"Avondale" In brief..

Property:

Avondale

Address:

Narrandera

Owners:

Mr. Warwick Anderson

Phone:

(02) 69598240

Area (in hectares)

890 ha

Rainfall (mm/pa)

450 mm

Oldman Saltbush area (hecatares)

75 ha

year of first Planting

1996

Q & A: an interview with Mr. Warwick Anderson

Why OMSB planted?  

To stop salt moving in to our low salt prone areas and to build a feed reserve.

What grazing and pasture benefits have been observed? 

You have feed in March for your stock, which for our operation has always been a hard and often a very expensive time to manage through. This small area of bush has given a surprising lift to our other pasture country. We are not running extra stock yet, so our ground has better cover. It is really good to see this happen.

What financial benefits have been observed? 

Nothing direct yet but I know our country is getting better. This is hard to put a direct dollar value on but it has to be worth lots.

Biggest OMSB impact?   

To just know that we have a tool that works to stop our country salting. We planted trees the same time as the 2^nd year of saltbush and they have done no where near as much good for the ground as the saltbush.

Any problems with OMSB? 

It is hard to get the saltbush planted in wet years. The planting is slow and needs to be done properly. Our first years planting was rushed and so had  a greater number of losses than our later planting.

Do you / if you had a salinity problem, do you think OMSB would help with controlling deep drainage and/or lowering the water table?  Salt is near us and the saltbush we have planted is dropping the ground water. It does work even though some department people told us it wont and we should only be using trees.

Would you like to increase your area sown to OMSB? Yes

What limits your planting of a larger area?  Money and fitting in with cropping.

Our Comments:

Warwick & his brother Ross started planting omsb as a plant from problem areas on their property. As time has gone on the benefit gained from having guaranteed feed off the omsb has been appreciated.