Cows stay out and graze all year without the capital investment

This massive amount of water will now slowly migrate into the Murray Darling Basin (at one million square kilometres; one of the biggest river catchment areas in the world – with four thousand kilometres of river!) finding its way into the Darling and eventually the Murray river, which may, in many weeks time mean that the mouth of the Murray (in South Australia!) will flow for the first time in years. Time will tell if this happens, but the aerial shots of South Western Queensland reveal the sheer scale of the rain and the huge volume of water now sitting there.

The politicians here make you realise that ours are not nearly as bad as we think! With elections being talked about (some time off yet though), there is plenty of squabbling over policies and whose ideas have been pinched and by whom, and various ‘U turns’ being performed. The level of debate is uninspiring in the main, and plenty of moments picked up by the media that make you groan in despair. The media are very much the same as they are at home, if a little more direct and abrupt; mainly posturing and showing how clever they are, rather than doing the job everyone would like them to do.

*I spent some time with Max Jelbart in Melbourne, meeting people at the ADF (Australian Dairy Farmers Federation) and a particularly impressive young lady, Natalie Collard who is the General Manager. We discussed the state of world markets, the UK and Victorian dairy industry and agreed that in the medium to long term things look cautiously optimistic. Australian dairy farmers are of course much more exposed to world commodity markets, as they export most of their production.

They also have very much simpler (not necessarily easier) systems than our own, where cows stay out and graze all year without the capital investment of buildings and all the extra labour and costs involved; cows are however fed cereals and silage, and can be either spring calving, autumn calving, or both.

*I met another old friend the other day at Frank and Barb’s dinner party; John Malvany is a dairy consultant I met in the UK many years ago, and had the pleasure of spending the day with in Victoria when I was on my Nuffield Scholarship in 1995. He had only just left the dairy company at that time and set up privately as a consultant. He is very highly respected, always a wise counsel, with many years of experience under his belt, and it was really good to see him again.

Tomorrow I will join him on Max Jelbart’s farm, which will be great fun. Max runs a thousand cows on the home farm and a further four hundred at Caldermeade farm and restaurant, where the general public can view the cows being milked from a gallery above the rotary parlour, watching the ‘centre-pivot’ irrigation system in the distance watering the pasture for the cows, and then retire to the restaurant for refreshments and a meal.

I’ve also walked the Macalister demonstration farm at Sale, which Frank is in charge of, where pasture production and utilisation is impressive, with the cows producing very high milk solids (fat and protein), although a fair amount of grain is also fed. I was interested to see the Israeli underground irrigation system, which has been installed in some of the paddocks at great expense. This drip-feeds the soil beneath the pasture, which puts he water where it’s needed and cuts down evaporation; precision irrigation. It’s early days, and there are a few problems (it’s the first time its been put under permanent dairy pasture) such as the spacing of the dripper tubing, which may be too far apart, leaving a dry strip between each run. Putting them closer together would be even more expensive!

*We’ve been out in the double sea kayak, and having been soaked to the skin as soon as we left the shore; battling through the ‘breakers’ it was very pleasant as we travelled out a fair way to some rock reefs. It was all going very well until we tried to surf one of the waves and got tipped upside down! I should explain here that one is wearing a ‘skirt’ which is attached very firmly around the opening of the canoe, so whilst one is upside down in the water, knocked about by the waves, a pull strap at the front of the skirt needs to be found in order to release it and get out. Frank kindly gave me more practice in finding this strap as he tipped us over again when he carelessly (deliberately) caught a wave sideways on. Believe me this canoe rotates 180 degrees in a flash!

At home, I hear that it is still mainly dry, but cold. The grass a Tillington is beginning to move slowly, and there is plenty in front of the young heifers there. The bio-digester is up to a constant 0.97MW/Hr, which is virtually at full power, and the second tower is now up to temperature, which should take us to the full megawatt in the weeks ahead. It’s all happening quicker than we could have imagined, and James Covey is doing a sterling job of running it.

We are now off snorkelling. With the 8km walk yesterday, and all this activity; I am now contributing healthily (pardon the pun) to the overall activity and fitness of the Victoria population! We will return fit and tanned – ready to get stuck into the farm and NFU activity.