Woomargama Station – using the right plants in the right place for the right purpose – Chris Mirams

As manager of Woomargama Station, Chris views the property as a long term investment in Australian agriculture and sees his role as understanding and satisfying the demands and objectives of all stakeholders including the land, the owners, management, staff and the local and wider community.

Chris was invited to submit a paper to the 2009 Conference of the Grassland Society of Southern Australia

In his paper he wrote, “Despite a move to rotational grazing many years ago and the practice of destocking into sacrifice paddocks in tough times, during the course of the drought hundreds of hectares of cocksfoot, fescues, chicory, plantain and perennial rye withered and died. The only true survivors here are the native grasses, phalaris and mature lucerne.

We have discovered that we really only had three permanent pastures; phalaris and subs, native grasses and a little bit of lucerne. We have also discovered how important permanent is and how costly non-permanent is. It is interesting that while we were focused on sowing the latest cultivar, we were completely distracted from utilising what we now understand to be one of our great resources, our native grasses”.

Download the full paper here.