Living and working in the Kimberley Part 4

PART 4

Liveringa Station and cropping in 2012



Logo on the cars.







Liveringa Stations title is now Liveringa Pastoral Co. Milne and Agri Group; a large company. Under its “umbrella” it owns Milne Feeds Pty Ltd which is one of the largest stock feed milling operations in the State. The Milne’s operations extend to poultry with Mt Barker Chicken which is the largest free-range chicken producer in WA and pigs through Australian Natural Pork, a free-range pig producer at Cranbrook.  Liveringa also owns a neighbouring station called Nerrima which runs cattle on 500,000 acres. I have been told it recently bought an old winery as well called Fox River Wines which is in the same area as the chicken and pork companies it owns. The head office is in Perth. All this owned by one man but managed by many.

So the station itself; Liveringa has two business units; Live Stock and Cropping/Operations both with their own management and teams. The station is still on 1 million acres with its front fence being about 60 km along the Great Northern HWY and its back fence running about 120km along the Fitzroy River. The station has around 44 paddocks which can be several 100 acres each. I am not sure how many bores there are on the station now but most if not all paddocks would have one for the cattle. The driveway in from the HWY to the station hub is a 17km dirt/ sand road. 



This is Liveringa Station the whole 1,000,000 Acres. It shows the frontage on the highway across the top and the back fence along the Fitroy River ( the green line at the bottom).  The lines all over it are the paddock fences.

 



Here is another map of most of Liveringa and I have tried to show you the where abouts of each  place I have mentioned and where they are all positioned to each other. Main roads are in red and again the river is in green across the bottom. I forgot to place a label on the Barrage; it is the last black word on the green river line on the right tucked into the bend. Looking at this map the red road line from Camballin which goes off towards the left then heads up to the top left corner takes us to the Hwy for  Derby/ Broome, this is my 24km dirt drive.   



    The living arrangements on the station are that managers and their second in charge people get their own small house, so do the cook, helicopter pilot and mechanic, then the rest such as stock and cropping crew and drivers get dongas with a bathroom block to share. All the accommodation is spread out near the huge workshop shed. There is a recreational room, with the stations “bar”, an in ground pool and a kitchen with a compact dining room attached.




It is very hard to give you a good idea of how the station hub is set out because it is very spread out. This is the veiw you get as you come into the station. Looking over one of the pivots ( number 3 they call it) the cattle yards are the closest buildings then to the left are worksheds storing machinery then the very last shed on the left is the main work shop. The kitchen and houses are behind all these where you can see the trees and they spread down to the left.

 




Here a few of the houses as you can see they are spread out, the pool is under the sail .
There are 6 houses/ cottages; 1 is built out of rammed earth, 3 are rendered brick and the other two are older fibro cottges. The main hub is to the right of this picture . This picture is taken from the airstrip if I turn a bit to my right...........

 


you see the main work shop shed in the background. That huge tank is the stations water supply which is pumped from a bore. Pete is driving the truck and the boys are in there with him. Then if I turn around......

 


you have the stations airstrip and the place where all the wrapped bails are kept. (The truck has gone up the runway and has turned around.)

 





View of the cattle yards from the water tank. A good point of reference is the wheat silos which can be seen in most photos. The green patch just below the yards is that number 3 pivot seen as you drive in. All the white spots are birds, like cockatoo's  ( Little Corrella's)

 



This is Ian and Dawns house, they have done a great job with the garden.

 


The pool, we have spent quite a bit of time here. When
we first got here you couldn't get in it the water was so cold,
now it is like a warm bath!

 




The kitchen on the left looking across to the Rec area.

 





Inside the kitchen. First is the dining area which can be a
bit cramped when everyone is here.
  The kitchen is through the door.

   






The kitchen
On the left is Carmel who helps out in the kitchen and is the mechanics wife
and she is with Rachel who was the cook here. Rachel  worked on the station in many
different positions for 4 years, she left September. 

   




Looking from the kitchen down to the Donga's. Basically where the
young and single ringers and cropping crew lived.

  



The Rec area, our social activity centre with the bar. The building behind on the right is the main workshop and to the left you can see the huge carport for everyone to park their own cars and camper trailers under. The kitchen and dongas are off to the left and the houses to the right.

 





Hanging around the bar.

  


Inside the rec room. Those doors on the back wall and to the right are bedrooms for guests that visit such as; vets, enviromental reasearches, people doing studies on the land etc... Liveringa has allot of visitors doing all different kinds of research.

CROPPING OPERATIONS

Ian is the manager of the cropping/ operations side and is Peter’s boss.  Ian's position covers general running of the stations facilities and the crops so; maintaining the buildings/houses and all farming equipment/ tractors. So he has a full time mechanic- Terry, truck driver- Greg, grader driver- Ken, maintenance person- Pete, Gardner - Julie and a cropping crew of three, Jake, Lisa and Pete. 

 Ken the grader driver is kept busy by not only trying to maintain the tracks and dams but by also grading firebreaks along all the fences and roads on the station; a very important and necessary job when fires are easily started in the dry season and move rapidly with the wind. Pete has had a few experiences with fighting fires and doing back burns which is all interesting and new for us and very much part of life around here. 



The station has a licence to grow Sorghum and is also experimenting growing corn for feed. They have been able to get this licence because they have permits to use the Fitzroy River for watering.   

THE BALING PROCESS

Grow, mow, rake, bale, load and wrap.

Step 1. Seeding and growing




This is the seeder, a huge piece of machinery pulled behind a huge tractor.

 

A close up of the seeder.






One of the pivots in action, this was taken just a few days of us arriving so
you can see the crop just shooting.

  




A pivot with the mower in front gives you a bit of an idea of how long they are.

  

They call the area where they grow the crops "pivots" but the actual sprinkler is the pivot. The area is 100 hectors with pivots 550 meters long which move by electric motors attached to each set of wheels. For those who care for figures, 153 litres a second is pumped out of these pivots and they water every 2^nd or 3^rd day.

The first crops on the pivots are sown around May so when we arrived on the station they were in and shooting. The machine has a GPS guide in it which makes it easy when sowing the seed. The growth rate of a crop depends on water and weather but it roughly takes 6-8 weeks  

The water comes from canals that run off the Uralla Creek, (also called Snake Creek) which is fed from the Fitzroy River, as seen in the previuos blog). The station pumps water from the canals to the pivots. The water level in the canals is determined by the level in the Fitzroy. When the water no longer naturally flows into the canals the gates are shut and a pump is set up to pump water over the gates into the canal. The station is only allowed to pump water from the Urella Creek till it gets down to 37.5 meters above sea level. One of Pete's jobs each month was to take and record the rivers depth.




This is the canal with the pump house. There are two very large motors sucking up the water for the sprinklers. 

 
The station has 3 Pivots on its own land and another 38 acre pivot which it leases from a neighbouring station across the HWY and is watered by its own bore so it usually gives them a few good crops.

Sorghum is used because it can be harvested up to 3 times meaning they chop it off as low as possible and it reshoots again and again depending on weather and how much water they can get onto it. 

Step 2. Mowing


So once fully grown it is ready to be mowed. This is the main mower used but if this mower is in having repairs there is a mower attachment which can be pulled behind a tractor.  The mower leaves the cut sorghum in flat rows but they are insufficient for the baler so next it needs to be raked.




This is the main mower with Pete driving on the number 2 pivot. The shed in the background is the pump house. It is very common to have the eagles flying around him because they are after the mice and lizards which are running out into the open. Other animlas which also like the crops are wild pigs, kangaroos , ferral cats, Brolgas and stray cattle that think they are in heaven with all the green feed.

 





Pete took us all for a ride, this is Charlie having his go. It is a very weird feeling with just a huge sheet of glass infront of you and looking rught down at the mower. There are 24  blades inside the head and these have to be replaced every week when in continual use. The mower is driven by independant front wheels, so it can turn on the spot and be  lined up ready for the next row, it looks really funny. 

  

Step 3. Raking




The raking machine is toad by a tractor. It is in the shape of a "V" so it collects 2 rows of cut sorguhm and channles it down the "V" and out the back into a single thicker, taller wind row ready for the baler. Pete has driven this as well.

 



Showing the set up of the rake behind the tractor. Jale drives this mostly and I reckon he would ahve a very sore neck at the end of the day for he spends most of it looking behind making sure it is all running smoothly. Pete tells me when he was raking he turned around to check that all was good and there was a lizard running as fast as it could to keep in front of the fingers and escape, he slowed down enough for it to escape but what a funny sight!

 



A typical scene in the pivot; bales waiting to be collected from the day before as they start the process all over again on the next section. With a good run they can do a whole pivot in 7 days. 

 




I am trying to show the difference between the raked rows on the left and the mowed rows on the right. The left ones are higher and thicker compared to the ones on the right.
You can see Lisa in the loader in the background going around collecting the bales and putting them in groups ready to be loaded onto the truck.

 
 The turning over [ raking] of the sorghum also helps with the drying out process. This sorghum is made into bales still green; it needs to be at 60% moisture which they test by chopping up a handful and putting in the microwave, then weighing it and then they can see how much water is in the sorghum, high tech!!!!!

Step 4. Baling




The baler. It looks plain but quite an amazing machine. You can see it picking up the sorguhm at the front then out the back comes the completed bale. Again Jake spends most of his time looking backwards!

 
I think this an amazing machine because of what it has to do. It picks up the loose sorghum and has to compact it tightly into what they call ‘biscuits’; these are like layers which make it easy when you go to pull the bales apart. The bales are held in place with several rows of knotted baling twine then when completed they are pushed off the back of the baler and dropped ready to be picked up. Quite an amazing machine when you see the loose crop go in and come out as a 700 - 800kg tight block all within minutes. But, when things go wrong with this machine it is a real pain in the backside to fix because everything gets caught up in blades and baling twine and has to be pulled out and restarted, not much fun with a hot machine on a 40 degree day! They were trialing corn and it did cause quite a bit if grief with this machine. They can alter the cutting thickness in the machine and it took quite a few goes to get the right consistency to make the bales stay tight and not fall apart.   The 100 hector pivots can produce 800 - 1000 bales, of course depending on water and weather. 

Step 5. Loading




Lisa driving the loader. She goes around and collects the bales and groups them together ready to be loaded onto the flat bed truck.

 


Loading onto the truck to be taken to the runway for wrapping.

 

Liveringa lines the sides of its airstrip with the bales I have no idea what other stations do with theirs. The person unloading the bales from the flat bed needs to place the bales in a nice straight line so the wrapper can come along and do its job without too much fuss.

 

Step 6. Wrapping

 

This is the most mesmerising piece of machinery to watch and has become Peter's main job. As you will see it runs behind a tractor but it sits out to the side of the tractor to be able to pick up the bales and that is why the bales need to be in a straight line for it takes a bit of manipulating  the wrapper to pick up a bale that isn’t in line.

 The bales are picked up via a metal toothed conveyor belt.

Once in position it is lifted up onto the yellow rollers and starts rotating, as it rotates the outside arms with the plastic rolls spin around wrapping the bale in plastic.

The bales do two full rotations then the arms stop spinning and the plastic cut.

Then the bale is lowered back down onto the platform.

Then the conveyer tracks push it off the back and they are completed.

 When the wrapping is all done the tails of the plastic need to be tucked in by hand so that is the last thing done for the person operating the wrapper. Pete does around 100 bales at a time which can take anywhere from 2- 3 hours, depending on how many problems he has with the plastic. He has found the hotter the day the more problems he has with the plastic ripping.  Depending on how far into the cycle the plastic  rips he can sometimes let it finish with one roller, otherwise it is turn off  the machine, out of the tractor, tie the plastic back onto the machine, back into the tractor and start again. In the heat of the day he may have to do this 2-3 times a bale, which becomes very frustrating… So to miss the heat of the day and whenever possible he will start wrapping at 5 am and get through the bales without hardly any problems. 

The bales are airtight and within 10 days they are ready but they can last for months as they are.  Within the 10 days  the 60% moisture sets of a fermentation  which makes the sorghum sweet and vinegary smelling and irresistible to cattle.  This feed is much better for the cattle with a higher percentage of protein and many stations around here buy it from Liveringa. Liveringa sells it back to its own cattle station for $200 a bale but sells it to other stations for $270 a bale. 

 In October there was very little water left to run the sprinklers. The last pivot was completed early November but they still had the one leased over the HWY  which was done early December.  The station has a piece of land they call the Freehold; it is out on the flood plains. Around December they plant it out in the hope that it gets flooded just enough to start and grow a crop ready for the beginning of the next year. It is a gamble whether or not to do it because they could lose the lot if they have a big flood. Last year it worked well for them and they got a good crop of hay to start the year off.

So that is how the cropping side of things work here.