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I am Gary Abbott I farm in the West Arthur Shire
with my wife Ros and son Tim.
This is on the Northern side of Lake Towerrinning,
which is a popular spot in the district.
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The rainfall is 500 millimetres,
we have 1,300 hectares.
We run 4,000 merino sheep
and crop barley and oats
and there's about 150 hectares of saltbush planted.
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This land was first cleared in the ‘50s,
all the lower landscapes and
my father bought it (the farm) in the ‘60s,
and we started clearing the hillside in the 60’s and 70’s.
The land was originally covered by Red Gums,
White Gums and Jarrah' and Jam wattle trees.
In the early 1970s the lake behind me
used to have Marron and Redfin perch and
in 1973-74 there was a major flood
and that saw them dying on the edge of the lake
and it really has not recovered since then.
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I remember it was surrounded by Bulrushes
and leeches and that all started to disappear
when the levels got down
and the salinity started taking over
and the place started to decline.
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With the salinity, we have
spent a lot of money on drainage
throughout the area
but we're finding there's a lot of up-keep on drains
and there is a place for deep-rooted
perennials in our system
to help the drainage and lower the water table.
Our first introduction to saltbush was in the early 1990s
when we hired a contractor
who had a Kim-disc-seeder and we
originally started off seeding old man saltbush
quayle bush saltbush, wavy leaf saltbush and creeping saltbush
now we have gone into the Anameka old man saltbush
In this area there's
puccinellia and tall wheat grass growing
and there's a little bit of veldt grass
and since we have direct seeded
saltbush it has improved by
lowering the water table and it's quite
good coverage now.
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This is an Acacia saligna, it was
included in the Kimseed mix that we
direct seeded in the 1990s.
The parent plants would have died out
but this is seeded naturally,
probably about three or four years ago,
and as you can see it's quite nice and healthy.
The saltbush is a good hardy plant and
it seems to fix the situation but we're
finding that the much better variety of
AnamekaTM is a lot more palatable for the sheep
and we're getting a lot more
productivity by moving into AnamekaTM.
This is a two-year-old AnamekaTM plant.
I was very impressed with the growth rates of it
and the sheep absolutely love it.
Every 10 or 12 weeks I
run a mob of 400 in here, about a 15 hectare paddock
for about 3 or 4 days
and they really come out
of the paddock ‘jumping out of their skins with the
vitamin E and the extra minerals they get into their body.
But you've got to be careful with it
because they love it so much
they can over graze it,
so good management is the key with this stuff.
In between the rows where I was putting
the AnamekaTM we seeded tall wheat grass
and between them they
do a very good job lowering the water table
and good feed source.
Also I did plant some
Messina clover it has not done quite as
well but there are some patches that are starting to
regenerate so hopefully they'll keep going
and put another nitrogen component into the system.
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The advantage of the saltbush and
tall wheatgrass is that at the
times that we really do need feed we can
run the sheep in, which is usually at the
April period, and this then really
helps lower the cost of the
supplementary feeding.
In 2006 we had a
another site, the Agriculture department wanted to
experiment mound types for saltbush
because it was a waterlogged site.
So we had four types of mounds
one done with a grader, a plough and a disc plough
or there was also just straight ripped.
Out of those four techniques
the mounding was the most successful.
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I like this area, it has a good sporting community,
reliable rainfall (sometimes)
and supports 125 species of bird life.
You can find many swans and
duck and spoonbills,
and I believe for the Bluebill duck,
it is an important sanctuary for it
and probably the only place that you can
find as many in this area,
and I think it is in our interest to
to reduce salinity and lower the water table,
reduce silting in the drainage areas
and it's important we preserve this area
so it can carry on into the future.
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