David Marsh: The Land Does It For You

Welcome to the bicentennial episode. And who better to mark the occasion than this legend of regenerative agriculture, David Marsh. To visit Allendale Farm is like stepping into an incredible rewilding of country – as a livestock farm! David’s been here for nearly 60 years, the first half of which he ran industrialised cropping and livestock farming, which continued to devastate the land, his bank account, his family’s health, and increasingly, his conscience. The second half, he ditched the cropping and started to run livestock regeneratively, letting the land do more of what it wanted to do. Now he sees birdlife akin to RAMSAR listed wetlands, 1500 new trees that seeded themselves, and myriad other extraordinary changes. And powering this enormous legacy, a family tragedy that continues to shape their lives in profound ways.

A long-held hope, my family visited David and his wife Mary near Boorowa in NSW a few weeks ago. I only half-jokingly wanted to call this episode ‘the do-nothing farmer’ – and even the ‘do-nothing and pay-nothing farmer’ - with reference to the deft, laid-back, ‘hands off’ approach David applies to the land, its self-organising regeneration so evident. But he thought that sounded a bit less than glorious, and insisted it’s more complex than that. I’ll let David explain, in a treasured exchange, in suitably golden twilight.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers and a transcript, also available on Apple and some other apps. (Note the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read.)

Recorded at Allendale Farm on 10 March 2024.

Title slide: David & AJ ahead of this conversation (pic: Olivia Cheng).

See more photos on the episode web page, and to see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.

Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from the film Regenerating Australia.

The RegenNarration playlist, featuring music chosen by guests (with thanks to podcast member Josie Symons).

Transcript

David: 0:00

Turned the place into an absolute desert. You know, there was no vegetation on a lot of our paddocks and I felt so ashamed of that because I had to, I really had to admit to myself that I was the cause of it. It wasn't just something that came along with dry weather, because there was plenty of grass on the side of the road. I had to admit that I was the bloke responsible. That was a major turning point. And I went on this odyssey trying to, I vowed to myself that I would never let that happen again. I went on this odyssey of trying to find other ways of doing things that wouldn't make you feel like you were trapped all the time.

AJ: 0:52

I

Speaker 3: 1:04

My name's Anthony James. Welcome to the bicentenary episode of The RegenNarration. I never expected to be here, much like many of the people we hear from on this podcast. Life's innate regenerative impulse continues to surprise in all sorts of wild and wonderful ways, and for that I'm immensely grateful. I'm grateful for you listening and corresponding. I'm grateful for hearing the things you're attempting and maybe how this helps a bit, and I'm so grateful for you supporting listeners for making it all possible. Thank you. S omehow it still feels like we're just winding up. I'll have some pretty substantial news for you soon on that front. M eantime, of course, i f you're also finding value in all this, please do consider joining this brilliant community of supporting listeners for as little as $3 a month, or whatever you can and want to contribute. Subscribing members get additional benefits, of course, in addition to the great karma. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration. com forward slash support and thanks again.

AJ: 2:15

To mark this bicentenary, then, who better but the bloke Sam Vincent was describing a couple of episodes ago when he said: " I remember, actually at Malone Creek a few years ago, being at an event and there were quite a few young guys from Boorowa I think who'd come, and when David Marsh started speaking it was like the king had entered. He's so modest, he'd never present himself like that, but the respect in the room for him among these younger farmers was really great and palpable.

Speaker 3: 2:46

David Marsh is a legend of regenerative agriculture. To visit Allendale Farm is like stepping into an incredible rewilding of country - as a livestock farm. He's been here for nearly 60 years, the first half of which he ran industrialised cropping and livestock farming, which continued to devastate the land, his bank account, his family's health and, increasingly, his conscience. The second half, he ditched the cropping and started to run livestock regeneratively, letting the land do more of what it wanted to do. Now he sees birdlife akin to Ramsar-listed wetlands, 1,500 new trees that seeded themselves and myriad other extraordinary changes. And Empowering this enormous legacy, a family tragedy that continues to shape life in profound ways. A long-held hope,

Speaker 3: 3:46

my family visited David and his wife Mary, an outstanding artist and human in her own right, near Boorowa in New South Wales a few weeks ago. I only half-jokingly wanted to call this episode the Do-Nothing Farmer, and even the Do-Nothing and Pay-Nothing Farmer, with reference to the deft, laid-back, hands-off approach David applies to the land. It's self-organising regeneration so evident. But he thought that sounded a bit less than glorious and insisted it's a bit more complex than that. So I'll let David explain in a treasured exchange at their place in suitably golden twilight. David Marsh, it's a pleasure to be at your place mate, where the hell are we?

David: 4:35

We're in the southwest slopes of New South Wales, near Boorowa the Garden of New South Wales they used to call it.

Speaker 3: 4:41

AJ: They used to call it? DM: Yeah, AJ: when are we talking about?

David: 4:47

Ah well, I'm not sure about that, but I've heard it called the Garden of New South Wales. I think it's because it's generally considered a reasonably safe sort of a place for rainfall. That has not been true s ince I've been here, actually. AJ: Really? Well, in the last 25 years since we started doing things differently, half of that time has been below average rainfall years. So I don't even call it drought now, it's just dry times.

Speaker 3: 5:13

All right, that's a perfect segue, in a way. Let's start with what has become of this place, what you've done to it? What's happening now, in a sense, what you've just taken us amongst? Let's start with the water.

David: 5:32

AJ: In the context of dry times, tell us about what happens to water here? DM: Well, it's not magic. When it stops raining, things get dry. But what we have found is that, because of our management of ground cover, we're retaining a lot of water in the landscape and because of the way we're grazing and having long recoveries, we've got big root systems and they're holding more water for longer. AJ: And how do you know how?

Speaker 3: 5:58

How does it show up?

David: 5:59

I can tell you exactly how we know that, because when it starts drying off at the beginning of summer, we're often green for three weeks longer than the farms around us. And then the other way, when things start you know, middle of August things start just a little day length. Getting up a little bit, we've got spring before it's happening on country, that's set stock, which we were doing not too long ago. You've got to be careful you don't get too virtuous 100%.

Speaker 3: 6:28

We'll talk more about that, but just being frank about the observations, you were showing us an area, too, where there was a big rainfall event and you got a swollen creek because of all the water running off upstream. Yep.

David: 6:45

Yeah, this wasn't just. You know. There was a lot of that going on all over the district. You know, low lying places had fences flattened in some places. People put them back up and they had them knocked down three times because their ground cover levels were low. Runoff was high. So here you know, our big focus is never to lose ground cover, and I think we've been. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that we've always been able to retain that for 25 years, whereas prior to that we often had desert looking conditions which I used to feel miserable about, but I didn't think I had a choice. But then I found out that you do have a choice. We will definitely pick out that you do have a choice.

Speaker 3: 7:25

We will definitely pick up that thread. But just on that ground cover, I've had it said to me that 100% ground cover, 100% of the time, is the Holy Grail. So you found it, you found the grail.

David: 7:37

Yeah, look, I think we've had 100% ground cover a lot of the time. We probably, you know, in those three years 2017, 18, 19, they were extremely dry years, you know we got down to? We got down from over 400 adult cattle down to 120. Now we did that because of our desire to retain ground cover. So that's a decision not too many people are keen to make, but we've made those sort of decisions many times over the last 25 years and it's always been of a benefit.

Speaker 3: 8:22

And now you've got a situation where a lot of those grasses are native grasses too, and it's almost like I was just stunned to see the young trees everywhere, almost like nurseries. And I'm doubly stunned because I know nurseries are going out of business. But here we are, it's happening, and you're not even growing them.

David: 8:44

No, we're allowing them to grow, and that's you know. I think that the last La Nina event, the last three years, which were 30% above our average long term, those conditions happen, you know, once every decade or so, and there are definitely conditions that would be conducive to seed coming up, but when you've got stock everywhere, they never become trees, and before we started managing planned grazing, we had stock in many paddocks and I never saw a tree that would have been there. I just couldn't see them, I didn't have the eyes for it. But it wasn't until 2010 that we suddenly started seeing trees coming up spontaneously and that that was a really exciting moment for me, because that hasn't happened here for between 120 and 160 years. Since axes were swung so effectively, we've been living in a landscape watching the demise of the woodland system, which has been going on for several million years.

Speaker 3: 9:55

In a very short time. But to think, now it's running its own race again.

David: 9:59

Yeah, it's got the capacity to replace itself and it's starting to do that it's got the capacity to replace itself and it's starting to do that.

Speaker 3: 10:08

So you've reached in excess from, I believe, 3% tree cover when you bought the place in 1966. Yeah, in excess of 20% tree cover now.

David: 10:13

Yeah, it'll be higher than that now, because, since 2010, 1,500 seedlings are starting to become trees.

Speaker 3: 10:20

Wow. So that's about a bit over 10 years since you started in earnest with the holistic grazing and so forth.

David: 10:27

Oh yeah, from 1999, that's when we started 2010,. That's when we first started seeing tree seedlings.

Speaker 3: 10:33

The last 14 years of seeing that. So they're the age of some of the bigger small trees. Yeah yeah, A beautiful thing to behold. And you mentioned a bloke from Queensland who ended up at about 40% tree cover and and they were his most productive areas as a farmer yeah, this is a guy called Shane Joyce.

David: 10:52

Had a place called Duke's Plains can't quite remember exactly the part of Queensland, but yeah, he, he was a biodynamic farmer and, yeah, his, he was a good record keeper and his most productive years or parts of the farm were where he had 40 percent ground cover, 40 percent trees, which most people would say that would be a big handbrake on production, but it wasn't you've got this beautiful line, don't you?

Speaker 3: 11:20

I picked up somewhere. Oh, we've been increasing yield at the expense of production.

David: 11:26

Yeah, so production is really the result of all the photosynthesis and life that happens in the landscape. But when we we've been increasing the size of the pump as the size of the lake is getting smaller really, and you found even in your experience that you were in fact.

Speaker 3: 11:46

did you say you were winning competitions?

David: 11:48

We did win a couple of cropping competitions here, and we had a bloke from Grenfell who's a wonderful guy now not very well, unfortunately, but he used to say, no, we love coming down here to get the big ones, the big crops. Yeah, no, we did grow a few big crops and it was really just right. At the beginning of zero-till agriculture, I think we were the first people, or among the first people in this district to sow a crop with no cultivation at all skinny points, which was considered the big positive innovation it was a big leap forward.

David: 12:24

Yeah, getting away from all the cultivation of, you know, exposing the land to the elements on a several times a year basis, and it was always made light of in the pub. You know how'd you get on? Oh, you had a bit of wash, but it was, you know. It was hundreds of tons and a hectare, you know. But it was made light of because we were all having it in bits and pieces all over the place and we didn't feel that there was anything we could do about it. But along comes no-till agriculture. We got on the bandwagon and, yeah, it seemed like a wonderful thing because, you know, your paddocks weren't at risk anymore. However, the flip side was that you were completely and utterly reliant on chemicals for land preparation and control of weeds. And it became very obvious in my mind only a few years after adopting it and thinking it was wonderful. There was going to be a short-lived practice, because the longer you go in those systems, the more chemicals you need to use, and I was disenchanted with.

David: 13:30

When I was 40, I think I started looking back at my life and thinking you know what sort of a legacy is my behaviour leaving the planet? You know, that's a sort of an ethical thing to think about, and I didn't like what I was seeing. You know, I had a farming system that was not involved with increasing life. In fact, we were killing things more than growing things. So I sort of, yeah, I started looking around for other ways to do things and, yeah, I went on probably a 10-year journey. I heard about what we're currently doing, holistic management. It's really just a decision-year journey of. I heard about what we're currently doing, holistic management. It's really just a decision-making framework which sort of makes it possible for you to make, you know, sound decisions economically, socially and environmentally all the time.

David: 14:18

I heard about that 10 years before I started practicing practicing it really and that was due to the fact that in the early days I wasn't, you know, we had kids at boarding school, we had need for a lot of cash and I just wasn't confident that I could make such a radical, or seemingly radical, change without going out of business.

David: 14:38

So I had to satisfy myself that I wasn't going to put my family in that situation and I spent 10 years looking and I probably did the opposite of what I should have done, because I actually went and did more cropping, because when we were in that position to change in 1989, when I first read Alan Savory's book, it was right on the cusp of the reserve price for wool collapsing. And so you know, know our somewhat secure way of being able to budget on what we were going to get for our wool clip, that vanished overnight. And so I thought, well, you know, it became very hard to make money out of livestock for about seven or eight years and so, yeah, we sprayed out some very good pastures that we spent a lot of money establishing and went and did more cropping, so we went from sort of 25 percent to nearly 50 percent of the farm wow and that in itself was a.

David: 15:37

That was an absolute eye-opener. In fact, if I'd changed before that, it probably wouldn't have been a good thing, because the lesson I learned was that I did a HM course in 1999 and I looked back at our various enterprises, one of which was cropping, which I thought was our best enterprise because it churned out a bit of cash every now and then. But when you stood it up against our desire to live in a landscape increasing in diversity and also having 100% ground cover, you just couldn't achieve it cropping. So when we put that enterprise through the gross profit analysis, which reveals which of your enterprises is going the most to cover your overheads, cropping came out the worst by a country mile, really, yeah. And so that made it easy for us to make a decision to get away from it.

David: 16:29

Before that we were thinking we wanted to get away from it. We didn't have any objective way of making that decision. It was a. You know we loved I mean, everyone loves the emotion of shiny paint and big crops and all that sort of thing. But looking back on those eight years from 89 to 97, there were only three crops that actually delivered their potential. There were five that, regardless of the fact that they were quite good rainfall years, there were five crops. You know there was a couple of wet harvests, there was a devastating frost, there were some diseases. You know there were a number of dry seasons. You know it. Just, in a place where land's very expensive, it just wasn't paying the bills and we didn't want it anyway, so it gave us a good reason to get away from it.

Speaker 3: 17:19

Yeah, these are all threads we'll pick up more as we go. But to back back then or to go forward on that note with the spraying and then double the spraying, which came to be a real consequence in your life in a couple of ways. But just firstly on the regeneration, to see a few more of the highlights, if you like the ground cover as it is now, including the native grasses. They function to keep the weeds out that you used to have to work bloody hard and spray on, absolutely.

David: 17:54

Yeah, the bane of our existence in this district is the Illyrian thistle, a big bluey, grey thistle, like all those plants, that loves plenty of open space and high fertility and, yeah, we were giving it lots of that. We had a lot of bare ground, red carpet for the thistle Yep, absolutely. And then we were controlling them by spraying and that created the conditions they love once again. So, yeah, we had a big spraying program annually and we had a lot of thistles in a lot of paddocks. And you know, 25 years later we've just been for a drive you can still see a thistle or two, but there's virtually none here compared to what they used to be. And we've done that by letting the world change so that it doesn't suit them anymore.

Speaker 3: 18:44

We did talk about your possible book, because you have a stack of old blog posts that just needs to be put into some coherent form. And as you talked about the way things are going now, with these self-organizing systems kicking in, I just thought, wow, this, this is the do nothing farmer. But you said that your wife tells you off whenever you use that language.

David: 19:11

She hates me saying that. Don't say that you're not doing nothing, you're just doing different things.

Speaker 3: 19:18

You're sort of you're doing something to do more of nothing.

David: 19:22

I'm fully engaged in letting the world do the work.

Speaker 3: 19:26

Yeah. So here you are, almost, as I don't know, a model exemplar of sorts in terms of being genuinely laid back debt-free and have a farm that's viable and functioning.

David: 19:40

Yeah, I mean it is. You know, before we were trying so hard to get where we are now, but we were actually going backwards incrementally all the time. You know there were a few things that added to that. You know we had kids at boarding school et cetera, which many people do, but you know we were trying to reduce our debt all the time by spending a lot of money to try and produce more, but we were actually incrementally going slowly backwards, because whenever a dry period had come along, you know we'd get it all wrong. We'd, you know, not reduce numbers early enough and then throw a lot of stock onto a collapsing market, those sort of things. So you'd just be getting out of that hole and along would come the next dry period. It's the classic thing. I had got to the point where I thought, well, we're just going to have a core debt of quite a large amount and that's just modern farming. I didn't feel like we'd ever be able to get out of it.

Speaker 3: 20:41

It's a big part of it, isn't it? But everywhere it's what we take as a norm We've come to take as norms that don't have to be assumed as norms in every walk of life. Yep, and this is one example. I'm curious as the biodiversity has taken hold and start to run its own race here and just continue to delight and surprise me. We're surrounded by bees and butterflies as we speak, even in this garden. Have you just been happy to keep your profit at a given level, or have you increased that too? What's been your approach there.

David: 21:20

Well, you know you incur some immediate costs when you go down the track we've gone. It's an absolute myth that it costs a lot to transition from industrial agriculture to the sort of things we're doing. But there are a few costs, you know. To get the sort of recovery that pastures need after they've been grazed, you need more land divisions. So you can do that by putting up temporary electric fences. But you soon get sick of doing that. So, yeah, we went from 26 paddocks to 104 in about three years. We put in a water scheme. Those two items cost $85 a hectare. Now that's a one-off cost. It's around about 7070,000. I think roughly that amount of money. But you know you only spend that once and then you're not spending that every year for the next, however long. So, and it's you know a lot of people think it's terribly intensive. It is intensive where the livestock are, but you're seeing your livestock pretty much daily and you're moving them every few days and you're seeing the landscape improve. I mean it's very little work involved once you get it set up.

Speaker 3: 22:34

And I guess it's what you call work as well, in a sense Like if that's fulfilling, seeing your land come back then there's your vocation, absolutely.

David: 22:44

No, that's like. My absolute passion is and I mean I was so browned off that I didn't find out about this stuff 20 years earlier that the landscape has got this innate capacity for renewal and repair. That's the trend of evolution. I mean, that's been going on for 3.7 billion years. It probably should take a bit of notice of it, and mostly we don't know about it. I certainly hadn't heard of the process of plant succession.

Speaker 3: 23:18

It doesn't sound like you are concerned with making more money at this point.

David: 23:25

No, I mean, that's another story really here, because you know land, like from a cash point of view. A lot of the time I've been a farmer, I've probably been technically insolvent, I reckon. But the thing that makes me look good at the bank is that the value of the underlying asset keeps on increasing, and so our equity has always been. Even when we thought we were in trouble with debt, our equity was still pretty high. I remember talking to a friend whose brother, or brother-in-law, I think, maybe worked for one of the other banks not one of the big four, and it was in a dry period, and I said you know how much equity will those banks lend to? And his answer stunned me. He said they'll lend to negative equity.

David: 24:12

So you know, you think how does anyone live with that sort of scenario?

Speaker 3: 24:17

Well, very bloody, stressfully.

David: 24:18

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:21

So you've cleared all that debt, including those old boarding school fees. Yeah, so that is to say, for people who might be in that boat now, or if you were in that boat now, still, it is possible to run things this way. Yeah, absolutely, and live like that and fund lives like that. Yep, yeah, it's just you might not have your motorboats.

David: 24:40

No, I've never aspired to have a motorboat. My aspiration was a Citroen car. Actually, I had a number of them. You gotta be different to have one of them too. So I'm consistent.

Speaker 3: 24:55

All right, coup de grace, yeah, for I do wanna take a step back to 1966, if not before 128 species of birds have shown up on this place.

David: 25:06

Yeah, they're not all resident but they've been identified over the years. Actually, an interesting story. As I mentioned this morning, I went over to, or we went over to, charlie's call of the reed warbler launch and there's a lady there who Charlie and I know very well called Nicky Tors and she works for Greening Australia in Canberra and she is an absolute genius at bird identification. She can walk into woodland where you can't see a bird, but you can hear them and she'll tell you what they all are. Anyway, someone had said to me I'd be interested to match up the change in vegetation woody vegetation on Allendale with the change in bird numbers and I said, oh look, I can get you that information because Greening Australia got it. Anyway, I said to Nikki, would you mind handing that stuff to this fellow? And she said no, that's fine. But she said I'll come out tomorrow morning.

David: 26:04

This is the night of the launch of the reed warbler. I want to come out tomorrow morning and do one more count. Anyway, she must have got up at four o'clock in the morning, I'd say, because she was up on the hill over the road counting birds. She counted 40 species in an hour and four of them were western birds that had come in here because we had resources that they'd run out of out west. So you know that was incredibly important. And of course, you know the two lines of increasing vegetation and increasing birds were in lockstep, because you know, when you provide habitat, things want to use it. We're no different, are we? You know, when there's a resource available, we come in and we find a way to use it.

Speaker 3: 26:44

It is amazing to think, though, because that's sort of the scale of a Ramsar accredited wetland like this is this is this is about as good as it gets, and you're on a working farm with livestock.

David: 26:58

Yeah, well, you know, I can go around this place on any day and in any paddock I'll see blue wrens. Now we only. We had none around the house here 30, 40 years ago and they're here everywhere now. But they're all over this place and we've had a lot of increases in, you know, ground dwelling birds because there's so much cover. Now they feel safe.

AJ: 27:20

Yeah.

David: 27:21

They've still got the red fox to deal with and the cat, but Gives them a chance there's, you know, I can just see them all the time. You know rufous songlarks which we hardly ever saw. They're everywhere, so they're nesting obviously.

Speaker 3: 27:39

What about that apex predator that takes care of the foxes and scares the cats off the dingo? Yes, How's that go around?

David: 27:45

here. Well, as far as I I know, there's been none here since I've been around.

Speaker 3: 27:50

Still.

David: 27:50

But there is the wedge-tailed eagle. He's a big predator. Am I allowed to tell the story about him? Go ahead.

David: 28:01

I was ploughing over the road at the back of that hill, opposite the mailbox, and I had this black dog that a father of a friend of mine had given me. I called him Nat and he was a really joyful sort of a dog and he was following the tractor around as I was ploughing and he had the shank of a dead sheep in his mouth and he was bounding along in front of the tractor and I could see this eagle watching him as I came around. Anyway, the eagle came down. He dropped down about 20 metres behind and above this dog and I could tell by the way he was running that he thought something was near him and he suddenly looked over his shoulder and saw this massive bird and he dropped the sheep shank and bolted. But anyway, every time, every lap, this bird would come around and terrorise the sheep, shank and bolted, but anyway, every time, every lap, this bird would come around and terrorise the dog.

David: 28:52

So I thought, well, I wonder if he'd come and have a look at me. So I turned the tractor off and lay down in the grass and waited. Sure enough, he came and he hovered right above me and I could see everything, every part of him. And then he dropped down. He was only about five metres above me and he just was observing me. I think he was wondering if I was a bit of carrion, and then he just twitched his tail and sawed off. You know, it was a wonderful thing to witness. But they're not nesting here, they nest further away, where there's a bit more bush Interesting.

Speaker 3: 29:26

I wonder if that'll's a bit more bush Interesting. I wonder if that'll be a thing to come as well Might be after me. Yeah, speaking of legacy, so it was almost 60 years ago when you picked this up. I mean, you were a young fella, I gather. Actually, you weren't even voting age. Where were you at the time?

David: 29:43

When are we talking 66. 66.

Speaker 3: 29:48

I was still at school. Yeah, I was 17. Yes, because you were telling all sorts of other interesting stories about not being aware of the 67 referendum as a school age kid Completely politically naive yeah.

David: 29:58

There was one bloke in my year that I reckon would have known. But his family were very politically aware. Yeah, my family never talked about it.

Speaker 3: 30:06

And the education we got about.

David: 30:07

Aboriginal questions was absolutely wrong.

Speaker 3: 30:15

It was still true when I was going to school.

David: 30:18

So thankfully that's changed. That was a missed opportunity by our society Recently. Oh no, just the learning that we could have had from people that knew how to look after country for 25 000 years, just knew how to recognize.

Speaker 3: 30:31

I mean you said, have the eyes for it I mean the eyes for it yeah, yeah, interesting that that was a successful referendum, not a divisive one. Um, and that was still true at that age.

David: 30:41

A lot changed after it, though, if you talk to people who know on the ground ground. Yeah, it didn't alter a hell of a lot, but it was an important step just the same, indeed.

Speaker 3: 30:50

Yep In the same way. The voice referendum wasn't great, but doesn't derail the good stuff that's happening on the ground.

David: 30:58

No, I think there's more conversations going on after it than there was before it.

Speaker 3: 31:02

Yeah, I agree. So I'm curious, going back to that time, you've picked this up as a school kid.

David: 31:11

Look, my father was probably a frustrated farmer. He was a doctor and his father grew up in Mackay in Queensland and came down to Sydney. He was one of the early ear, nose and throat specialists at St Vincent's Hospital, dad's father. He married my mother. He went away in the Air Force up into the islands. He was a medical officer for a bowfighter squadron and anyway, when the war ended, he and Mum, unbeknownst to each other, were on the staff of the children's hospital at Bridge Street, camberdale, and my father loved classical music and he had music playing in his rooms.

David: 31:49

My mother was seven years younger and she heard this music and came in to see where it was coming from and they met and fell in love. Magnificent, yeah. So, yeah, they got married and, yeah, they started having a family fairly quickly. Mum stopped work until my youngest sister. There were five of us, one boy and four girls. Mum stopped work until my youngest sister left school. That was a huge thing for her because she was very brilliant. I don't think I ever heard her say she was disappointed that she had to stay home and rear a family and not be a doctor, but then she went back to work after we'd all left school. She did, she did yeah.

Speaker 3: 32:38

So there's volumes for her and women everywhere probably.

David: 32:42

Yeah, actually she was in a big cohort of women when she was at university because a lot of blokes were away at the war.

AJ: 32:47

Of course.

David: 32:48

Yeah, there was a big intake of ladies.

Speaker 3: 32:51

Speaking of Indigenous people, women in subjugating how much we lost through that lens as well. Women at the front line, but everybody ultimately. So, again, hopefully something that's on a different trajectory. In many ways now, though, I know it's still so much to go, even in farming, with 90% of succession still going to the blokes.

David: 33:14

Is that right, yeah?

Speaker 3: 33:15

still. Yeah, so you're being brought up by doctors? Yes, but there was an inner farmer in your dad yeah, do you reckon absolutely?

David: 33:25

yeah, no, you know, he was a great reader, dad and he, like he was, really. It was like our place. It was quite a big. You know, it was a biggish home, an old house in Boweral on the side of the jib four acres, bradman country, bradman country. Yeah, in fact, my best mate was a bloke called John Springer who lived just around the corner from where Don Bradman lived.

Speaker 3: 33:48

Magnificent, you could play a bit of cricket too, oh I did play cricket.

David: 33:52

Yeah, at prep school I played cricket. How did you go? I got eight for 13 against French in once.

Speaker 3: 34:00

It sounds good.

David: 34:02

We were little tykes and they were big girls. Yeah, but no, that was no. I loved cricket, so you were a fast bowler. No, I could naturally swing the ball. I was left handed bowler and I just naturally was able to swing the ball.

David: 34:19

I was wrapped in it really for quite a while. But anyway, where were we? Bowral, that's right. Dad and the garden. Yeah, we had this four acres and it was. You know it was like a heavenly place to grow up in. You know, my parents were very fond of each other. I had four sisters who I loved and still do, and yeah, we lived a very carefree life, not knowing how good it was. Like so many young people, you don't reflect on your childhood until later on. But no, I think in a way you know, every spare minute Dad had, he'd come home and he'd be in the garden. He made a lot of compost. You know he had compost heaps and leaf mould heaps around the garden. We had chooks and he used to put the chook litter into the compost and it was humming like a top really.

Speaker 3: 35:15

My grandad did a lot of this too, a lot of people did that generation?

David: 35:19

Yeah, but what was driving some of it was he was involved with people's health and he made the connection between food and that Did he? Yeah, absolutely. And, as I mentioned before, he had all those favour and favour series of books. You know Sir Albert Howard, agricultural Testament Friend Sykes Humus and the Farmer, lady Eve Balfour. You know Sir Albert Howard's wife. He married two sisters that fellow actually and they were both brilliant ladies, but yeah, so they were in the bookshelves. I didn't read any of them, but I do remember Silent Spring. Wow, I didn't read it either, but I had a really big awakening as to that things weren't right. And it was absolutely in 1962. This happened. Yes, I was in a little boarding school in Nostvale and it was another place that was like heaven. Charlie Massey went there.

Speaker 3: 36:16

Crikey, david, to think that you've had a charmed life even in boarding school. Yeah, and we've learned so much terrible stuff about institutions of that nature.

David: 36:26

It's an extraordinary credit to it. But what happened was that Silent Spring had just come out. 1962 was published, and I'm sure all your listeners have probably read it. If they haven't, they maybe should.

Speaker 3: 36:37

Maybe should.

David: 36:38

Yeah, it was really about the consequences of indiscriminate use of mostly insecticides in the wider landscape and how they keep on what they call it bioaccumulating in the food chain until the top predators, in this case hawks and eagles, couldn't produce viable eggs. So, anyway, that had just happened and there was this school I was at had a farm. It was about 160 acres, I think. It was of dairy leased out and there were quite a lot of rabbits getting around and 1080 had just come on the market and they put out a couple of free feeds of carrots and then put out the 1080 carrots and there were a lot of dead rabbits but there were a hell of a lot of dead possums and I thought there's something wrong with this.

Speaker 3: 37:31

And I was only 12 then.

David: 37:32

Oh, not even yeah Yet you wanted to be a farmer. Well, I did. I was lucky in that. You know the couple of schools I went to. There were a lot of kids off farms there and I was very lucky to be asked to go and stay with some of them, or farms there and I was very lucky to be asked to go and stay with some of them. It was a completely and utterly romantic idea for me. Becoming a farmer. I had absolutely no idea what the reality of it was, but I did go and stay with several families who I'm always grateful for. But I also met a bloke who had a big influence on me, who was sort of a cousin of Mum's. His father had died. He came from up at Coola. They owned a big property on the Liverpool Plains called Binya Binya Downs actually. I think it was a big place back in the day. But anyway, bruce, his dad had died and his mother, who was then a widow, married my mother's uncle whose wife had died, and his mother, who was then a widow, married my mother's uncle whose wife had died and the two families were actually friends before and they Dick and Kath sold the property up at Koola and moved down to Boweral. So we saw a lot of them.

David: 38:42

And anyway, I was at this little boarding school in Mossville Island I forget what was on a sports day or something, and Kath brought her son, bruce, over. He was working for the New Zealand Australia Land Company and I think then the biggest landowners in Australia, I think at the time, and he was an overseer on a place called Bunjua, down near where I first started work after I left school, down near Yarrana, and yeah, I was in awe of him because he was just this tall, strong, lean looking, the quintessential, bushy, and he was just a lovely bloke. Anyway, I started I don't know what a deal was done between mum and only Kath and next thing I'm going up to spend a bit of time on this property which Bruce and his brand new wife had. They'd just finished their honeymoon and I'm there staying with them. They were terribly generous to me but the friendship I had with he and his wife over the years it was a big thing about me getting involved in farming, really, yeah, and I think I, you know, my parents noticed that I was leading that way.

David: 39:53

And then this aunt that Dad had, who was quite wealthy in Sydney, she had a horrible experience. She had a terrible stroke and was incapacitated for nine years before she died. But she was quite wealthy and when she died her only relatives were Dad and his sister, and so there was quite a bit of money came along and that's when this farm got bought. Okay, yeah, and with some help from another sort of half cousin of Dad's, a bloke called Bill Middleton, who came from Bynallong, which is not far away, and, yeah, he helped us, and plus another guy from up near Conoundra he helped Dad find. He did a lot of work helping my father try to find a farm that would be suitable, and I didn't know that until long after these two men died. No, I knew that Bill Middleton had, but not Colin Fitzharding. He put a lot of work in, yeah, so you don't know what goes on behind the scenes, do you sometimes?

Speaker 3: 40:54

No, you don't, and sometimes I don't know. I guess, coming from this perspective, hearing the stories, I mean it just enriches things, doesn't?

David: 41:04

it. Yeah, absolutely Well that Bruce McMaster. He was more than 10 years older than me, but I'd absolutely say, without contradiction or not giving anyone a fair go, he was my best friend in life. I used to ring him and talk to him probably weekly for probably 30 odd years or more than that, probably until he died a few years ago Wonderful bloke. Now, he wasn't into what I'm into, but he was very interested in it.

AJ: 41:34

Was he.

David: 41:35

But he was. He used to call himself the Presbyterian farmer because he wasn't doing what all his neighbours were doing. He was a low-cost, very good stockman and a very like. He educated three girls at boarding schools in Sydney on a grazing block. That was a soldier's block that the previous owner had run weathers there in the through the summer. Then he'd sell all the weathers and trap rabbits for the winter. That was his income, so it wasn't considered a good block.

Speaker 3: 42:05

And yet.

David: 42:06

Bruce was a good manager. He wasn't considered a good block and yet you know Bruce was a good manager. He turned it into a profitable enterprise, low cost.

Speaker 3: 42:11

Very interesting, yeah, the different ways available to us eh, I'm digressing too much, am I?

Speaker 3: 42:18

No, no, I'm finding this For me. This is right on the money. Oh, ok, yeah, let's keep going. So, even though you'd come across Rachel Carson yeah, I hadn't read it, but I knew what it was about yeah, you might have just answered the question, because you went and farmed let's just use the term conventional for purposes here and you ended up in the situation you've described, that sort of dynamic you've described already. It got to the 1982 drought where that really became untenable. That was a moment for you.

David: 42:53

That was a big kick in the backside for me because you know, I think it was only a very short dry period 82, 83, but everyone remembers it because two things happened. It didn't rain in spring at all. You know we got an average of 625 mils of rain here. We only had 240 for that year, and so it didn't rain in the spring, which is almost unheard of here. And you know I didn't know how to measure how much grass we had.

David: 43:26

I didn't know how my way of dealing with preparing for drought in those days was. Did I have enough silos full of grain and a shed full of hay? But that's never enough when it's really bad like that. So I didn't unload when I should have Threw a lot of sheep on the market that were worth nothing and didn't have any animals dying. But you know, production was very low. We fed out 400 tons of grain and went a couple of hundred thousand dollars backwards in that experience and turned the place into an absolute desert.

David: 44:00

You know there was no vegetation on a lot of our paddocks and I felt so ashamed of that because I had to. I really had to admit to myself that I was the cause of it. It wasn't just something that came along with dry weather, because there was plenty of grass on the side of the road. I had to admit that I was the bloke responsible. That was a major turning point. I had to, and I went on this odyssey trying to. I thought I vowed to myself that I would never let that happen again. I went on this odyssey of trying to find other ways of doing things that wouldn't make you feel like you were trapped all the time.

Speaker 3: 44:39

And.

David: 44:39

I did that for a number of years, 10 years probably more.

Speaker 3: 44:42

Looking, yeah, looking. And then that was the incubation period, 17 years actually, of looking.

David: 44:53

Before you went on that holistic management course. Yep, heard about it 10 years before I did the course. Terry McCosker actually was the bloke who I first heard it from. He was working for Hassel and Associates in Dubbo and he ran an introductory grazing bloke on a grazing day on a block up near Karkor. And yeah, I'll never forget it because there were quite a lot of people there and this guy, his name was Sam Cook, I think his name was. He'd been a student at Orange Ag College and he had a nasty accident.

David: 45:25

He was running his farm from a wheelchair and anyway, we had a whole lot of discussion that was around, you know, ground cover and all the things that we hadn't been thinking about. And anyway, at one point we went over onto this bluff and we were overlooking a creek with a bit of a flat on it, and Sam got onto his bike and he drove down to the gate out of this paddock. It was a mixed herd of, or a flurred of, sheep and cattle in one paddock and as he was approaching the gate, the whole, all the animals in the paddock, just gradually moved towards the gate. He had my full attention, I can tell you so, but then you know it's not just as easy to suddenly switching, because you saw that I had to do a lot of thinking about what were the implications. I had no doubt that it was reality, but could I actually get away from what I was doing without going out of business? So that's when I started doing more cropping for a few years.

David: 46:25

A little later than that, I probably thought about it for a few years after, whatever year that was that Terry ran that course. I can't remember the date of it now, but it was 89, when I should have changed and didn't which I've mentioned before and that was probably a good thing, because I learned a few lessons along the way. That probably saved me from some mistakes when I did actually get on with it, because I'd done so much reading and I was so confident that I wanted to do something good for the planet and not leave this bloody disaster behind me, because, I mean, that's your enduring legacy, apart from your family. What's the land look like they've been looking after? Is it worthy of what you feel you want for yourself?

Speaker 3: 47:10

Well, this has come to be the cornerstone of your legacy, isn't it? The parallel journeys of land recovery and personal recovery. Yep, and this relates to this part of your life directly in a sense, because you double down on the spraying and stuff. Yeah, and I mentioned before you came to think of that in quite a rueful way later.

David: 47:36

Yeah, I'm quite happy to talk about that.

Speaker 3: 47:39

You are? Yeah, let's go there.

David: 47:41

Yeah. So yeah, mary and I got married. I had two older children from my first marriage. Wonderful people, they're 50 and 51 now.

David: 47:51

But anyway, mary and I were married for a number of years and then we were having a baby and that baby was born with a very complicated heart which, unfortunately for him, wasn't able to be corrected with surgery. In those days there were probably people who had what Matthew had that could have been corrected, but just the way it presented in him it wasn't possible then. So he had to learn to live with 70% oxygen saturation. We have 98%, so it meant that he was constantly lacking energy. So it meant that he was constantly lacking energy.

David: 48:28

So you know, I had just started using agricultural chemicals and you know, when you have a child with a disability which was a genetic thing with Matthew you know the medical profession wanted to try and find out if there's some attributable cause and we were asked a thousand questions about how we live, what we do, what we eat, what we are involved with all that sort of stuff, and nothing came up. But I had this niggling doubt in my mind that it might have been connected to the way I was farming, and that's never been proven one way or the other. No one could prove it, but I had that doubt there and so so we you know, yeah, he had a quite a shaky start and without his mother and the sort of instinct she had of what was good for him, he probably wouldn't have made it past being a baby. But the thing you want to find out is A what are the likely trajectories of his life? And if you want to have another child, what's the likelihood of it happening a second time?

David: 49:37

And the answer to the second question was different to what I thought it would be. I thought, well, it's happened once, it couldn't happen again. But actually the odds double. If you've had it once, statistically it's more likely to happen. Happen, it's still a way outside chance. And we did have another child a few years later and she's 100, okay, and she's a doctor.

Speaker 3: 49:55

So that was, that was beautiful yeah but um, so, but uh.

David: 50:02

Part of matthew and how it affected us was we had to adjust our lives to fit in with what he was capable of. And Mary is an extremely strong individual and never cared what anyone thought about what we did or how we approached our lives with Matthew. But having someone with that sort of a disability in your family, nobody who hasn an experience that can really get how all-pervading it is. It pervades every facet of the family's existence. So all the things that you take for granted doing with kids that don't have that handbrake on them, most of them you can't do, but you can do a whole lot of other things. And this child who was, you know, anyone would have forgiven him for acquiescing and giving up on life, but he was just. He was just incredibly joyful. He was always laughing. He had this very dark sense of humor and laughed at the things that had fallen in his path that he had to try and overcome.

David: 51:10

So that didn't seem to be forced no, it was inherent in him, and actually his cardiologist when he died he said, I think he he tried to carry his burden lightly because he was worried about you and Mary Didn't want you to be worrying about him. But anyway, he had this beautiful life. When he was little, his mother was very musical and she used to be ironing with the Les Miserables and the Phantom of the Opera on and he knew all the words and we took him to various of those shows and he loved them. But you, you know, in at school we were worried. When he got into secondary school we looked at going to boarding school but the campuses were just too big and there weren't the mobility aids then that may have made it possible for him so and he didn't want to go, he wanted to be with us and I was so glad that he wanted to do that, looking back because he spent all those secondary school years in Boorooa and yeah, we were worried, I think probably because, you know, because he had no energy. He was always going to be on the periphery of society a little bit.

David: 52:24

But he had this extraordinary wit and and he was very bright. You could tell immediately because he used to go and stay with some friends of ours in Canberra when he was when he'd left secondary school. He was doing a digital animation course and he'd those friends of ours had had interesting friends. They were dentists themselves and had other academic type people there and Matthew would be there and we'd hear stories that he'd engage with any conversation that was going around. He wasn't opinionated but he was very bright, you know. He knew a lot of stuff. So you know. But so we, you know, when I first came here I was so in love with this farm and so keen to make a success of it. Whatever I thought success was then probably growing more wheat and wool than my neighbours or the district average or something ridiculous. But you know, I went for years without a holiday and that was so stupid. But when Matthew came along, we went for a holiday every year and we were Byron Bay addicts. I think we went there for 25 years straight.

AJ: 53:35

It was a good era for that it was a meatworks town.

David: 53:38

When we first went there there was nobody there much, and gradually we saw it change.

Speaker 3: 53:43

Indeed, and Mary getting back to the spraying thing, that Mary had an instinct about this too. Yeah, she did.

David: 53:51

We both did. Really I was worried about it, but she was very keen that we get other people contractors to do any of those sorts of activities, and so I did have a spray unit for a little while, but then I got another bloke to do the spraying before we stopped spraying. But no, I think you know, one of the things that happens when you've got a kid like Matthew is, you know, for a while. He was born in Canberra but he quite quickly had to go in an air ambulance to Sydney to find out what was wrong with him. There was obviously something wrong and they couldn't diagnose it in Canberra. So we went down, followed down in the car, and because my parents had been doctors and were both on the staff of that hospital, they'd lost all those connections. But they knew people who knew people who would direct us to this cardiologist who looked after Matthew Blake, called Dr John Sellemeyer, who was just this extraordinary man. He'd listen to Mary at an appointment and Mary was good, she kept wonderful records, and so she'd trot out all these things about how Matthew was and what he'd been doing, and he'd write copious notes. And then he'd listen to Matthew's chest with a stethoscope and then he'd write a page of what he heard, just that. I mean, I've got those notes now. It's extraordinary Observation, yeah, anyway.

David: 55:25

Yeah, when he was 10, he had a major episode that did threaten his life. He got an abscess in his brain which was related to his cardiac status, and he spent three months in hospital at the New Children's Hospital and he was the longest resident there on the cardiac recovery ward and we've got to know all these nurses and a lot of the patients. He was the longest resident there on the cardiac recovery ward and we've got to know all these nurses and a lot of the patients and we're still in touch with a few of them. That's beautiful.

David: 55:53

But, yeah, I think I might have been saying before that you know you're trying to find a way out of all these dilemmas that you seem to be facing and just so many times, you know, someone popped out of the woodwork with a bit of information that really helped you, or you saw something or read something, and I don't know if you're open to these things. They just keep coming along. I've had it all my life. Since I've become conscious, I think Really, yeah, I've had a lot of things that have happened that have taken me into another direction and I think it's only because I'm open to it really. And I mean my father used to talk to people at the drop of a hat, whether he knew them or not. My kids are a bit embarrassed about the way Mary, and I do that, I think. But you have these amazing conversations.

Speaker 3: 56:47

Well speaking of which I joked about the title of your upcoming book.

David: 56:52

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 56:53

But you've got one.

David: 56:57

Yeah well, I didn't actually tell you what that was all about that thing, but when Matthew died, which was on the eve of Anzac Day in 2007, he was 21,. He had a friend in town who they used to try and outright each other. They'd do some writing about any topic they liked. It was on a blog. I didn't even know what a blog was then, but you became an expert. I found out about it later. But anyway, Sean and Matthew, it was sort of like a literary dueling banjo.

Speaker 3: 57:29

Not a bad way to do it.

David: 57:30

Yeah, anyway, sean went looking on the internet to see whether Matthew had written anything about his life, and he came across this bit of writing called Life, death and Other Miracles, and it was about him talking about how he became reconciled to his own mortality.

AJ: 57:49

Really.

David: 57:50

And he was only probably 16 then, I think. And part of it was about when he was in hospital when he had the brain abscess and that he was scared of dying young. But then he realised that he became reconciled to that. But he told the story about how he was in the children's hospital and he had to go for a CAT scan, which often happened, and he had to have nothing to eat for a certain amount of time and he'd organised for these nurses to bring him a Vegemite sandwich at five o'clock in the morning and they didn't turn up and he got a bit stroppy about it. And then he found out a couple of days later that the reason they hadn't delivered was that the Chinese boy in the room next to him had died. And he said I've never felt the disgust I felt with myself for feeling for what I'd said to these wonderful girls, anyway.

David: 58:50

So this went on and he talked about various aspects that had happened in his life when he had thought about death and his own, and. But he said this is one thing he said I think I can repeat it. He said I'm not aware of having a particularly sad or unhappy life. He said I think that has fallen more on my parents. You know, we got that on the eve of his funeral and it was just so comforting in a way to know that he'd, because we'd always. It's a real dilemma for people that have got a child that's critically unwell. You know, how much do you tell them? Because I mean, we didn't not tell him. We told him what was physically happening with his heart and how it was different, but we didn't get into how long he was going to live, because nobody knows the answer to that one. But I think if you, you can probably say too much and it just might dash their hopes.

David: 1:00:03

So, I mean I'm not advising others not to do what they think is right.

David: 1:00:09

I mean we always did what we thought was right, guided by Mary's instinct, and like, for example, when he had the brain abscess, we rushed him. We were had the brain abscess, we rushed him. We were on holidays when that happened and we rushed him up to Lismore Hospital to have this CAT scan and he had the scan and then, you know, the paediatrician called us in and he said I think your son's got a very aggressive tumour and he's only got a few days to live, crikey, really, yeah, that absolutely hit us like a ton of bricks. But then we both felt that if that was the case, he should know about it because he might want to say something to us or who knows what. Whether or not that was the right thing to do, I don't know. But we and Alice, his sister, were on his bed in this emergency room with a curtain around us and we told him and he did exactly what any of us would do. He howled and wailed and carried on like we all would and in about a minute he was comforting us.

Speaker 3: 1:01:12

You know, yeah, extraordinary, extraordinary In that way, david, his legacy his legacy seems to be powering yours. Yeah, strength absolutely yeah.

David: 1:01:26

So but getting back to this proto book that you've mentioned, nudging, it along. One of the things that I've said in it in regard to Matthew is that you know when he died, you know that's a whole other deal. You know grieving for a child, that's what nobody wants, but no one can take it away from you. You have to confront it and you know we were falling apart. There's no question about it. We thought we were all right, but we got hard to get out of bed and the people in Booroo were fetish for months.

David: 1:02:03

so you know that was a wonderful thing, but you can't expect anyone to understand what that feels like. We had known all his life that he probably wasn't going to live a long life, but knowing that made absolutely no difference at the time of his death. No, that's right. It, you know. It just completely floors you.

AJ: 1:02:27

Yeah.

David: 1:02:27

And you know I had my heart was aching. I thought I was having a heart attack, but it was just I was aching for him, but yeah, so I was writing about that in this chapter, about Matthew, the end of Matthew's life and then after it and, um, you know, a lot of the time when you're grieving and a lot of people, I think, feel this, um, everyone wants to say something profound and wonderful to you or let you know that they're thinking of you, which is so wonderful and uplifting, but at that moment you're in this numb state because your body produces all these adrenaline, like substances that put you into this numb state, so you can actually get through it and you do find yourself comforting those who are trying to comfort you a lot. That is just, I think, so common. But I drew a parallel with, you know, over time, you know I used to hate it when people would say, oh, time will heal.

David: 1:03:28

I really didn't like that, you know, because the thing that we found most painful was this slow ebb of time that took you further away from the last time you held him in your arms. You know it was so painful, but you know it is actually right to say that over time the tsunamis that are coming at you early days close together and high, gradually become further apart and lower, and then you learn to. You don't get over it at all, but you do learn to cope with another reality. But some people that you hoped would do something for you were unable to and it wasn't. I very quickly came to the view that it wasn't a strike against them at all, because I reviewed my own performance when people had had tragedies and I'd write them a letter and say things and I'd think, god, that really wouldn't have been that helpful. But you know, we all do the best we can. Well, that's an important tenet there, so what?

David: 1:04:28

what I was getting to, though, was that, over time, we began to heal. The landscape was starting to heal as well, and it was sort of a parallel thing that the healing landscape helped us heal. You know, that was just so important.

Speaker 3: 1:04:44

Do you feel like recalling, on that note in a sense, what you told us at the top of the hill?

David: 1:04:51

What was that? I've forgotten.

Speaker 3: 1:04:53

A couple of miracles, no less. Oh yeah, that seemed to, I don't know, sing out from this land.

David: 1:04:59

Yeah, yeah, no, that was extraordinary, yeah about. Like you know, I was so shocked at Matthew's death. We were both with him when he died and it took seconds for him to die and I was so shocked that I had to look at a photograph of him to remember what he looked like for a few days. That was just so. I felt so guilty about that. Anyway, that passed quite quickly but anyway, a month or so, maybe six weeks, after he died, there was a little mulberry tree on the end of the place down towards Boorooa, and we all loved mulberries and Matthew loved it. We used to go down there and pick them and get mulberry juice all over us and make mulberry pies and those sort of things.

David: 1:05:43

Anyway, I was down there, I was about to move cattle into this paddock where this little tree was and I was walking along a fence. It was a very frosty morning in May and it was a big white frost and I was walking towards this little tree which had all its leaves on, but they were all white with frost and I actually you'll probably think I'm nuts, but I actually saw this happen I was walking towards this tree and when I was about 20 metres from it all. The leaves just slowly fell to the ground. It was quite bizarre, but it made me feel like he was around it wasn't the only one.

Speaker 3: 1:06:20

It wasn't the only one. Yeah, it wasn't the only thing that happened. No and the other time you weren't by yourself.

David: 1:06:24

That's right. Yeah, we were coming back from Yonge one night and it was just before his funeral and we'd been to see him before his funeral. And we were coming back, mary and I, from Yonge and there's a little bit of a rise on the way back towards Booroo and at a certain point you can see Allendale. And it was late dusk, nearly dark, clear sky, and as we came over this rise where you could see the farm, it was as though someone turned a flashlight on the whole landscape, lit up like pure daylight for a split second. I said to Mary did you see that? Yeah, she said what was it? We don't know what it was, but it was real.

Speaker 3: 1:07:10

And you both saw it Unbelievable.

David: 1:07:11

Yeah, yeah. And look, I don't think you're necessarily going to have those things happen all the time. But you know I can't explain have those things happen all the time. But you know I can't explain why those things happen or how, and I don't care because they were real and they were helpful.

David: 1:07:28

The other one that I didn't mention then was at his funeral. We had song for Guy playing as he was being carried out of the church, which was a bit of music we all loved. Years later, maybe only three years ago, so that's 14 years after he died I was in Boorooa. It was the day of the anniversary of his death. 24th of April was the date. I was in town. I was thinking about him, I was driving around the roundabout just before I turned out to come home and I pressed the button on the radio in my car and Song for Guy started on the first note when I hit that button. Then it played all the way until I drove into the driver's home and then it finished. I mean, how did that happen it?

Speaker 3: 1:08:17

was just unbelievable what can you say?

David: 1:08:21

I have to say I was weeping as I drove into the drive, oh dear me.

Speaker 3: 1:08:25

I love the thread from your. Was it your grandparents? No, your parents falling in love with the music. Oh, yeah. And then the thread through some other instance of music you mentioned. I love that too, but that is something, isn't it? And I think most people listening when you hear this quite often that sort of chance on the radio thing, don't you? Yeah?

David: 1:08:47

Well, my son in America, he couldn't come back for Matthew's funeral and I was talking to him and he, you know, he was absolutely shocked, of course, and he was pulled up under a big conifer up in the mountains in Aspen and he said there's very few birds around here because it's a cold desert, that climate, you know. There's very few resources because of the cold. And he said he looked up when I was telling him what had happened and he said there's this bald eagle in the top, this bald eagle on the top branch of this tree just sitting there. And he said, as I finished the conversation he soared away. So he had a little moment that he wondered how it happened as well.

Speaker 3: 1:09:33

Yeah, and that phrase you used earlier having the eyes for it just keeps occurring to me. So, in all this, then, yeah what year was it that Matthew died he?

David: 1:09:43

died. He born in 86 and he died in 2007.

Speaker 3: 1:09:47

Okay, yeah, so 21 and 42 days so you were going all through all this change in yourself through the 80s and 90s with with Matthew as a boy, boy and then Alice's early formative years becoming a doctor, probably closely related to the experience. I'm wondering then, when you think about the incubation period of your change and how you're managing landscape to what we see here today, when we're at a point where we'd love and obviously you've been talking and working in this further afield in these 25 years as well 40 actually 40, yeah there you go.

David: 1:10:27

Since 1980, I've been banging on about this.

Speaker 3: 1:10:30

There you go yeah.

David: 1:10:32

Didn't know what I was banging on about in 1980. Until you got to do it.

Speaker 3: 1:10:35

Yeah, yeah, and you took the punts. There's so much about that transformation process that's interesting a that it took a period of time right, and this is consistent with a lot of the literature, which is the field it's how my work came to meet your work through charlie. Obviously initially with reed warbler, because it covered the same sort of understanding of the way humans are, and consistent in the literature is that it doesn't happen at the drop of a hat. It does, even if the trigger might, but the process, because it's a deeply embedded thing, takes time. So in this context, where many of us would love to help people transition, if you like, faster, is that a fool's errand?

David: 1:11:19

Well, I don't know, but I think one of the things you know.

David: 1:11:23

I look at young people who do grazing courses these days and some of them are quite young and in one way I feel very envious that they want to do that at that age. But then I look back at myself and I'm actually one of the things I did when I was doing that master's degree in sustainable agriculture at the same time as I was doing the Holistic Management course. One of the things we had to do was one of those things where you've got to graph your responses to a whole lot of seemingly random questions on a quadrant and it was to reveal whether you were an ecocentric or a technocentric thinker. Anyway, my responses were almost all in the ecocentric part of the quadrant and that hit me like a ton of bricks. I can remember the moment because that was the explanation for why I was feeling disappointed about the way I was farming, because I was farming in a way that was opposite to the way I am and that revealed it Was that in the degree yeah, where was that?

David: 1:12:25

That was Orange Ag College actually was part of Sydney University back then.

Speaker 3: 1:12:29

Well, how bloody interesting that they then were. Were integrating the human Yep?

David: 1:12:35

no there was some. There was some really enlightened people running the courses up there.

Speaker 3: 1:12:40

For all. I still hear about ag education being the techno-centric that that was happening then.

David: 1:12:47

Well, interestingly, in my case, when I went to that thing that Terry ran up at Carcore and then read Alan Savory's first book, which was probably not well written, and then read Alan Savory's first book, which was probably not well written, the ecological stuff which is the heart of those books went straight over my head. I focused on how to do this grazing the right way. Oh, okay.

David: 1:13:11

And so I was on the journey but I didn't know it of having a philosophical change of heart, which is what's absolutely necessary when you go down this track. So if you haven't had that, it doesn't mean you're not going to have it, but it could take a long time for that philosophical shift to happen, and it may never happen with some people.

Speaker 3: 1:13:33

It does suggest a way to go about relating with people in a way that might help. I mean, it can't be out to change them, though. That's anathema. So I wonder for you, how did it? Did it change the way you then say for the last 25 years, certainly since being practicing and really looked up to by increasing numbers of people, how has it changed how you, if at all, how you, engage with people on this stuff?

David: 1:14:01

well, I think it's. It's about telling stories about the journey you've been on. I still think that's. I mean, you know, humans, of all uh types, societies, have all had storytelling as part of their culture, haven't they, you know? Oh, telling stories, music, dance, all of that is absolutely inherent in all human societies. You know, in our society, where we're so used to having technological fixes to every problem that comes along, we've still got that really, haven't we? That we're still music. Still a wonderful thing.

David: 1:14:40

It was a big part of Matthew Marsh's life, I can tell you. I don't think it's that surprising that you know, like my neighbours aren't asking me what I'm doing and they're not doing what I'm doing. Some of them have planted quite a lot of trees. And look around this district. There are a lot of tree plantations all over the place. But you know, when you boil that down to tin tax, it's us deciding what should be, and that's okay to a point. But you know, when land care started, I was involved in the beginning of that at Booroa 1989. It's still going 34 years later, which is huge for a community group.

Speaker 3: 1:15:18

Unsung. I'd say Unsung, it's underrated.

David: 1:15:21

No, it's well sung because there's some good people in there that keep it going.

Speaker 3: 1:15:26

In broader society, though I mean, oh yeah, indeed.

David: 1:15:30

And I have won a couple of land care awards in my time and I'm not pouring water on land care at all. But one of the things that happened to me after I did that HM course and started putting it into practice getting down what do we want for our family, for the business and for the landscape. It's hard stuff to get down. A lot of people stumble on that. But if you can't get that down, you'll continue doing what we did a lot of, or I did a lot of, or I did a lot of making a whole lot of random decisions in no particular direction, making bugger-all progress on most directions because you just it's scattered. But once you get the people, the business, the landscape written down as to what you want, every decision you make must leave or should lead you towards that, and until you get that down, it's terribly hard to to do that.

Speaker 3: 1:16:25

Um was that to say? You know terry mccosker has called the farmer transition from conventional to regenerative the belly of death, financially as much as anything else. But you alluded before to to that an overbaked worry in your case. You came to realise it wasn't so significant.

David: 1:16:46

You know we did a few things that helped with that. We didn't just start practising holistic management and wait and see what happened. You know we had a self-replacing merino flock and we Sorry we were we were taking advice from a guy in South Australia called Malcolm Bartholomeus. He's now ingrained oh, he might have retired now, he's as old as me probably. Anyway, he was tracking 21 micron wool, which was sort of the average of a whole lot of other varieties. He was tracking the price of that over time in relation to the spot price today and so, using that information he didn't tell us what to do, but he gave us information we could act on if we felt like it.

David: 1:17:42

And so if we at times were locking in some wool you know quite a bit of our put like 80% of our clip, which was probably too aggressive in a way looking back.

David: 1:17:55

But we were locking it in, locking the physical wool in for up to three years ahead at prices that were two to three dollars ahead of the market, and that was way less risky than what I'd been doing before getting involved with Wool Futures, which you can get thrown out of business awfully quickly if the market moves against you when you're holding a few contracts. So one of the things we say in our holistic goal out of business awfully quickly if the market moves against you when you're holding a few contracts. So one of the things we say in our holistic goal or context is that we don't want to indulge in those sort of risky behaviours and so we stopped doing that. But so that was a way of mitigating some of the risk of the market. What else did we do? Yeah, we did a bit of locking in grain, but we didn't continue doing that because we stopped growing grain. We sold all our machinery quite quickly.

David: 1:18:52

I had one of my neighbours, who was a very caring man, who rang me up to ask me if I was okay, because he thought I might have lost the plot completely.

Speaker 3: 1:19:01

So it's fair to say that there are ways, and there are ways like there are ways where you can do this in a considered, smart fashion, not just sort of take a punt. That could help At least people like you who were disposed earlier to make that process a little quicker than 10 or 17 years or so.

David: 1:19:22

Yeah, well, you know when we actually did the course, or I did the course and I sympathise with anyone who does the course and comes home and tries to explain it in a non-emotional fashion to their wife or family, because there is a fair bit of excitement going on at those courses sometimes. But, mary, she's not a get out there and drench the sheep girl, but she's got the most incredible logic and I had taken on a few different things and given them a go and I had a bit of a history of doing that and I'm sure when holistic management came along she was thinking, oh my god, what's he?

Speaker 3: 1:19:58

up to now.

David: 1:19:59

Here we go. But what she could see immediately was it got the costs under control and that's what she?

David: 1:20:06

loved and anyway. But early days I think I mentioned, you know, the ecological side of holistic management went over my head because I didn't understand what it was about. But by the time I did the course I'd actually. Someone gave me Alan Sabry's and Jodie Butterfield's second book and I read it and I really started tapping into that. And then I read a whole lot of stuff. Albert Howard you know he was the guy who discovered the relationship between fungi and the roots of plants. You know that was such a big breakthrough. And then I read one of Dad's books called the Clifton Park System of Farming. Now it was written in the 1860s by a bloke called Robert Elliot and you know a lot of the stuff that we're doing now isn't new.

David: 1:21:03

He was sowing species of 28 species when he was sowing pastures. Wow. So I got very involved in how does ecology work and therefore how does the world function, because until you've got that sorted out in your head, there's a whole lot of stuff you don't understand. So then I got on to I'm sorry to mention all these books, but I've found some of them very important.

David: 1:21:35

One of the the book that's probably been most influential for me, was a Sand County Almanac, aldo Leopold, and I kept coming across references to his work when I was doing the degree course. Up at it was an external course, but Orange Ag, up at Orange part of Sydney University, and I kept coming across these references and I thought what is this book? Anyway, I rang this friend of Mary's up who's an ecologist and I said have you, you know, are you aware of this? Oh, she went into raptures. She said oh, that is such an important book.

David: 1:22:11

Oh, I said have you got a copy of it? Yeah, she said I have. Oh, would you lend it to me? And she was so reluctant to lend it to me, but she did lend it to me. But she did lend it to me, luckily, and I've been very good for Aldo Leopold's Trust book sales over the years, because I've bought a lot of those books and given them to people that I feel would get a lot out of it. But it doesn't matter how often you read that book. I've read all the other guys that everyone talks about Walden and John Muir. I mean they're all wonderful, but nobody describes the relationship that should be between humans and land as good as Leopold, in my view.

Speaker 3: 1:22:49

Yeah, that's right. It's not just for would-be farmers. I've got it on my shelf too. So, david, we were talking before. I mean, in a sense, about what happens next here, as you're in your mid-seventies now.

David: 1:23:01

Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. Next week actually.

Speaker 3: 1:23:05

Next week, yeah, which is 75?.

David: 1:23:07

The 16th of March, there we go.

Speaker 3: 1:23:09

Happy birthday in advance. Thank you, it is a milestone and I'm glad you're still around and I hope we've got another 25 years to make that make the century it would. But you've got an eye on what happens to this place next and that may have a good news story attached to it in terms of certainly your kids don't want to take it on, but I think they'd love to Really, but I don't think anyone is going to because they can't pay the others out.

Speaker 3: 1:23:35

Bang. Okay, so this is where I want to go. So we're in this point in time now, like even for my journey in this right. So five or six years going around the country, meeting people, extraordinary places, that I'm just extraordinary. And then I go and I communicate it like this and I'm at events and so on and I there's nothing that's excited people in cities more than this. I don't think and having worked in, you know, wouldbe sustainability regeneration for decades myself, but largely in cities and about, I guess, perhaps international development level stuff or urban stuff.

David: 1:24:11

Don't you find that, talking about this to a city audience, they get it straight?

Speaker 3: 1:24:15

away, straight away. They don't have the baggage to hold on. But also it's such a visible, yeah, sensory thing, even before you talk about having the deeper eyes that you've developed over time. But I even perhaps that excites people's like, oh, that's where you could go. I've been feeling this sort of stuff, you know that sort of thing. So, given that there's this and you know legends, like you, this generation I I'm not that you- can let me say that yeah charlie massey, down, you know, down the way.

Speaker 3: 1:24:48

And martin, yeah, over the other side, martin royds and and scott hickman, another mate of yours, and all over the country, the people I'm speaking with from that generation. Now it's baton handing time and while there are people then coming in interested, there's this situation where land prices I don't even wanna say values, cause I think it's a distinct thing Land prices, it's got nothing to do with agriculture. Exactly, that's a real estate value, or biodiversity, yeah, yeah.

David: 1:25:21

It's so that could be an interesting valuation later on the value of biodiversity on a farm, exactly Well that's right, could add to the price.

Speaker 3: 1:25:30

Well, so here's the thing, right. We're at this point, then, where prices mean the only people who can acquire unless you're born in money yeah, I mean your kids can't buy the others out. Sam Vincent, who we've had on the podcast, he can do that as long as his sisters don't want to see it end, because he can't buy them out. So we're at this situation where the other trend we're seeing.

David: 1:25:56

The time for land division has passed. Really, you know the time for having as much land as you can give a bit of it to all your kids is over. Really, you know the time for having as much land as you can, give a bit of it to all your kids is over, really.

David: 1:26:05

Yeah, because if you do that and they become separate farms, they'll all be. They won't be viable on this area of land. That's right. So if I split this place in three and they all wanted to be farmers, yeah, none of them would survive really. So they would have a very valuable asset, but they would find they'd struggle to make enough cash to if they were buying it. They'd have to pay a loan. They'd struggle.

Speaker 3: 1:26:31

And we're seeing this other trend of corporate big money buy-up of land and, in many cases, land that's been brought back like this, and then we lose it. So I'm wondering now, and I have this sort of fear point, I suppose, that this generation, your generation, will pass and the successors won't be able to access it and we will potentially actually go backwards. So I'm really interested, then, in how we transcend that dilemma. And note again a previous podcast guest, jim phillipson, talking about converting to trusts and the like. So there's that turning it into the commons, and family can be. You know, kids who do would ideally like to be part of it, can be part of it, but it's a broader owned thing. You're certainly thinking something along those lines in terms of potential covenants on parts of the property, aren't you? What else do you think about, even in general terms, about how we can grapple with this at this?

David: 1:27:36

point in time.

David: 1:27:37

Look, I haven't got a business brain? I don't think. But you know that doesn't mean you can't do creative things. You know there are people you can engage to make up for your own deficiencies in that regard. But what I've been thinking about, or we've been thinking about, is our younger daughter and her husband are doctors. Oh, he's a doctor too. Yeah, they're both doctors, love it. They're going to be living in Orange, probably. Ben had never been on a farm when Alice brought him here and the litmus test was how did he go? Yes, and he asked so many intelligent questions about farming when he'd never been on a farm. I think it almost distracted him from medicine at one point. Oh, wow. But you know he's a wonderful guy and they're a lovely couple.

Speaker 3: 1:28:32

So much for farmers being the vocation or farming the vocation you want to get away from. Yeah, it's funny.

David: 1:28:39

A lot of my life, everyone was trying to get their kids to do something other than farming. They're probably all wanting to come back because there's a fair bit of money around these days with farms. But no, I think. Yeah, you know, I don't think we've really scratched the surface of how to do this. To be honest, yeah.

David: 1:28:57

Ellie does and I'm in kindergarten when it comes to this and, like many others, I think about it. We have various circular discussions about it, but we don't really get anywhere. But we do have a we know a couple of businesses and there are more of them coming along where people have got a business that has access to some money that can buy farms. They supply management. You know some of them are doing things like increasing managing to increase biodiversity, put on covenants on things, do carbon baselining, stuff like that, All of which provided the structure that's there is not violated by some change of a business or or something that makes it untenable. That's, that is a bit of a risk.

Speaker 3: 1:29:52

I don't know how you mitigate against that, but I'm sure lawyers would be able to tell you Well, you also don't have you going down to the paddock to change the fence lines and seeing the birds and the joy and the fulfillment I mean, that's what people are attracted to yeah, you're right.

David: 1:30:10

I mean even if the next generation take it on. I mean I've seen farms that are managed similar to this one, where other generations haven't been excited by that sort of management. It's in great heart when they get it and they go and pull some of it apart.

David: 1:30:30

There are numbers of farms we can all think of, where there's been a sale and the new owner pulls all the fences out, rips up the water scheme and goes cropping wall to wall. I wouldn't like to be around to see that, to be honest, but it could happen. But I think you can do things that would, I'm going to say, guarantee. I'm not sure that you can guarantee anything, but it would be a high likelihood that sort of management would continue. But you know, is the manager? If it is a manager, is he going to get up in the dark and go and check the cows? If he hears them bellowing and thinks there might be a problem with the water? Yeah, that's it. It's hard to expect that, but you know there's a lot of wonderful managers around.

Speaker 3: 1:31:17

It does also make me think about the economic system, and sure that's a big question.

David: 1:31:22

What is that actually? Have I been involved in that for the last 54 years of?

Speaker 3: 1:31:25

my life. Yeah, yeah, the structure is not healthy. The structures that create, well, the growth at all costs structures are not healthy for farms and farmers and landscapes or future generations. And that's part of what Jim Phillipson's work, who I mentioned, is trying to shift. Shift it's really an intergenerational land return, yeah, let alone land for nature, yeah. So that that's where the well-being economy stuff and the treasurer's attempts at the moment to institute that officially are, I think, part of, they have to be part of the discussion, and so this makes me think, david, that I've even said the words recently. The cavalry has to arrive behind the vanguard of you guys now and and for all the people trying to get in and for all the work that others are trying to continue with, I mean, the mass is reacquiring seven park east I mean seven park coming back together in that way that that was fantastic.

David: 1:32:23

But not easy because it's still in the old structures.

Speaker 3: 1:32:26

Yeah, creative and probably still in motion. Really, how do you still carry debt? But, in a different way.

David: 1:32:34

Yeah, look, I think you know we've got a field day here on Thursday and it's funded by an effort in New South Wales to look at the things you can do managing farms that are good for your health and well-being, as well as the business and the landscape. And I've got to say a few words, as I usually do, and I was thinking about what I was going to say and it's sort of I mean, farmers manage a lot of risks, really, but I actually think that's probably the wrong term. I think we're managing a lot of opportunities rather than risks.

Speaker 3: 1:33:14

I agree.

David: 1:33:14

And you know I've found. You know we certainly don't feel smug when we've got ground cover and everyone else has got bare paddocks Not one bit, because not very long ago I was doing that. But it is incredibly calming on the human psyche to know that there's not a river of money running out of your bank account. Half your livestock, or however many are appropriate, are walking around in your bank account, your cash flow positive, the landscape's looking okay not the way you'd like it, but not falling apart and you as a human being are feeling calm.

David: 1:33:51

I don't know how you put a value on that Precisely. You know, like the first that nine dry year period, I calculated what we would have spent if we'd done what we used to do, which was reduce numbers by about a third too late at very little value, and then feed the rest. We would have spent between half a million and $800,000 in those years when it was dry and we didn't spend a cent on any of those things. We satisfied ourselves that when it was time for animals to leave because the landscape was being threatened, they left. So, yeah, that's the hard thing to come to. It's a very hard thing to sell what you think is your business, because everyone who's got livestock thinks the livestock are their business. And they are to a degree, but it's the landscape that makes them possible. So when are to a degree, but it's the landscape that makes them possible. So when the landscape's buzzing along and it's looking after itself at no cost, this can't help make profits. They might be modest profits, but you're not spending much money.

Speaker 3: 1:34:53

This is where I think there's a really interesting conversation. When things are working in that way here to not have the conventional economic structures scupper that, to be similarly creative with how you've made the land work.

David: 1:35:10

Well, I mean, there's a reality in this. You know, when we got out of debt, you know the Royal Commission in Banking happened and the marshes can only borrow a very small amount of money. Because we've got a modest income and no debt. You can't be trusted. No, If we wanted to go and borrow $4 or $5 million to buy our neighbour out, they'd probably welcome you with open arms. So it's a real dichotomy, I reckon it sure is All right, so what would?

Speaker 3: 1:35:41

in closing, I wonder what I guess, speaking of legacy, what your legacy message is to people who would be listening to this.

David: 1:35:51

Okay, well, look, I want to say a couple of things about a newish thing that's in agriculture, which is multi-species cover cropping. I'm doing it, I think, but I'm not paying anyone to do it. It's happening here because diversity is increasing. That's the type of multi-species crop that you're not paying for, but I'm not saying it's the wrong thing to do. And if country's been knocked around, it's probably a very good thing to do to kick start some biology in the soil, etc. Just be mindful that most of the species and if not all the species, not all the species occasionally there's some perennial grasses tossed into the mix, but predominantly they're exotic annuals and they can't replace themselves.

David: 1:36:38

So I think the thing is you've got to be clear about it can't regenerate itself. So what I'm aiming for is something that will go on renewing itself at no cost, increasing in biodiversity at no cost, and that's the natural tendency of ecosystems, even in a damaged ecosystem. The evolutionary knowledge for diversity is inherent in the community and if you give it time it will do that. I mean 20, 25 years. There's nothing in the history of the world. So the change we've seen here is meteoric really, in ecological terms it really is, you know. I mean, I think you're continually trying to prove to yourself that what you've learned in a course has legs, and all I can say is it's definitely proven that it's got legs here.

Speaker 3: 1:37:36

All right. So now my suggestion for your book title is the Do Nothing, Pay Nothing Farmer. That'll sell, surely?

David: 1:37:43

I don't want all the businesses coming in with their cutlasses at the gate all right mate to close I dreamt about this last night, did you really? Yeah, absolutely, proceed about the music. Yeah, okay, I've got two. I'm allowed to have two. If you dreamt about it, I'm all ears. Okay, your song, elton John. That's one. I think I've forgotten the second one, but that will absolutely.

Speaker 3: 1:38:14

Oh no.

David: 1:38:15

Killing Me Softly. Roberta Flack, Really.

Speaker 3: 1:38:18

What makes you think that?

David: 1:38:19

Well, they both were songs that Mary and I fell in love with. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:38:27

This is a theme. Magnificent. David, thanks so much for having me at your place and the family, and thanks for speaking with me here today. DM: Been a pleasure.

David: 1:38:36

I think we'll have to do it again. I don't think I said nearly enough. Nah, it's been a real privilege, Anthony. AJ: It sure has mate. T hat was the king.

Speaker 3: 1:38:51

He'll love that too, won't he? David Marsh. For more on David, see the links in the show notes. And thanks again to you generous listeners for making this 200th episode possible. If you've been thinking about becoming a member or other kind of supporter, please join us. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. Thank you, and thanks also for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it on your preferred app. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden and, at the top, Green Shoots by The Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.