In the wealthy pastoral heartland of Tasmania’s dry midlands region — where being a Merino woolgrower usually means a long heritage dating back to the colonial landed gentry and rural squattocracy — Gardner admits that dairying is still looked down on as an inferior farming pastime.
“They are interested, even intrigued,” Gardner says of his sheep farming friends and neighbours.
“They are watching closely but, as graziers sometimes think they are above others, when I mention (land use) conversion and our new dairy, they still talk of peasant farmers …
“They see us as taking a huge risk. But now we have the water, I don’t see it that way at all.”
“The water’’ to Gardner and his wife Emily is the new $104 million Midlands irrigation scheme, the flagship project of Tasmania’s massive water-led agricultural and food bowl rejuvenation.
The pipeline, which from today will deliver 38,500 megalitres of water into the three valleys of the Macquarie, Isis and Jordan rivers, runs straight through the Gardners’s 2600ha property Annandale, at the foothills of the misty Tunbridge Tiers, halfway between Hobart and Launceston.
Annandale has always been a fine Merino farm carrying 5000 sheep, with some high-value poppy crops grown on the side when its low 465mm annual rainfall and creek flow allowed.
After generating 6MW of power, enough to drive the Midlands scheme’s water pumps and provide power to at least 5000 homes, the precious water will flow in pipes and river systems to 68 farms downstream where extra water has rarely been available.
In the process, the Midlands scheme will be the catalyst for low-profit sheep farms to switch to growing higher value crops such as poppies, irrigated grapes and vegetables, or converting their often bone-dry paddocks to verdant green dairy pastures.
Tasmania Irrigation chief Chris Oldfield sees the Midlands scheme as a symbol of the extraordinary transformation under way in Tasmanian agriculture.
Five more dams and irrigation networks are planned with a price tag of another $192m, if the federal government will contribute $110m to the infrastructure costs.
“It is of national significance what is happening down here; this is not just about little old Tasmania any more, but about how we fulfill the nation’s agricultural potential and our Asian food bowl vision,” Mr Oldfield said.
Another spin-off from the irrigation schemes is the creation of a new market for open water trading: financial investors are offered any spare water entitlements after landholders have grabbed their required share.
Melbourne investment banker David Williams has already bought more than $10 million of water rights on two new schemes in Tasmania, including nearly 6000 megalitres at $1100/ML on the Midlands project.
For Gardner, the 1900 megalitres of water rights he has just bought for $1.7 million is not only an investment, but the key to his family’s farming future.
Annandale will be the only dairy farm in Tasmania’s midlands; at a cost of about $5m in water rights, new cows, building a modern dairy, installing new fences and irrigation infrastructure and paddock conversion.
“The irrigation water is what reduces that financial risk. I can see that dairying will very quickly become the majority of our income,’’ Mr Gardner said.
Source: Weekly Times
