Tamworth heart transplant recipient Fiona Coote said she was “only too delighted” to again support the auction, which raised $25,000 for heart research.

But despite younger years spent on her family’s sheep and cattle farm, she was more a high-profile spectator than a hands-on participant.

Ms Coote said the honour of leading Marco the limousin around the arena rightly went to the high school students who raised him, not to the self-confessed “’fraidy cat”.

“He was a big boy – very, very placid and a lovely temperament, but I was happy to just stand behind him and scratch his neck,” she laughed.

The charity auction has been raising funds for the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute for 19 years.

Ms Coote said was was “very impressed” at the work and generosity that made the auction happen.

“This has been going on for a number of years and there’s a lot of people who contribute,” she said.

“Schute Bell Badgery Lumby are basically the instigators [and auctioneers] and source a calf; the kids at the Harden Murrumburrah High School ag department raise it, feed it and look after it … Paul Ferry, the gentlemen who bought it, has bought it nine times or so.

“It’s such a generous gesture and the institute just so appreciates that they do this each year – and that Paul attends and bids furiously and buys it.”

Ms Coote was at the event with another donor heart recipient, Melissa Hargrave, who recently celebrated the first anniversary of her transplant, and said they’d exchanged numbers.

She said she’d had an association with the research institute for many years.

“They thought, me being from the country, this might be something I’d be interested in helping out with … I was only too delighted to say yes,” she said.

Schute Bell Badgery Lumby – a rural agency specialising in wool, livestock and property – and the students have raised more than $300,000 in 19 years to help fund lifesaving heart research.