I'm Catherine Bennett.
We're on Raintree Mara, which is on the North.
Logan Road, about seven kilometers north of Cowra.
And we're close to the Lachlan River and we found we're custodians of the land
rather than owners and we want to leave it in a better state than it has been.
So that's why we enjoyed doing this work very much.
We're going to make a tree circle
which is what we've done as a way of protecting paddock trees
and also improving connectivity across the farm with corridors, laneways,
individual plantings, tree plantings
as a way of improving our environment.
This particular one is going to enclose about 500 square meters,
which means a circle with a 25 meter diameter.
So we do that with a piece of string and a tent peg mark around.
And I think I counted it used 21 on posts
they put in at an angle facing out and in a circle.
Then we put a top wire on and you can just strain that top wire in a little bit
and it just tightens up those iron posts.
But they're still at an angle.
Now, the angle is really important.
It can be any angle,
but it's really good to maintain that because sheep tend not to rub on it.
You can then plant ten or so trees and that helps with microbial activity
and develop developing a mycelial mat underneath the soil.
We're really noticing that once those isolated old trees
have a circle and support around them, their health improves greatly.
It also keeps sheep
away from the base of the tree because of course they use it for shade.
What we do is we offset the circle
so that the tree is on the southern side.
So we still are able to access shade.
Over 12 years or so,
we've made about 23 circles
and they're now scattered across low ground and high ground
and then planted scattered paddock trees
with a single guard so that there's a connection.
And we've also connected them to corridors
that are about 25 years old to the neighboring properties.
We feel as though we're building up a really good connection across the farm
to neighboring farms, but also one of our boundaries is the Lachlan River,
and that's a fabulous corridor for all sorts of things.
And we've got we're working on the connection down to there as well.
So we've worked with Katherine for quite a few years actually,
Katherine and John, and helped to try and support them to make the changes
that they wanted to make on their farm to improve their biodiversity.
So there's been a few different projects that we've been able to support them with,
including these tree circles
that they started about seven years ago on their own, the lesser supported
mid Lachlan Landcare to run a project called Driving Corridor Connectivity.
And so through that project we've been able to support
about seven different landholders in our region
and we've done works on those properties to help improve
connectivity over about 50 hectares, whatever we can do
and else can do to help support that is fantastic and a great outcome.
The Central Tablelands Local Land Services has received funding
from the Australian Government to do works in box gum grassy woodlands.
And so as part of that we rolled some money out to Landcare.
They came out with a few projects.
One of them was to protect hollow
bearing and paddock trees and so that's why we're here today with this one.
Katherine's done a really great job in, in doing a lot of paddock trees.
She's got some remnant areas locked out, she's got some corridors,
so it's actually creating quite a large area.
This is a little refuge and even standing around today
we've seen lots of birds that you would not expect productivity
wise, you know, hot summers, shade trees,
just the benefits of cooling the wind is coming onto your property.
Yeah.
Production wise it's also a win as well.
I just love coming out and saying birdlife, mammals, echidnas,
all sorts of wildlife are coming back as we look after this area
and just seeing trees growing and maturing
and looking healthy and connecting the landscape is just fabulous.
And of course I went through a number of droughts.
One of the most depressing was the early eighties drought.
And I remember coming out and crying out here
because it was so awful
and now I don't have to do that. I can look and think
that we're doing a really good job and it's looking wonderful.
