Nuffield Australia 2008 Autumn Tour report

(Reproduced from personal observations by Paul Bethune)

The Nuffield Australia Autumn Tour was held in late February. A group of around 60 toured through the Goulburn Valley and North East Victoria, starting at Bill Cassamity's property – Strath Ayr. Bill is one of the more colourful Nuffield scholars and has been a pioneer in the turf industry. The water restrictions in Melbourne have cost Strath Ayr its major market so they’ve diversified into total project management and have some pretty exciting projects on the go such as the Launceston race track. We took a look at the cricket wicket machine which lifts pitches in and out of sports stadiums. It’s the only one of its type in the world. It wasn’t intentional but water, or our lack of it, became the predominant theme of the tour.

Darley Stud was our next stop which was an amazing display of how you can transform a farm in a short timeframe. With brand new facilities, kilometres of post and rail fencing and manicured lawns, the expenditure was clearly in the millions but was really just loose change in comparison to the value of the horses it will house when fully operational. There was only one horse (value $10 million) on site at the time of our visit and it was commented by a young South Australian filly that our group had failed to add to the number of studs in the building!

We lunched and heard more about water at Chateau Tahbilk. We rounded the day off with a visit to the Snell’s dairy farm at Merrigum. Then we unwound with a BBQ cruise along the Murray in a couple of paddle steamers. Jamie and Ann Snell did a power of work in catering for the night and the lunch the next day which greatly reduced the cost of the tour as well as hosting the group on the Thursday afternoon – so our thanks to Jamie and Ann.

Friday was the returning scholars presentation day and the standard of presentations was very high in front of an audience of over one hundred (see below). On Saturday we took off again, our first stop was Dennis Moon’s irrigation business and farm where our thoughts were again turned to water. Here the contemporary scholars and the Australian group parted company, they headed back to the big smoke via Andrew Broads at Bridgewater and then went on to Integrity Fruit where a group of five farmers have pooled resources to build a single state-of-the-art packing facility.

From here we went to Brown Brothers’ winery at Milawa where we split into two groups. One group did a site tour whilst the others spent time wine tasting and then the idea was to swap. It was noted that a small minority decided that wine tasting was far more enlightening than a tour and had two wine tasting sessions in a row.

We camped that night at Merrijig and the next morning went to Chris and Kim Stoneys. Chris is a natural story teller you could just stick him next to a campfire with a beer in his hand and you’d be entertained all night but he had a fascinating story to tell and he told it boots and all. With land leases all over the countryside and massive stock numbers the Stoneys’ had a fairly unique set up.

We finished the tour at Alastair and Ruth Lawson’s Angus Stud. This farm was a highlight for a number of the tourists. The Lawsons have recently bought property at Goondiwindi and in Western Australia to demonstrate to the locals that their cattle will perform just as well under a range of environments. Lawson’s sell around 800 bulls per year.

Well that about wraps it up. In summary we went, we looked, we learned, we relaxed, we generally carried on and had a good time. T’was a shame the country wasn’t in better heart but that will change the rains are a coming – it always rains at the end of a Trevor Caithness long dry spell.