How This Farmer Brought a Wetland Back to Life.

You're planting the same species in clumps. That's correct. Now, once again, down here, you had a fairly significant aquatic pest, didn't you, that you were dealing with? A smorgasbord like this, the pigs are going to move in. They're bad up here, aren't they? Pig heaven, pig heaven. But you've solved that problem too. I'm going to say 95%. I'm just north of Mareeba in Queensland with John Collis of Weatherby Station, and we're talking rehabilitation of wetlands. Where we're standing was a very degraded wetland where the cattle had had access for over 50 years and the environment was pretty sick. John, a fair bit of work's gone into this. Been a fair bit of work, a lot of labour, and the pride of the labour, a fair bit of research to get best practice implied if we could. So you've got some tips for us today. Hopefully. to break the rules, the established rules somewhat of ReVeg and make a whole lot of sense. So let's start on the hill. and make our way down to the wetland and have a look at how you've organised, planned and then managed this wetland and then rescued it from ferals. Hopefully. Now John as we go up the hill here mate, I'm noticing that you're planting the same species in clumps. You're planting different plants in different areas of this wetland. When we put this project together with Gulf Savannah Resource Management Group, I did a bit of desktop research. Strange for me, but I got out there and got onto the computer and onto YouTube to look for what's happening in Australia, New South Wales. Searching for best practice. Best practice, searching for best practice and best ideas. I've got some good ideas from New Zealand. Some of the ideas I came up with weren't mine, I just plagiarised the ideas from other places. One thing I learnt was where we're standing, we used to call it grassy knoll and this was covered in giant rat tail so we wanted to knock it out before we got in and put baby trees in this baby here was planted the day after Anzac Day last year so this tree is probably 17 months old tube stock so we did the the desktop checking and we wanted to get the right species that are in the area local provenance local species that grow here this is This is narrow-leafed ironbark, Eucalyptus crebra, if you want to be technical. And so we planted this, and it doesn't like wet feet. So this is a ridge. So we put these species that fitted this footprint here and down, as you'll see in a minute, down on the edge of the wetland where it gets inundated, we've planted the paperbarks, the narrow-leafed paperbark. We've planted a lot of trees in these rows. The rows are four metres apart. The trees we put three metres apart in the rows, but then I found between the rows, about six months after we'd planted this up with 1,500 trees, 1,400 trees, of which about 1,000 at least have survived, in amongst the rows I've found seedlings. We've taken the cattle pressure off and we've excluded the cattle and Mother Nature again, she's been dropping down seeds or dormant seeds or seedlings and in between the we're getting the native species that was there, the carimbia, the poplar gum, so that's just a bit of a bonus. Now John, there's a very significant weed in this site, some people will know it straight away, some people won't. Tell us about this grass mate. We call it giant rat tail, it's got a big long Latin name as well. It's a perennial grass, very hard, almost impossible to control. Chemical means once you've removed the stalker pretty much your only weapon in your in your case in this situation aren't they? Correct, chemical application but it's not a one-trick pony you've got to do follow-up and timing is critical been a lot of work done on on using the grass herbicide we're back to propionate that is flupropionate is the active yeah flupropionate we've actually boom sprayed this prior to putting the trees in. This is a little Melaleuca here when we get a decent canopy and you'll see that as we move around the block as we get a decent canopy that will shade out and put this weed right under control. We've probably got about a 95% control using flupropionate but we didn't get 100% control. This guy's a survivor and he's probably the only one I can see in about a 10 metre radius but it's a it's a nasty one so john as we're coming down off your grassy knoll the theme of zone planting continues and once again you've intentionally planted with trees that suit that environment tell me about what you've done what we've done here uh with the trees we ordered up 1500 tube stock of local species and we got the seed off this property so it's indigenous seed It's local provenance is a flash word that they use, the technologists. Yep. So it's indigenous, seed of indigenous species. That was produced and I was thinking mix them all up. And then I picked up on YouTube from some very interesting work done in New Zealand that you actually plant, as you picked up, on that smart word zone and then look at the zones. We've got inundated up against the wetland itself, wet feet for the trees, put the species in there that likes wet feet, example, a narrow-leafed paperbark, and on this dry, but still inundated area we're standing in now, we get into the blue gum, or as you call them there in South Forest, red gum. Yeah, yeah. They like to be periodically inundated. They'll flower, they'll seed, and then they want water to go away and dry right out, and that's what happens where we're standing. Actually, exactly. But if we go down this very gentle slope a little bit, you end up with water here most of the year, don't you? Well, down on the edge of the wetlands, certainly. The wetland does recede during the dry, dry. But once again, these Melaleuca, don't mind, they like wet feet. Perfect environment for you. Yes, correct. Now, once again, in the process of rehabilitating this wetland, you had to start out with high-impact, large-scale intervention, didn't you? It involved drones and herbicide. Correct. We had the giant rattlepod problem we mentioned. Yep. But we've got a nasty aquatic weed. Which is this one. Which is this Hymenachne. Hymenachne, it was brought in by the government in all good faith as a ponded pasture, and there's a lot of it around the ridges. Works out well as a ponded pasture, but when you're in irrigation channels where you're trying to catch fish or sail or water ski in impounded water or even streams, wetlands like this, it'll grow in a metre of water. It'll grow a metre out of the water. fantastic high protein grass it's a green haystack to a lot of people but in the wetland you're trying to restore rejuvenate regenerate you've got to get rid of it it just takes over it's impossible for us as humans when we're doing research on a new variety to think of every outcome isn't it correct now you had cattle coming in here for 50 years yes they were trampling down the native sedges and things like that around the side they were turning it into a muddy bank the only thing that could survive was this weed so the first thing you did was get rid of it uh-huh spray it with the drone excluded the cattle and what's coming back behind us here oh okay you got your native sedges this is the native sedge the native this a little native lotus yes uh the red flower is a azolla it's a floating floating uh fern basically and the water under that in deep water is usually crystal clear it's scrubbing the water doing a good thing for the water but the um what's happened when we've nailed the Hymenachne we've been able to get the native rushes and water lilies coming back in and excluding the cattle and knocking this out was the secret to it. So now that you've removed the cattle and that's easily done with a standard fence, you've got another problem here that you just touched on and that's feral pigs. You've got a large feral pig population up here. In this area there's a lot of feral pigs. Neighbouring property over the creek has cane. When they pull the cane off at this time of the year, middle of early spring uh the pigs come in and this could be this was pig heaven we've got a it's a smorgasbord isn't it like a smorgasbord for them to wallow root around or after earthworms anyway and and the fencing i would say is probably giving us a 95 percent control plus or minus so you retrofitted your existing fences with two hot wires yes and the secret is the power in those hot wires you're using some pretty good energizer here aren't you There's 8,000 volts. Just checked a minute ago, 8,000 volts on the fence. The wires, the bottom wires, six inches, 150 mil off the ground. Yes. And an earth wire. Yes. And a hot wire, which is the pig zone. Yes. And it's giving us, I'm trying to figure out, 95% control. I can't say we've got 100%. If there is a pig in here, Mr. Picanha comes in with his two little dogs and bang, and that's happened on one occasion. One occasion. In a year, yeah. Yeah, right. Now, people will tell you that you can't have electric fences in Queensland because you can't maintain them because the grass grows too much. What's your routine for maintaining your electric fences with wires down that low? Okay, plenty of power in the energiser. Yep, so you can push through. Punch it through. It won't burn the vegetation, but it'll certainly singe it and there's enough energy going through. A good earth return system. Yep. And at the side of a side-by-side with a pump in the back and a tank, you can just spray your fence lines if you need to. And you do that how many times a year? At most twice. We've only done this area through here where there's a lot of probably better quality soil. Out through the bushland, hadn't been done because there's very, very little weed or grass growth in amongst the trees. So maximum two sprays a year. But the secret is a good energiser, isn't it? It's got to have plenty of horsepower. We need to power down. Where's on solar, lithium battery solar? Yep. And it's doing the job for us. And I think that's the trick. Big enough energiser, good earth system all the way around. And that'd be my answer, yeah. Well, John, it's been fascinating talking with you today. You are an agriculturalist first and foremost. That was your first degree. It was in agriculture. Yeah. You've been an agronomist both for the government and in industry. You've got a graduate certificate in rangeland management and a graduate certificate in life with hard knocks. You've put all of that into this project, but you've also, despite all of that education, been so keen to learn further. And you've come up with this idea of zone planting around a wetland and look at the results so quickly. Yeah. The tools I've used have been getting guys out of retirement who've had skill sets there and lifetime experience. I've used YouTube. I've used Google a little bit and I've talked to contract operators, neighbours And you've adopted new technology as well and the drone and the electric fence. Yeah and people looking over the fence now may be learning something from it and hopefully people watch your YouTube just to get an idea or two. Well John thank you very much mate. It's an absolute honour and pleasure to be out here with you today and i hope that your message about getting our wetlands working gets across to people and they take advantage of your new idea this area anyway of zone planting very important thank you very much tim good on you