The Suburban Australian Couple Taking On The Outback

hi I'm Francis and I'm David it's been two and a half years now since you last saw us on Australian story and we thought that you might like a little bit of an update about what we've been doing for last couple of years unfortunately it hasn't really rain and we're now officially in drought there's nothing much grass to watch but on the upside we've had lots of wonderful people come to visit us at will lean and share a little bit of our life and our story so I guess we're still here still standing and looking forward to bringing you a bit of an update I don't ever regret my decision to go to woollen not at all I just love it so much and everything that we do with the environmental rehabilitation and all the things that we get to achieve together and I certainly don't ever wish to be anywhere else when I think back to the 14 year old girl that did a year 8 speech on banning the live export trade so the girl that now lives on a cattle station and has a far deeper understanding of the environment of Agriculture and and how the whole system has to work together yes it's funny to look back on that I suppose for me it was a very romantic idea to start with being out there with David and he would just take me to some of the most breathtaking landscapes so I just came out for a brief two-week working holiday and and I didn't leave fleek holder and Sydney now you've got to move on it was time to come back to Melbourne and start her studies she said the well I'm not coming home I don't think I would have made it through the first year if if Francis hadn't come along I guess I was going on a bit of a wing and a prayer and hoping that I would get through it was ambitious to think that he was going to be able to survive certainly to this point where we are now the fact that he's achieved that I think his is a credit to because I I certainly didn't see how I could have done it it will lanes about 700 kilometres north of Perth it's in the morgue of shrublands of the southern rangeland in the oldest landscape on earth a 3.6 billion years old Willie was settled in 1886 by the Sharpe family was like a small town they had a lot of people working here a lot of Aboriginal people but also we had a blacksmith shop and there was probably 60 or 70 people on maligne at any time during the the early part of this injury it was a very affluent lifestyle so they had beautiful big Black Tie dinners right up until the 1960s sewing rooms ironing rooms kitchen cooks big veggie gardens fruit trees everything you think of now really it's just David and I and a few backpackers at at the homestead Australia relied on properties like we'll aim to generate the wealth there's an old saying that straily rode on the sheep's back well it's very true the main exports that learned a lot of income for Australia was wool and that went on for many many years about 60 70 years and that's what this country was founded on it's gone downhill since big drought in the 1930s when a lot of the sheep died and there was massive erosion and degradation in the countryside and really the countryside's never recovered from that we've had a few a few drafts since then which have made it worse the stories that my father's can tell of salt bush that was higher than a man on a horse and all the rest of it people just totally stopped some of these places of the extent without running 40 60 70 thousand sheep not cattle sheep and they just totally devastated these property through Greed's I've got really fond memories of going to Elaine as a child and then I Jack arute there then in 1989 I had the opportunity to buy the property and I flew across it and signed a contract that day for over a million dollars that was pretty exciting especially when my wife asked me how much we had in the bank and I only had $1,300 certainly at Murchison rangeland is something that I basically I think was born into and never truly separate myself from and Elaine was just one of those places that we grew up but it was more than just a home it feels like that's where we belong I think anybody that lives in that red dirt sort of country so it gets it in their veins a little bit and and learns to love it it was everybody's home forever until I see my mother passed away my wife had died and I decided that I couldn't live I'm willing family at that stage Richard came up and gave up his job to look after the property it's more than partner now wife Heidi we went back and took over the station and started running it the way we were on to run it we changed the station from being a predominately sheep station and with some cattle to all cattle but it was still dad's asset and until dad decided what do you want to do with it and what was always an unknown succession planning in any agricultural business is very very hard both boys wanted to take on the property and the two boys wrote a submission Richard he was married at a time so he had other financial commitments and the ability to go on and do other things because he had done other things away from the property David on the other hand had been away University and traveling but I only had one passion and that was to be on maligne Richard and I or maybe maybe Richard more than me decided that we weren't kind of work together I like I was willing to give it a try but to be honest you know he was probably right we probably wouldn't have worked together very well but so so dad had you know huge decision to make I really wanted to try and do things differently it's quite obvious to me that what's happening out here in the password countries is just not sustainable not environmentally sustainable and if it's not environmentally sustainable then it's not going to be economically sustainable either because everything that we produced comes from the environment and to my mind that meant destocking but that's the big step because you make the money out of stock both boys had a different view as to how the property should be run and my eldest son had a more traditional view which I agreed with and David had the radical view which I came round to there's a certain element of shock and then it's how you recover from the shock that defines you as a person I think well I've certainly am lucky enough to have a partner but that was very supportive and and we were able to move on and without having a huge setback to to our lives so when we initially were asked to leave the station it was requested that we do a final muster and remove all the cattle from the place so that when David came home to take over he could basically start his regeneration in the rangelands we felt that well what a waste we've sort of we just sort of getting the herd up and running we've we've started from scratch we're just starting to get the genetics coming through and some of the infrastructure was you know where we wanted it to be and now all the sudden we were going to leave it and that was just going to basically go back to nature and we put all the cattle on track and effectively when the cattle left we followed them out and the day we left was the last day we were they it was a big wire there's a young man up in the bush I spend quite a bit of time out there helping him Dave had been on the station for six months at that point by himself when I arrived so it was March 2008 when I got there my main interest for going out to lean was to experience the outback tourism the station itself was very interesting to me but it was more the the tourism Enterprise which was the attraction was never anything permit I did stay a little bit longer and a little bit longer but I slowly fell in love with the station and the tourism and and of course David there's just so much wildlife especially birds lots of beautiful landscapes big granite outcrops the most amazing sunsets and sunrises you'll you'll probably see anywhere looking at the landscape it still does look very pretty but once you get somebody starting to point out the problems you start to look at it with fresh eyes what the other people thought when he radically D stopped totally was where was the finance coming from how he was actually going to keep afloat because the debt levels might have been fairly high totally destocking like he's done and and I think that's that's not what passed Rosen's about parcel is about livestock to remove all of the cattle was a huge decision turning off all the windmills to was an extremely radical thing Dave turned off all the watering points and the windmills on the station because of the grazing pressure which was being afflicted by the Kangaroos and goats with access to permanent water they can continue to breed and their populations explode in areas that previously they would have perhaps died or moved off without the permanent water do you think if we put a bank in here some of these blue bushes that start to come back down again I think so but we wouldn't grow in the bank itself now I have an understanding of the land it's certainly a passion I've taken on with Dave we've really got to do something about this erosion channel here cuz that's just gonna keep getting worse we put the bank in here they should establish around around either side we borrowed a concept called a funding Bank from a chap named Bob Purvis north of Alice Springs and he's used these conservation earthworks to fix eroded gullies and trap water high up in the landscape and grow grass species which then seed themselves down those gullies and start to heal the landscape again we also invented wire mesh structures that we put in high flow river areas to try and slow down the water and spread it back over the floodplain you see this Deborah's coming down here coming down coming down getting caught in the enviros I was totally skeptical of the whole project in those days now if I could afford it I'll be buying a lot more in doing it David he's determined and I'd say stubborn he's not going to do anything in half-measures so he was so determined that this country had to be regenerated or he didn't want to be part of it but they've done we'll learn his drastic to totally do stop the property means cessation of income how they keep bread on the table I don't know you know I haven't seen their financial returns and how much money they make out of tourism but I can imagine it's a big challenge it doesn't get to us that often I suppose it's most likely to become a bit tough for us over summer more towards the end of summer I suppose when we haven't had an income from stock or tourism and it's sort of those last couple of months that were just trying to get by we closed over summer because it's just too hot and our power system can't can't handle air conditioners that's when it's yeah at its most most difficult and you sort of got a wonder whether whether it's worth it Francis's had to learn to live by a new way of life in in a way I mean all the the luxuries and things that she took for granted here they're not out there at willing it's quite different and we couldn't understand why our daughter would want to leave what we've got here and go out into the middle of the outback you know to nowhere it's a beautiful place though it is a beautiful place and I do see why she fell in love with it apart from falling in love with David but yeah she just fell in love with what was out there as well they really are exemplars but people would say foolish exemplars but who cares they are actually going to give us the data that can help us understand how to meet that challenge of regenerating the landscape we do a lot of monitoring together we take our laptop and photos from previous years that we've taken out to sites we then look at old photos and take a new photo of that particular site the recovery has really been amazing and much greater than I thought and much quicker than I thought and a lot of these spaces I'd never seen before I'd heard about the manor I guess I knew what some of them were but just to see them recover and come back it is just amazing phenomenal initially with the destocking we wanted to concentrate on the Willy Lake system just normally dry like and only films once every nine years release well it have a bit of comparison for her quickly the lake is being flooded it's a nationally important wetlands it's a freshwater lake unlike a lot of the inland salt like it should have a grass that grows all over the lake bed but that grass had been receding over many years and in Italy we wanted to try and get that grass back onto the landscape back onto the lake bed and the recovery that we've seen on the lake just in four years has just been phenomenal and well worth the investment of not putting the stock on for those few years and the best thing about this is the country the country is just bloody magic after one hundred and forty years of sheep attacking it every day and tens of thousands of them plus tens of thousands of kangaroos and goats and other vermin and yet the country can still come back relatively on its own if it's nurtured it's pretty special I am actually impressed with it with the way he's actually worked it but it's still a long way to go and to actually see the results is years down the track it'll probably be quite a long time like it might be sort of 15 years before it really starts to pay itself off and I guess that's that's a big part of why a lot of Posterous are not doing it the idea isn't just to make Moline a nice little oasis for us Dave once said you know he's he's trying to find a sustainable way of to graze cattle in the southern range lands it's it's not just about Moline it's about the the whole picture if the station for whatever reason doesn't succeed under the regime that David's implemented everyone will know that he's he's given his best shot and no one's gonna live with the what if I think the warrior fish if party and I'd stay there no what if would have been alright the station was still running but was it running it's productive is it because it should be in say 50 he is Tom five we haven't been back because I'm very fond of the memories that I have and I'm nervous that if I should go back and things have changed then my memory and perception of things may be altered perhaps not necessarily the way I want them to be I don't harbor any regrets about what Francis has done for all the different things that have happened to Francis and the experiences that she's had you can't have any regrets I mean she's a confident young woman now who really knows what she wants in life and you know she got that experience by going out to a lane the winner David brand Young Achiever Award is Francis Jones in 2009 Francis started a degree in eco tourism through Murdoch University and studies externally at the station in late 2009 she took the position as chair for the Gascoigne and Murchison tourism incorporated and in mid 2010 was elected to the board of Australia's golden outback the prospects for Elaine are exciting but because of the finances and the debts it still hangs on a knife-edge as to whether we can to continue the project but it's a very very tough call and it's very tough call on a young couple to try and achieve this within the next ten years coming back to Mount Macedon as always a really it's really lovely feeling to be Highway has it's so different to Elaine it's wonderful having Francis back it's always great seeing her and David to do have them come home we probably get to map messed in every 18 months or so sometimes you wonder what it what it's like on the outside of it it took probably a period of a couple of years of us going there then coming back to understand him any sense of humor he loves Francis you can just see that and well we just loved him so it all just sort of works well have you had much rain at all the last two and a half years have been good so they've been a bit of a roller coaster in one sense though we've had some more highs than lows but you know there's always a couple of those in there just can't avoid them unfortunately we've had two years where the rainfall has been well below average hasn't really rain since the last Australian story we're not getting the winter rains which we used to do in which with the area really relies on the drought puts a halt to all the land regeneration sort of stuff I think the regeneration work certainly risk proofs the station against the highs and the lows certainly the situation's not getting worse which is sometimes what can happen in a drought it's nice to know that we're just holding our and as it is the plants that we're trying to re-establish are essentially preparing us for when the drought breaks and then those first rains come the banks not knocking on the door like it was two years ago and that's the product of the of the fantastic tourism sort of seasons that we've had we're still nowhere near out of the woods but it's it's certainly a lot better than it was a couple of years ago I do think in the future Dave and I will be able to knock down the debt we just have to work really really hard towards what we're doing I never thought that you know at my age I'd be dealing with such a huge debt and it's not really one that I necessarily created myself but walked into as a you know as a business for the last two years Dave and I've had about 200 head of cows on ruling our lease conditions state that we must run cows it's certainly not tempting to just run cows full-time to have a full herd of cows out there knowing that yes maybe we could address our debt issues much quicker but watching what it might do to the landscape would it wouldn't be worth it what's been really disappointing is the government's response to the new leases coming up they're effectively trying to make a sign a lease that you know traps us in for the same same sort of problems that we've got for another 50 years two things need to happen we need a stewardship payment to pay to pastures so that we can D stop and start to heal the land but a problem that we need to start working on now is that of land tenure they need to be moving away from purely a pastoral lease to perhaps a range lands lease that allows traditional pastoralism to continue but it can allow for conservation for tourism then that would certainly reduce the grazing pressure that land is under if if we were more able to do different things my relationship with my brother Richard is definitely well on on the men his buddies my stock agent as well so whenever we sell cows we sell them sell them through here and it through him yeah that's really lovely you know with every we've got questions about the market what's going on you know David can just call which it off and I have a bit of a chat I feel that the responsibility to manage will lean very strongly and I ought to do under your neck if I don't succeed and we go broke we have to move you know what will the next person be like how will a tree will lean that in part is what sort of drives me on because I I'm not sure that anybody else is going to put the same passion and so into the landscape rehabilitation anyway that I had even if the change is slow we can't walk away from you know the environmental impacts of what's happening in the rangeland we stay because we want to I think in a lot of respects you know Francis has made my life worthwhile also made what I do worthwhile relationship is I go along strongly she hasn't asked me to marry it seems like we don't really have the time or the money to get in right at the moment but we will get right eventually I think Moline would be an amazing of the environment for kids to to grow up but Willie is what makes us happiest so that's where I see us you

Channel: Journeyman Pictures

Views: 55,382

Rating: 4.8490567 out of 5

Keywords: Outback (Location), Australia (Country), australian story, journeyman, outback, sydney, melbourne, Brisbane, Perth

Id: PeJgxvy0DRE

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 06 2015