Streams’ custodians reap rewards from riparian planting

• Published date: 26 April 2023
• Publication title: Central Rural Life

Rather than viewing the freshwater trio as a regulatory burden or a hindrance to farming, Tim Chamberlain and Rose Donaghy take pleasure in being their custodians

Just as Harts Creek, Birdlings Brook and Spring Creek are part of the farm’s fabric, so too are the riparian native trees and shrubs inextricably linked to the way they farm the land.

Organically grown on the 180ha farm are vegetable seeds, fresh vegetables, specialist crops and Wiltshire sheep which are on-sold to wholesalers and retailers.

This light touch to the land extends to its natural charms.

Lake Ellesmere is only a small step away and they have done their best to make sure farm nutrients don’t go beyond the farm’s irrigated heavy soils and into feeding streams.

That is not the only reason why the family has invested so much time and money into returning the streams to a better state.

The sheer beauty of the habitats gives homes to aquatic ecosystems and other walks of life.

Before returning to the family farm, a young Mr Chamberlain worked with dogs and horses on large sheep and beef units.

For a while he struggled to see how he could detach himself from their ‘‘geographic beauty’’ and take up lowland farming on the flat.

‘‘But we had these three creeks running through our farm and I wondered if we could create actual real beauty here. These are a bit of a pain in the neck really and they go through your farm and cut it up and make your paddocks not square. They have places where animals get in and die and I wondered if we could turn that all around to make havens of them.’’

The family wanted to turn around the way a previous farming era had treated them, he says.

‘‘At the very worst side of it, they were sewage pipes. Our pigsty went directly into the creek and the dairy farm’s effluent would go directly into the creek off the milking sheds. We bought a bit of land in 1970 and there was a dairy farm just above us and it was flowing through beautifully crystal and clear and then all of a sudden it went green. I was wondering why it was going green when it suddenly dawned on me they were cleaning the dairy shed. So all that changed and had to change. It wasn’t just the farmers — most of the cities’ effluent went directly out to sea so it was a human being thing.’’

Mr Chamberlain says his father was uncomfortable with this and only too pleased to get out of pigs.

That’s not the only generational mindset which was to change at Harts Creek Farm.

Their son, George, is now on the fifth-generation farm which started when five Chamberlain brothers came out in the 1870s.

They originated from farming stock in Devon and bought a farm each in the area so the Chamberlain name remains a local farming name to...