highway in the Northern Territory rolled and crashed into trees.