Darwin Innovation Hub warmly congratulates Kelly Shotton, founder of BoreWatch, on being named the 2026 Northern Territory AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award winner. Kelly accepted the award at a ceremony in Darwin, presented by Deputy Chief Minister Gerard Maley.
Kelly’s achievement reflects the growing strength of innovation emerging from the Northern Territory. Drawing on years of hands-on experience as a ringer, bore runner and station pilot, she identified a practical challenge facing remote pastoral operations and developed a solution grounded in lived experience on the land.
BoreWatch is a water maintenance reporting platform that enables station staff to document and monitor tanks, bores, troughs, fuel usage and infrastructure across large-scale properties. The platform collates data into automated reports, identifies issues and trends early, and captures historical records that support long-term planning and operational knowledge retention.
As reported by AgriFutures Australia, Kelly said BoreWatch was born from firsthand frustration on the land. “I built BoreWatch out of pure frustration. When you’re on a station, there’s so much critical information getting lost in notebooks, radios or just in people’s heads,” she said. “Water is everything on a station. If something goes wrong and you don’t catch it early, it can have a huge impact.”
Kelly’s success is a clear example of what’s possible when practical knowledge, entrepreneurial drive and regional opportunity come together. It’s a story that speaks to the expanding ecosystem of Territory-built technologies solving real problems for rural, regional and remote Australia.
Kelly will represent the Northern Territory at the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award National Announcement in Canberra on 8 September 2026, backed by a $15,000 Westpac grant to commercialise and scale BoreWatch.
Congratulations, Kelly. The Territory is proud of you.
Source: AgriFutures Australia
