The Grains Research and Development Corporation and Land and Water Australia wanted to cap-ture these success stories, and developed SALT magazine as the appropriate means of commu-nicat
Trang 2This is the fourth
edi-tion of SALT magazine
and it is difficult to
comprehend the changes
that have taken place since
the first edition These
changes have included major
government announcements
and new programs at both
the federal and state levels;
further revelation about the
extent and nature of the
impact of dryland salinity
Australia-wide; new industry
and educational initiatives;
and now a fresh new update of the format of
this magazine
At the time of the first edition of SALT
maga-zine, still less than two years ago, the majority of
the messages about dryland salinity were
large-ly negative: War on Salinity! Battle Against the
White Death! Salt Cancer of the Earth! So read
many of the headlines of the time
Yet even then, many success stories were to be
told Many others were taking shape Solutions
for dryland salinity do exist in many
circum-stances, and these solutions have been
success-fully tried where it counts - in the field The
Grains Research and Development Corporation
and Land and Water Australia wanted to
cap-ture these success stories, and developed SALT
magazine as the appropriate means of
commu-nicating these stories
Since then, one of the most significant events
has been the recent announcement of the Prime
Minister's National Action Plan for Salinity and
Water Quality This Plan was endorsed by all
state governments at the November 2000
meet-ing of the Council of Australian Governments
(COAG) The National Dryland Salinity
Program is proud to have contributed to this
initiative by having providedmuch of the knowledge-baseupon which the Plan builds
The National Action Plan is nificant for a number of reasons
sig-First, it will direct the largest sum
of funds ever allocated by theCommonwealth governmentspecifically towards tackling dry-land salinity nation-wide
Second, it will allocate resources
as block-funding against nity-supported plans at a regionalscale, overcoming past limitations
commu-of project-by-project support forsmall, unconnected activities
Most significantly, however, it recognises thatthere is no one solution to dryland salinity, andthat under some circumstances, the most effec-tive and profitable means of managing salinity is
to take a positive attitude towards utilisingsaline land and groundwater resources
SALT magazine is about sharing a positive
atti-tude toward the problem In some cases, the
stories in SALT magazine are about the triumphs
in overcoming a salinity problem In others, it
is about preventing one, or adapting to one
The new format and distribution of SALT
maga-zine is intended to widen the audience to ensurethat more and more people become aware aboutthe triumphs; about the solutions
Over the next few months, Australia's NationalDryland Salinity Program will itself be adapting
to the changes that are taking place In addition
to changing the format of SALT magazine, the
Program's Communications team will beimproving our national, state and regional com-munication effort Already we have appointednew State Communication Co-ordinators inNSW (Lisa Gray) and Queensland (MarkWarnick)
Kim Mitchell of Currie Communications hasrecently been appointed as the NationalCommunications Coordinator over the remain-ing life of the current Program (to June 2003).Together with Bruce Munday (SA), GeorginaWilson (WA) and Jo Curkpatrick and DianaWolfe (Vic), the new members of our team willadd great value to the research, developmentand extension effort of the Program
One final change to the management ments of the Program has been my appointment
arrange-as the fulltime National Manager This roleamalgamates the previous part-time ProgramManager position, which I formerly undertook,with the part-time National Co-ordinator posi-tion, formerly undertaken by NicholasNewland, and before him by Adrian Webb.Nicholas has now moved on to take the helm ofthe South Australian Environmental ProtectionAgency and on behalf of the Program we wishhim well
While it is trite to say that change is good; it ismore accurate to say that it is inevitable I lookforward to the changes before us with a greatdeal of enthusiasm, and remain committed toensuring that Australia's National DrylandSalinity Program and its partners remain a posi-tive source of innovative and practical researchsolutions
Australia's National Dryland Salinity Program is
a partnership in research, development andextension tackling the salinity risk to Australia'sland and water resources For further informa-tion about the Program, contact one of ourCommunication Co-ordinators (see page 23) orvisit the NDSP website at www.ndsp.gov.auWelcome to SALT magazine
Any recommendations contained in SALT magazine do not necessarily represent the policies of the
National Dryland Salinity Program partners No person should act on the contents of this publication whether as to matters of fact or opinion or other content, without first obtaining specific independent professional advice which confirms the information contained in this publication.
Editorial design & production: WDM Design & Advertising, Adelaide
Other contributors
State Governments of WA, SA, Vic, NSW, Qld and Tasmania
Richard Price, NDSP National Manager.
Richard Price
Home
Trang 3Aproject to reverse the
effects of a major salinity
scald on Yeppoon's
Capricorn Coast, Queensland, is
being used as an educational tool to
reach landholders, councils, the
community and school children.
The salt scald, several hectares in size,
is in the catchment of Hedlow Creek,
on Old Byfield Road, 25 kilometres
from Rockhampton
Capricorn Coast Landcare Group
became involved with the problem
three years ago where it lies adjacent to
the saline Hedlow Creek
Group vice-president, Les Embrey, says
soil in the area has become very sodic
and dispersible making it particularly
prone to erosion and causing a number
of trees on a nearby property to die
"A corridor of salt tolerant species of
trees, shrubs and grasses have been
planted near the salt scald to lower the
water table and give some ground
cover," he says
"The plants were propagated by Yeppoon State
Primary School's junior Landcarers group
"Pupils from the school have worked
enthusi-astically with the Landcare group and last yearthe youngsters won the Shade and SpadeEducation Award for Arbour Day."
As the vegetation grows it is expected to lowerthe water table and link up with nearby trees
to form a wildlife corridor
The site has been used for Junior Landcare andCouncil excursions and as improvements takeplace it will be part of a remedial approach toeducate landholders and the community
A bore-hole was sunk, allowing the group tomonitor the level of the water table and saltcontent on a monthly basis
It is hoped that in the future landholders alongHedlow Creek will receive monetary assistance
to fence and revegetate riparian zones
Revegetation of ridge lines in the catchmentcould also serve to lessen the movement ofsalts through the soil profile Future work willdepend on trends in the figures
Chantelle James, Envirolink Co-ordinator for
Capricorn Coast Landcare Group,says combating dryland salinityinvolves communicating accurateinformation and practical solutions
to the broader community
She also co-ordinates 15 ly-orientated community groups thathope to achieve environmentalaction on a larger scale by poolingtalents and resources For eightmonths these groups have beenworking on a publication for theCapricorn Coast region to help thoseresidents not normally environmen-tally-minded to become aware oftrends and solutions in the area.Community interaction has included
ecological-a Giecological-ant Recological-ats Tecological-ail Grecological-ass field decological-ay forlandholders, a Waterwatch trainingday for locals concerned about waterquality, an environmental bus tripfor councillors and managers fromLivingstone Shire Council and edu-cating the younger communitythrough three junior Landcaregroups
More workshops, field days and informationevenings are planned for 2001 This is typical
of the mentoring and empowerment work byall Landcare and ICM groups acrossQueensland
The content of these educational activities will
be ascertained following analysis of resultsreceived from a landholder survey conducted
in the area for the Capricorn Coast LandcareGroup's Envirolink Project
• Les Embrey and Chantelle James spoke with John Sanderson
Scald site helps spread
the word on salinity
Key points
■Conservation efforts on a major
salt scald in the Rockhampton
region has proven a valuable
educational tool
■Numerous educational activities
involving the site are assisting to
improve community
understanding of the salinity
problem facing the region
Trang 4Our attitude to salinity changed one
night in 1988 We have hardly any
salinity on our property, although it
is certainly a very serious issue throughout
the Coorong district.
At the Agricultural Bureau meeting that night,
Steve Barnett, from what was then the
Department of Mines and Energy, showed us a
district map with the areas that were then salt
affected He then presented hydrographs
showing the rate at which saline ground water
was rising and a map of where salinity would
be in 20 years time Suddenly we could see
that if nothing was done we could lose half the
farm
Steve pointed out that local recharge is
impor-tant in our district as it feeds an unconfined
aquifer which then puts pressure on a deeper
confined aquifer This is highly saline and is
being forced to the surface, so we all need to be
doing our bit to arrest this trend When we gotout of beef in 1982 we redeveloped the prop-erty, incorporating 20 kilometres of 60 metre-wide laneways That did not work on our lightsandy loams with cows walking long distances
to the two dairies, so we decided to rubble
10 m and plant native vegetation in the other
50 m This took advantage of the fact that oneside was already fenced and when finished wewill have revegetated 100 hectares where pre-viously nothing was growing
The annual evaporation at Meningie is about
1000 mm greater than the annual rainfall, sothe typical dairy pastures of rye grass andclover are not a prospect at all Our wholeproperty is now under dryland lucerne ofwhich we renovate 10 per cent each year Welook after the lucerne by rotating stockthrough 12 ha paddocks to give the lucerne atleast 21 days to recover, controlling weeds
(mainly primrose and silver grass) and byattending to the known soil nutrient deficien-cies
Established lucerne is apparently just about asgood as native vegetation in preventing groundwater recharge As the lucerne graduallydeclines veldt grass takes over, so we alwayshave perennial plants in the paddock, but theveldt is not nearly as deep rooted and so farless effective
Lucerne underpins our whole operation, but
we don’t like relying on a monoculture forsomething as important as ground water con-trol, particularly after the devastation caused inthe late 70s by the blue-green aphid and thesalinity explosion that followed
We have a 10-year plan to put a 24 m widestrip of native vegetation down the edge ofevery paddock we renovate This takes almost
a hectare out of each paddock, but running
Farming with
negligible recharge
Case study: Philip & Diane Down Location: Meningie, South Australia Area: 1740 ha
Average Rainfall: 450 mm Enterprise: Dryland dairy milking
450 cows; Holstein Friesian stud
Home
Trang 5east-west it will not only reduce recharge,
but also provide a very effective windbreak
which is important as we are so close to the
Southern Ocean
We started our revegetation program in
1989, planting 3000 tubestock by hand We
increased this to about 8000 per year using a
tree planter, but it was still hard work
involv-ing two people At this rate we wondered if
we would ever get to the end of our
pro-gram In 1992 we tried direct seeding and
had stunning results, despite pretty sloppy
site preparation All of a sudden this huge
goal we had set seemed achievable
The next year we did everything by the
book, except controlling the weather which
was a shocker - hot and windy After days of
crawling around on hands and knees trying
to find a germinating plant we just about
gave up, assuming that most of the seed
probably blew away But enough eventually
germinated to restore our faith that this
real-ly was the way to go These days we would
not dream of anything other than direct
seeding They might not all come up in the
year they are sown, but eventually most of
them appear You just have to be patient with
nature Our seed mixture is based on a
survey we did of nearby native scrub, soeverything is local to the district We makesure we have good weed control and groundpreparation and with experience we nowgenerally get the timing right
Rabbits used to be a problem, but the civirus seems to have reduced their numbersdramatically Hares have emerged as a morerecent problem along with kangaroos
cali-Ironically the revegetation work has
provid-ed them with a haven and this is likely to getworse as we establish more of this
Lucerne is obviously the key to productivity
on this farm and in a good year like 2000 wecan make about 600 tonnes of pit silage and
350 tonnes of hay It is also the key to oursustainability
But the revegetation is also very high on ouragenda When we started the redevelopmentthere was scarcely a tree standing on theproperty We have a long way to go, but it is
already immensely satisfying to look aroundnow and see where we have been
The network of trees and shrubs now port birds we didn’t even know existed,along with all the other elements of biodi-versity which make this a more sustainablefarm
sup-The Coorong District is a landlocked ment, so recharge reduction is about theonly way to make sure the salinity problemdoes not overtake us One of the goals of theLocal Action Plan is to reduce recharge by
catch-50 pc over the 10 years from 1994
As part of the strategy to achieve that wehave received Natural Heritage Trust (NHT)incentives to establish and manage lucerneand native vegetation This has certainlyhelped us maintain the pace of redevelop-ment and it has also encouraged lots of otherlandholders to get involved
This is one of the largest dryland dairies in
SA and we have to keep good
quali-ty feed up to the cows every day But
we also have to take a long-termview and make sure that our man-agement now ensures that we are stillhere to farm it in the future
• Philip and Diane Down spoke with Bruce Munday, NDSP Communication Coordinator (SA)
Key points
■Ground water in the region is rising
■Vigorous lucerne is very effective
at minimising recharge
■Native vegetation brings multiple
benefits
■ The Local Action Plan has
mobilised the whole district to
Opposite page: Well managed lucerne is the key to our productivity and
watertable management Above: Direct seeded windbreaks will protect every paddock Below: Multiple local species help control the watertable
and provide a biodiversity buffer to our agricultural system
Trang 6Windmills have long provided an image of security
in rural Australia, and a new side to their value has been reinforced at Corrigin, a town of 1300 residents in Western Australia's wheatbelt region.
Until scheme water was connected for the first time in 1961,
Corrigin's essential infrastructure included about 50 windmills
and wells supplying water from deep below ground The
prolif-eration of windmills even encouraged the brand name for the
local flourmill and motel
During the 1950s growing population and pressure on water
sup-plies forced townspeople to deepen bores, and creating concern
over diminishing supply But connection to the pipeline from
Mundaring Weir in 1961 appeared to solve all the problems
Like in so many towns, having unlimited water on tap brought
rapid changes to residents' habits
Within 10 years only two windmills were still in use, while
invis-ible water tables were rising through the combination of extra
water for lawns and gardens and less drawdown
By the mid-1990s alarm bells had begun to ring Waterlogging
was showing up in the south-west of the town; the hotel had to
pump out water from its cellar; and small areas of salt about the
size of a dining room table were appearing in the business district
in late summer
Shire president and local farmer David Abe remembers it well
"In the early 1990s council organised for a heap of piezometers to
be put down around the town," he says "By early 1996 they wereindicating that water tables were only 1.5 to 2 metres from thesurface in some places
"A few of us recognised the problem and we called a public ing to work out what could be done A committee was formedthat night, but it was hard to know what to do."
meet-Agriculture Western Australia in Northam provided some help but
it needed a longer-term strategy When the Western AustralianGovernment offered to help 13 towns with problems through theSalinity Action Plan from 1996-97, Corrigin made sure it was one
of the first to raise its hand
Understanding how to cope with town site salinity has grown stantially since, but many agree it has been a steep learning curveover the last four years
sub-Trees, offered as the primary tool, achieved little although somewere planted in the first year, David says Airborne geophysicsfly-overs also gave little result
Average Rainfall: 350 mm
Photos: Agriculture Western Australia
Home
Trang 7But appreciating that excess water
has to be pumped out and used on
a sufficient scale, is now helping
Corrigin overcome its problems
"Through the Rural Towns
Program, we have installed more
piezometers to monitor water
lev-els," David says "We are very
for-tunate that the water is good
qual-ity and five bores are now
pump-ing non-stop into a 40,000 gallon
(182,000 litre) tank Three more
bores will be connected before
summer is over."
The water cannot be sold by the
council, but is available for
farm-ers to use for stock use and
spray-ing, and for irrigating council and school
ovals Exporting water from the town is the
ideal option and one which no other town in
Western Australia has yet achieved
"A major cost is road works," David Abe says
"Where the watertable is high - within 1.5
metres of the surface - we can't compact the
ground properly and the foundations collapse
This is one of the council's biggest costs, but
one we hope to reduce from now onwards."
For the hotel, weekly cellar pumping had
become a regular part of life But resurrection
of an old bore 40 metres away enabled the
owners to forget pumping - until the casing
collapsed Connecting a new bore is now a
pri-ority, but the effects of other bores have helped
reduce pumping to every six weeks, even
without the closer one
Thirty towns in WA are now participating in
the Rural Towns Program administered by
Agriculture Western Australia, under which
costs are shared equally between local councils
and the program
Program manager Mark Pridham says Corrigin
was one of the lucky towns because of its
unique position of being able to take thesource of the problem - excess groundwater -and turn it into a resource This was possiblebecause of the good quality of the water underthe town and its location away from the flatvalley floors
During 2000 the economic impacts of salinity
on town site infrastructure were assessed Arange of control options which includedpumping groundwater were also evaluated
Recommendations for treatmentnow include a proposal to de-water the town site and reinstatethe water balance much as it wasbefore arrival of the scheme water
in 1961
"When Corrigin was the town ofwindmills, each windmill pumpedabout 2500 to 5000 litres per day,removing about 170,000 litres or
170 cubic metres per day fordrinking, washing and vegetableand fruit tree irrigation," Marksays
"But our analysis shows that oncethe windmills were removed, thelevel of the aquifer below Corriginbegan rising at about 0.3 metres per annum
It was only a matter of time before problemsbegan in the lower parts of the town."
Although the total cost of operating and taining pumping facilities has been estimated
main-at $22,000 per year, the potential savings inpurchased water to the community are about
$38,000 per year at current costs
This is making it comparatively easy forCorrigin to make the decision to invest ingroundwater pumping as its best salinity man-agement option and turn a liability into anasset
• David Abe and Mark Pridham spoke to Georgina Wilson, NDSP Communication Co-ordinator (WA)
Key points
■Excess ground water is beingpumped from beneath a town inthe Western Australian Wheatbeltregion to manage waterloggingand reinstate the water balance
■ Five bores now pump groundwater non-stop into a 182,000 litretank for the community to utilise
CONTACT:
■David Abe, Ph: (08) 9063 2263;
Mark Pridham, Agriculture WesternAustralia Ph: (08) 9368 3919
Left: A water truck
loads up with free
water at the Corrigin
stand pipe - exporting
the problem out of
the town site area and
assisting nearby land
owners
Corrigin Shire president and Rural Towns Programcommittee member David Abe with one of the productionbores reducing water tables in the town
Trang 8The Pakenham and District Golf Club looks
a picture The greens and fairways are well covered with grass, the trees are growing well and the golfers are out in force As Course Superintendent Anthony Wright told Victoria's NDSP Communications Co-ordinator (and enthusiastic golfer) Jo Curkpatrick, the course today looks a lot different than it did 10 years ago.
When the Pakenham course was established back in
1985, it was built on a floodplain covered in
Melaleuca ericafolia A lot of these trees were
removed to build the golf course, but without a planfor managing the water, the effects of salinity start-
ed to show up very early on We have tackled theproblem by improving the soil balance to deal withthe high sodium levels in the soil Our approach hasbeen to address the problem, not to apply a 'band-aid'
By getting a good balance in the soil we have beenable to show a big improvement in the cover on thefairways With better soils and good grass growth wehave also been able to utilise effluent water in ourirrigation program and that wouldn't have been pos-sible a few years ago
The inspiration for our approach has been WilliamAlbrecht, an American soil scientist in the 1940s and50s Albrecht had taken soil samples around the
PAKENHAM GOLF COURSE
Reclaiming the greens — naturally
Photos: Jo Curkpatrick
Home
Trang 9world and determined that there was a
com-mon thread for fertile soils in terms of the
lev-els of calcium and magnesium in the soil
We started with a soil that had pH of 2 with
high levels of sodium and sulfur In earlier
days gypsum was being added but that was
making the problem worse By meeting
Albrecht's balance for calcium and magnesium
and by adding calcium and potassium, the pH
has improved and we have been able to grow
good grass on the fairways and greens
Some of trees on the golf course were suffering
from the high salt levels, so we went back to
planting M.ericafolia and swamp gums
(Eucalyptus ovata) and they are doing much
better than trees from outside the area We
have planted about 4000 trees so far
We use mostly organic fertilisers and haven't
used insecticides or fertilisers for two years I
would like to have the first certified
complete-ly organic golf course in Australia, but so far
we haven't found a way to control weeds such
as paspalum without herbicides
Our main fertiliser is chicken litter from an
organic poultry shed nearby We spread it
annually on the fairways Soil testing is
under-taken once a year on the fairways and
quarter-ly on the greens which allows us to keep a
pretty close watch on fertility levels and tells us
when some intensive treatment is required
It's not that hard to do and the rewards are
there We have saved money on insecticides
and fungicides and put the savings back into
fertilisers It costs about $1000 per fungicide
application and that's a lot of money for a small
club like ours Besides, by not using
insecti-cides we are noticing that the native birds have
begun to return
We still have a drainage problem and the
golfers will tell you it gets pretty wet during
winter But we can't flush or pump out the
excess water because there is no where for it to
go A quote to re-shape and drain one fairway
is around $75,000 and that is out of our reach
You can't beat good drainage, but by tackling
the soil chemistry we can make a difference
We also match our irrigation with evaporation
and tend to err on the side of not enoughwater Kirsten Barker, our local salinity officerfrom the Department of Natural Resources andEnvironment is keeping an eye on water tablelevels She reports regularly on levels in moni-toring bores on the golf course and in the near-
by residential area
We have noticed a fall in the water table, butwith several dry years it is hard to accuratelypin down the reasons What we do know isthat about 2000 hectares of discharge havebeen mapped in the Western Port catchmentand there is sure to be more than what hasalready been mapped
It really hasn't been that difficult or expensiveand the proof is in the pudding We have a bet-ter golf course for our members and in 1999the Cardinia Shire recognised our efforts with
an Environmental Management Award
Key points
■Dryland salinity is evident on thefairways of an 18-hole communitycourse located south-east ofMelbourne
■Average rainfall 790-820mm
■ Salinity problem is beingovercome by improving the soilbalance using organic fertilisers;irrigating with effluent water andplanting salt tolerant grasses(Santa Ana Couch), improving turfconditions significantly
Wright and Kirsten Barker,
salinity officer (DNRE) for
the Port Phillip region, look
over one of the club’s
greens
Right: The state of the
course before (top) and
after (below) the club’s
extensive restoration work
Trang 10Athird of our property
had the potential to go
saline and now after
more than five years of
pump-ing, we have turned the corner
and are progressively
reclaim-ing about 200 hectares.
Here at Kalannie, my father and
uncle saw the first signs of salinity
in the 1960s after land clearing
began in 1925 In the early 1960s they were
suggesting that pumping with windmills would
be necessary But it's only in the last five or six
years that we've really got into pumping
seri-ously, although we've tried other treatments
We must use the appropriate mix of land vation weapons in the war against salt
reno-Drainage is essential in our valley floors wherethere is a huge volume of groundwater that ismore saline than sea water
Oil mallees and lucerne areused in the valley slopes toextract perched groundwater,but in the valley floors, pump-ing is the engineering solutionused to extract the more salinewater
In 1994 I was talking toRamsis Salama from CSIROabout their salinity research,and he recommended I do acost-benefit analysis as a starting point Wetried to get funding from many places, butalthough we were short-listed a few times, wewere never successful
Groundwater pumping
is proving its worth
Case study: Robert and Helen Nixon and family
Location: Kalannie, WA Area: 7000 ha
Average Rainfall: 300 mm Enterprise: grain and sheep
Home
Trang 11We gained assistance from Colin Walker
at Murdoch University and established a
self-funded research and development
project Farmers like us with salinity
problems on land in the lower valley
floors are very frustrated that there is no
public money for engineering solutions
This is usually our prime land - the
champagne country
How much of my property was affected
is hard to tell Salt on valley floors is
insidious Only a small percentage of
the land is totally lost, but much larger
areas lose fertility and capacity for
pro-duction as the water tables rise For the
research project we installed the first
extraction and monitoring bores in
1995 and began pumping once
approvals had been granted
About a third of our time and
consider-able investment has occurred over five
years Altogether we installed 52
groundwater monitoring bores, three
water extraction bores and more than 10 km of
water lines
We had a long-term plan to acquire land with
salt lakes for disposal of the water Saline water
is pumped 5 km to these lakes, some of which
have been bunded (given retaining banks) toprovide evaporation and crystalliser ponds forsalt production
We planned to harvest salt, but this has beenvery limited due to unexpected rain in the lasttwo summers We had four inches of rain dur-ing January making it impossible over thisperiod In February you would normallyexpect the place to look completely brown, but
in fact it is green
The three production bores yield 450,000 litres
a day all year round The main costs now areelectricity and maintenance on the system as
we continue pumping People in this area arevery conscious of Landcare My neighboursand the LCDC have been very helpful and sup-portive Richard George and others fromAgriculture Western Australia have been asounding board for ideas, and various groupshave visited the project
The highlight for us has been the effects nearthe homestead You can see it in the native
vegetation 500 to 800 metres from the first duction bore As the salt encroached, thecanopy of the trees became stunted with lots ofdead wood Now the canopies are rising pro-gressively through the dead wood branches.When you start drainage work like this on aproblem that has developed over 75 years,changes won't happen overnight First, youhave to stop it getting any worse and then begin
pro-to peg it back
Reversing the effects of half a century is going
to take more than a couple of years, but wehave certainly made a start
• Robert Nixon spoke with Georgina Wilson, NDSP Communication Co-ordinator (WA)
CONTACT:
■Georgina Wilson, Agriculture Western Australia
Ph: (08) 9368 3889 Fax: (08) 9474 2018E-mail: gwilson@agric.wa.gov.au
Left: Colin Walker
■Cost-benefit analysis has
ensured economics of Landcare
activity
■Land reclaimed, increased
production and saleable salt
Trang 12Case study: Malcolm Schaefer
Location: Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Area: 1200 ha with a further 400 ha leased
Average Rainfall: 550 mm
Enterprises: Wool, prime lambs, oats and vetch
Kangaroo Island, which is hardly surprising since we are only a few kilometres from the Southern Ocean
Clearing commenced on our property in 1904 andcontinued up until about 1950, even though someparts of the land were obviously salt affected Iremember my father saying that the land almostasked to be cleared because the main vegetation typewas tea-tree which was very easy to clear
I realised that the salinity problem was getting matically worse in 1984 after a very wet year Thatwas when I started a small program of planting salt-tolerant grasses and trees on affected areas In thosedays, with not much experience to fall back on, ittook several years to thicken up the grasses and most
dra-of the trees (which cost $2 each) were eaten by garoos Another wet year in 1992 saw the salt spreadeven further, many more old trees died and I couldsee that the problem had now become urgent About one third of my land is salt affected, anotherthird is non-wetting sand and the remainder is goodcropping land Because I am at the landlocked bot-tom of a large groundwater system, there is not agreat deal I can do about lowering the watertable Ican probably protect assets like dams with targetedlocal revegetation, but I also need to protect the landthat is not salt-affected and live productively with theland that is
kan-A major breakthrough occurred when I attended alocal Landcare conference in 1994 and saw theopportunities for direct seeding of native vegetation.Not only can large areas be sown quickly, the 'roosdon't seem to find this as attractive as the tubestock
As my farm is bounded on three sides by native etation I have an abundant seed source as well as anabundance of kangaroos
veg-Preparation for direct seeding consists of spraying
700 mm wide strips with glyphosate in June and thenagain about five weeks later to kill the second germi-nation of weeds Seeding is done in August, but ger-mination seems to be staggered over the next 12months depending on the weather conditions, so itdoes not really matter much if we have a dry springand there is not much to show for awhile
Making the most
of saline ground
Serradela on a non-wetting sandy rise treated with clay
Home