NQ Dry Tropics Bootcamp participants at the Mulloon Home Farm garden.

In April, a wonderful group of graziers from across the Burdekin catchment recently came to the Mulloon Institute to learn about landscape rehydration. Hosted at Home Farm homestead, the weeklong event included a return trip from Townsville to Canberra, a signature two-day educational Bootcamp, plus tours of diverse properties demonstrating principles of regenerative agriculture in and around central NSW. This event was organised in collaboration with the NQ Dry Tropics natural resource management group. 

On Monday afternoon, once we had settled into the homestead, we were off again, racing the remaining daylight on a tour where we could appreciate the impact of the Mulloon catchment scale rehydration work. From the bed-control structures known affectionately as leaky weirs to the tree-lined contour banks upon the hill we climbed at dusk, we quickly gained a broader perspective of the Mulloon Creek floodplain. Seeing the Mulloon Creek system from the micro to the macro gave us an immediate grounding in the realities of a catchment-scale rehydration project.

Over the next two days, we learned about the fundamental patterns and processes that can be influenced by landscape rehydration projects. We oscillated between classroom and field activities to practice observing and interpreting signs of landscape function. This gave us the necessary foundation to begin thinking about interventions, considering the many options we could potentially apply to our suite of challenges back in North Queensland. How to prioritise an action plan was then an explicit focus for the remainder of the event.

Properly considering what our specific goals, limitations and opportunities are, is fundamental to beginning the process of designing an action plan that can successfully address even the most basic landscape issue. Touring three additional properties provided a great showcase of how successful enterprise management does not sacrifice landscape function. The great value in seeing these three properties back-to-back was how they all contrasted greatly with each other, and from Mulloon’s Home Farm. Yet, across all the example systems we witnessed, an appropriate application of general principles and fine-grained decision-making was obviously delivering great landscape rehydration benefits within a framework of regenerative agriculture.

Funding for this event was provided by NQ Dry Tropics.

The Mulloon Institute’s Bootcamps have been developed with the support of the NSW Environment Trust.