Transcript from the podcast “Speak Out Loud: Stories of Strength from the Southern Downs”

SEASON 2: EPISODE 9

GUEST: Tanya Jobling, Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group

PUBLISHED: 23rd March 2022

[00:00:00] Tanya: We run a range of workshops that suit people who are farming, either grazing or cropping or land managers in that way. So sometimes there we’re working on soil. Sometimes we’re working on natural sequence farming. Sometimes we’re working on regenerative agriculture. There’s also a range of bush care groups that we support. So we’ve got at least two bush care groups in the area.

[00:00:22] Kathryn: Tanya Jobling joins me for today’s episode to share information about the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group, a not for profit organisation which has been active across the region for 30 years. The Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group collaborates with other organisations to help the community connect with land management workshops and projects that benefit the health of the land and the health of the people. This includes education on techniques such as natural sequence farming, regenerative agriculture, bio controls and bushfire risk mitigation, as well as bush care groups which are open to anyone interested in getting involved.

Welcome to the podcast Tanya. Can you tell us what’s your connection with the Southern Downs?

[00:01:21] Tanya: So I work here at the Condamine Headwaters Landcare office. I work as the project manager and coordinator here at the office. I run the projects and deliver all the activities of the group to the community.

[00:01:35] Kathryn: Can you share with our listeners a little bit more about what the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group does?

[00:01:41] Tanya: The Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group has been running for almost 30 years now. It’s been a very long term Landcare group, one of the longest in Queensland and in the current format it delivers projects on a wide range of land management techniques, Um, relevant to farmers, bush carers, conservationists, any land managers in the Southern Downs. We like to look at what the issues are that land managers are facing. And there’s been some that have been very long-term the usual ones like weeds and erosion. Um, and then there’s some newer ones. We talk a lot about regenerative agriculture. We talk a lot about soil health. We talk about alternative ways of dealing with weeds like bio. And so I look around at the different kinds of needs that land managers have. And I try to design projects that meet those needs.

[00:02:33] Kathryn: The Southern Down’s Region has been on what we call a recovery journey following drought and bush fires in 2019 and 2020. And more recently the region has had some pretty significant rainfall and flooding as well as the pandemic. So there’ve been a number of layers of stresses across our community, as well as right across Australia and the world. What are some of the challenges that people who are living and working on the land have needed to navigate throughout this time?

[00:03:05] Tanya: I think like you said, I think the challenges have been all of those things. And I think that people on the land aren’t really a different country though. I think they’re feeling the challenges that we’re all feeling in terms of what’s been happening for the last couple of years with the pandemic, um, all the rules, the difficulties with travel, the difficulties with sourcing materials or labour. So I think, you know, people on the land are just, you know, feeling what the community feels. We’re part of the community just the same. With respect to the bush fires and the floods and the drought, I think most people on farms can mostly take that in their stride because they well and truly know that that’s part of the landscape that we manage when, when we’re land managers, that’s part of our environment. We always know in any business, be it in land management or in any retail or wholesale or manufacturing, we should be prepared for different things. Maybe the rest of the world now has more of an understanding what farmers go through and farmers have these kind of major disruptors often. So, I think farmers are really good at handling disruptive events, you know, you just take it on the chin and look to the next day.

[00:04:33] Kathryn: Being immersed in land management, and obviously drought, bush fire, floods is going to affect the land management, what activities and events is the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group currently focusing on? And in what ways is that benefiting the region?

[00:04:52] Tanya: I had a wonderful project that came out of my experiences in the 2018, 2019 dry period, which was having the opportunity to look at some early adopters of natural sequence farming in our Southern Downs area and how those farmers had actually managed to create a place in their landscape that held water and held biodiversity and a lot of life in that really dry period. And so that inspired me to write a project looking for funding for a natural sequence farming project that was successful. So from 2019 to 2021 we ran a natural sequence farming project. That’s a natural sequence farming is based on the work of Peter Andrews looking at holding water in the landscape, rehydrating soils, creating a better environment in the Australian farming system for capturing rainfall and increasing biodiversity, increasing soil cover like pasture cover on the soil. Really interesting conceptual work that really does apply to us here in the Southern Downs. So that project delivered a range of workshops. It delivered a training course with Tarwyn Park Training that was extremely well-received. And we then went on and did funded works on a whole number of properties in our area. And that got a lot of people started with trialing natural sequence farming. And you know, that really builds people’s experience with a new land management technique and looking at those results now has been very encouraging and it’s a kind of work that applies right across the seasons. Um, both in the dry times and the not so dry times, it’s still relevant. You know, we are almost always limited for moisture supply to our plant life in this environment. So increasing the capture of rainfall is really critical, even in the current season. And if we don’t actually capture the rainfall when it is raining, then we don’t have a chance any other time. So that’s one of the projects that’s been very inspiring over the last few years. That’s led into Uh, a range of projects in regenerative agriculture and working with farmers who are deliberately working with a whole range of techniques to build soil, build biodiversity, build health in their system. And the health in their system is then a resilient system. So it’s a system that can handle a bit of dry or a bit of too much wet or a bit of cold or a bit of heat because it is a system that is more intact. So you know, if you’ve got pasture cover on your soil, then a hot windy day is of less damage to your soil than if you have no pasture cover. I mean, that’s a simple example, but farmers who are trying to work with their landscape to increase its function as a system, as a whole, has been a lot of the focus of the regenerative ag work that we’ve been doing. So we’ve currently got a program running a whole range of workshops in regenerative ag. So some of that is natural sequence farming. Some of it is multi-species cover crops. Some of it is pasture crops. Some of it is grazing practices. Some of it is tree establishment where there’s no trees in the landscape and a lot of it is around soil health and system health for for farming. So we’ve got a really active cohort of people who come to those workshops, contribute to them, or, you know, take on ideas out of those workshops. And that’s been one of the really interesting projects that’s been running across the Southern Downs community.

[00:09:00] Kathryn: Tanya, that sounds like there are benefits for the land in terms of a healthier landscape, increased productivity for those who are working on the land which also leads to profitability and benefits for the economy, for the larger economy across the community, which all leads towards health of the people.

[00:09:25] Tanya: I think very much so. It’s not always as direct as what you’ve just said. You know, if we shift to regenerative practices, we might take a hit on yield, for example, if we put on less direct urea in a certain crop, but we might’ve reduced our costs as well. And we might have reduced our runoff to the waterways and we might’ve reduced our insect pressure in the process. So, the benefits are as you said, across the landscape and definitely across the community, but sometimes they’re diverse. Sometimes they’re not as quick as, you know, the quick fix solutions are and the most benefit, and I think this is the one that you could never measure, but is, is the most interesting and most exciting is that people gain a real sense of enthusiasm from understanding that they’re farming better, that there is an encouraging way to work with the landscape, and that there’s a whole world out there to explore of other ideas that apply to a farming. It doesn’t just have to be more of the same fertilizer and more of the same pesticide. That’s not to say fertilizers and pesticides aren’t an option, but they’re one of a number of options. And so a lot of our farmers are really exploring those options and finding it very interesting and rewarding to do so. And the rewards are financial, the rewards are on their farm, but their rewards are in the joy of you know, the work of finding that out as well. It’s probably a little bit idealistic to say that we’re all immediately profiting from regenerative ag. We are, but in a sort of deeper way than, you know, increasing yields.

[00:11:20] Kathryn: Thanks Tanya. How can people get involved with the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group if they’re so inspired to do so after hearing about some of the projects that you’ve got going?

[00:11:31] Tanya: We run a wide range of projects for all different kinds of interests. And so the best way is to look out in the media for what kind of workshops are on that are going to suit your interests. So for example, we run a range of workshops that suit people who are farming, either grazing or cropping or land managers in that way. So sometimes there we’re working on soil. Sometimes we’re working on natural sequence farming. Sometimes we’re working on regenerative agriculture. There’s also a range of bush care groups that we support. So we’ve got at least two bush care groups in the area. There longstanding bush care group at Killarney. So Killarney Bush Care. They’ve been meeting for a lot of years. People are welcome to get involved with that. And we’ve got a more recent group that does bush care here in town at a reserve, at a particular reserve. So people are welcome to get involved with that. And so there are ways that people can get involved in specifically conservation works and have an interesting social time while they do it. People can get in touch with the office and I can hear what they’re looking to get interested in, and I can put them in touch with the right kind of groups for that.

[00:12:44] Kathryn: Tanya, what’s your top tip for managing tough times, for example changing weather conditions for someone who might be living or working on the land or caring for land in some way?

[00:12:57] Tanya: A top tip for dealing with change is to know that it is all going to change. I mean change is certain. My top tip would be look after yourself and get yourself ready for change because it will come. It is coming. It’s here all the time. Put yourself and your family and your farm or your piece of land in the best possible place for that change. We don’t know whether it’s a drought next or a flood next or a fire next or we often in our lives have personal changes as well. We just need to be sure to position ourselves as best as possible for that. I often like to talk to people and I say, well, you know, there’s three kinds of business. There’s your own business, there’s the business going on around you, and there’s the business that belongs to the rest of the world. Well, the only business you can really mind is your own business. And so get stuck into your own business and make it a good one. Whether that’s your health, your family, your landscape, your own life, you know, and be ready for change.

[00:14:02] Kathryn: Before we started recording Tanya, you mentioned the cultural burning workshops. Could you tell us a little bit more about those?

[00:14:10] Tanya: Yes, certainly. Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group has been involved in cultural burning workshops for a lot of years And all through 2020 and 2021, we ran a series of cultural burning workshops to help people in the Southern Downs understand more about cultural burning. So there’s, there’s three really important aspects to cultural burning. There’s the cultural aspect of it. So understanding the indigenous perspective of land management and burning as it applies in this environment. The second aspect is understanding the way that appropriate fire increases the health of the tree, grass landscape. And so there’s a whole lot of biodiversity benefits that go with an appropriate fire regime looking at grass health, looking at weed control, looking at tree health and looking at cycling nutrients. So the third aspect of cultural burning is understanding bushfire risk mitigation. So with appropriate fire regimes in a predominantly fire prone landscape, we can manage to some extent bushfire risk. All right. So what our workshops were were helping people to understand how they could use cultural burning, cool burning, and appropriate burning to reduce the bushfire risk, particularly in areas where people’s houses are close to bush. They were a really interesting series of workshops. We had a lot of people attend them and still a lot of interest in cultural burning you know, in the community now.

[00:16:08] Kathryn: Is there any possibility of future workshops?

[00:16:12] Tanya: There’s plenty of possibility. It’s always a juggle to squeeze a bit of funding here or there, and then, you know, bring it all together. That’s, that’s our task as a Landcare Group. Certainly the interest is there and I imagine there would be a range of cultural burning workshops coming up in future years.

[00:16:31] Kathryn: Is there anything else that you’d like to share about Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group?

[00:16:37] Tanya: I’d like to share that I understand that it’s difficult for people to know where Landcare sits in, in the whole bureaucratic framework. A lot of people come to Landcare thinking that we’re somehow a government thing. And whilst Landcare is right across Australia it’s not the least bit government funded in Queensland. We receive no government funding at all. We’re not connected to council or to state government or the federal government. We’re actually a local, not for profit community group on the same basis as as many other local community groups. I feel that we as a community have a responsibility to land management, but you know, we also, as a country, I guess, as a nation, have a responsibility for land management. And I guess that’s where state and federal connections come in. And I understand that it’s hard for people to know where Landcare sits in that framework. So when we get a project that is funded, it’s up to us where we can actually get our money from to run those projects. And I guess Landcare has got a bit of a legacy of having been highly funded in the past. There’s just so much less funding around and anybody involved with community groups will know this, uh, there’s a lot less funding around now than there was in the past but I think, you know, I guess that’s relevant in a conversation on resilience. Isn’t it? You know, that, uh, we’re resilient too, but it also means, I guess, resilient doesn’t mean expecting things to be like it was 10 or 15 years ago because that’s not possible. So what we’ve aimed to do at Landcare is to work our way forward in the current funding landscape and be the best kind of group that we can be for the community for what’s going on now, for what our outlook is for the next few years. I hope that people understand that Landcare sits in that kind of community groups space whilst dealing with the rather enormous issues of erosion and soil health and and weed management and land management, and you know, what is sustainable and what is regenerative and what is good agriculture. And we tackle the big questions from a small base. And I think we’re good at that.

[00:19:05] Kathryn: How can people get in touch with what you’re doing with the Condamine Headwaters Landcare Group, Tanya?

[00:19:11] Tanya: So the best way for people to get in touch is to call the office directly. We have a landline. Four double six one, double 9 0 9. We have a Facebook page, so people are welcome to have a look on our Facebook page. We always post our workshops and any other current activities on our Facebook page. People are welcome to sign up to our newsletter. So we send out a newsletter three times a year. People are welcome to become members. So members always receive the newsletters and also are welcome to come to meetings. And they’re welcome to send an email into the office as well. You’ll find the email address on the council website.

[00:19:50] Kathryn: How can people get on your newsletter list?

[00:19:53] Tanya: They can ring me up or send me an email And they can ask to be on the newsletter list. And there’s no obligation. If people want to be on the newsletter list, you don’t have to be a member or participate in anything in particular, just to read what we’re doing on an ongoing basis.

[00:20:11] Kathryn: Thanks for listening to the Speak Out Loud Stories of Strength podcast with me, Kathryn Walton. I hope this episode inspires you to get involved and to get connected with your community. You can find the transcript and any links mentioned in this episode, in the show notes and please share the podcast with your friends.

We acknowledge and pay respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual, and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Series Two of this podcast has been jointly funded under the Commonwealth and State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements 2018.