Andrew Wilson is a local through and through. Andrew is an intergenerational diary farmer who went to Richmond River High and has seen his share of floods over the years. Justine Poplin visited Andrew for a chat about the life of a dairy farmer.

I grew up across the road from this farm in Woodlawn. My father and his father had a dairy on the other side of the railway line, we are intergenerational dairy farmers.

I went to Richmond River High School, the old-schoolhouse with the wooden stairs, leadlight windows and verandas like an old Queenslander.

After leaving school I went to Hawkesbury College at the base of the Blue Mountains where I studied Agriculture. I was really interested in horticulture actually, and I worked a lot at the Sydney flower markets and cut flowers. Australian natives particularly interested me, such as Geraldton Wax - all those bird-attracting varieties. The market exported them around the world buying and selling seasonal flowers. I worked in Sydney and Melbourne for 10 years and then travelled around the world. After seeing what was out of Lismore (out of the box) I came back to the farm.

My dad had a stroke, so I came back to see what I could do to help out the family. I just thought I’d come back and see if I could help them, yeah… but once he had one stroke, he had more and more aggressive strokes and I decided to stay. My cousins were farming here, so I thought I’ll just do that for a while to make some money and keep myself busy. Despite growing up on a dairy farm, I had never milked cows… and here I am 25 years later and it’s my life!

Our farm has between 280 and 300 head of Friesian cattle for milking. A dairy cow has a calf every year, so she only produces milk for approximately 10 months of the year. The cows have two months off where hopefully they can get back in calf and the whole cycle keeps rolling on. It’s not hard work, it’s just constant farming work, everything including the milking is mechanised now so it’s easier than in the past!

We have a 20 swing-over herring-bone milking parlour and we mellow and mill our own grain. It’s a mixture of millet, minerals and vitamins such as magnesium sulphate; salt cows sweat a lot and also need salt in the mix. We have three buggies the ‘side by sides’ to get the cows in and just to do work around the farm. The dogs also like to ride in them and they’re just a lot safer than a quad bike. They’ve got a roof on them, so you don’t get sunburnt or drenched with rain.

My interest in horticulture was rekindled again with dairy farming. Some research came out regarding peanut legumes (Amarillo Pinto Peanut) it boosts nitrogen levels in pastures. So, we had planted the subtropical legume on the farm in our pastures. This way, I can get the grass to grow without chemicals, making far better milk - it is wonderful.

(Amarillo Pinto Peanut Flowers)

Neil McAnally was a forerunner in these crops. He had his whole farm planted with pinto peanut years ago. I would often look across and see the yellow flowers, the entire paddock ablaze with yellow. Every time a peanut is formed in the ground, up pops a little shoot with a yellow flower on it. Back then, as a child, I always wondered what it was. Later, Norco managed to get some seed out of North Queensland. We put it in - once you’ve planted up the pastures with the seed you have peanuts constantly stay in the ground - they just keep growing and growing and spread out together. Then we let the cows in, the herd go into those pastures and graze, they love it – good for them, good for our milk!

I met Kelly (my wife) at the pub - The Northern Rivers Hotel 27 years ago when I came back from Sydney. Kelly’s a Boyd from over in Kyogle, also a farming family. She knows her way around a farm and knows dairy farming from her family The Boyd’s and the MacLean’s from Kyogle.

We have two kids one at Bexhill primary school and the other at Woodlawn College. Their schools were okay with the flood – at Woodlawn the water went into the lower level in the columns, but all the classrooms were okay. After Covid, schooling was just a bonus really that we didn’t have any extra disruption. It's a shame about Richmond River, surely it was cheaper just to fix it, it’s such a beautiful campus out of town – a real historical landmark. Yeah, it’s really sad that the powers that be can’t come up with smarter strategies and solutions.

(Richmond River High School. Photo: Richmond River High School Facebook page)

When I was in High school and it flooded - the next day everybody got in there and cleaned it up. All the students used to clean and hose out the classrooms and we just worked it out. You can’t do that anymore, students as ‘slave labour’ really helped clean up the school. (he laughs here…but it was true). So much red tape now.

2022 was going quite well until February 28, and then it just kept raining and raining, and it got quite high when we got down to the dairy in the morning at 5 o’clock with a substantial flood. We go and get the cows and it’s still raining quite heavily - the water just keeps coming up quite fast, then I start to get a bit nervous. I didn’t actually think it would get up that high.

By the time we finished milking, it was at the door up our thighs. We took the herd to higher ground. We have a hill on higher ground - 100 acres over there above the road, so we just walked the herd across the road up the hill. Everything was up on the hill, we were very lucky we didn’t lose any cattle. The herd sort of huddled on the other side of the hill just trying to keep out of the weather - they didn’t like it. It was very likely that we would be not able to milk for a couple of days… and we didn’t. We didn’t want to miss milking as the cattle like humans, would get mastitis.

We attempted to move all motorised equipment - vacuum pumps, motors of any sort. The house was safe it would’ve taken another 4m to get up here. That was the first time I’ve ever seen it go anywhere near the dairy. The water came up so high that day but the next day we were able to put motors back for milking. The cows were okay and I’m glad none of them really suffered this year. They all came through with the help of John & Yvette Campbell veterinary services. John’s done a great job helping us get the herd healthy and back on track.

The water went over the railway line, my father and my grandfather always said all that ‘big floods’ come up level with the sleepers - saying that, I remember the ‘74 floods, but I was a kid.

In 2017 it was nearly as high, it went to metres 2.5m over the railway line.

(The Lismore to Bexhill railway line)

Historically, the local aboriginal people spoke of a big flood on country back in the 1800s. Kelly’s family, the Boyds have that aural history that has been passed down through the generations. A few white people around here don’t really remember the stories, but they’ve been passed down through our family and my dad‘s family. Pretty scary, really terrifying and I knew that Lismore was in big trouble when the water just kept coming up. We were too busy to listen to the radio, it was pretty chaotic. There was going to be extreme damage. More than I’ve ever seen.

We were just starting to get back on our feet and then the second flood came! It was up level at the railway line, that wasn’t good, and then the sun didn’t come out and just keep raining for months and everybody who lives around. It was pretty demoralising, we were flooded in here for four days. Usually, the water seemed to get away quicker. These days and I’m not sure whether that’s the bit of work they’ve done out the back of Bunnings…?

In the 1974 flood, I remember… we were cut off for a week. My uncle was stationmaster at Mullum and they had to send food over on the trolleys and on the transfers, yeah but this time I think it was only three and a half days. In those days, when it wasn’t flooded you could walk the railway line everywhere! Kelly and I vaguely remember stories of train travel to Lismore - my mum and my dad used to catch the train into town to go to school when he was a kid. I think there was six or eight trains a day then, that was the form of transport when I was a kid. This road here, was just a track, a terrible road of chat gravel, just holes and bumps. Not many people used to train though, you had to drive to a station and they didn’t run on the right times…I can only vaguely remember. The trains have stopped running and we don’t get to hear the rattle on the tracks anymore.

[2023 - what would you like the seasons to look like?]

I don’t think we need any big dumps of autumn rain, but I know we’re always going to in the Northern Rivers. They are predicting half a dozen cyclones this year coming down the coast and you don’t know… until it happens. Yeah - I just think some nice ‘gentle weather’ be nice in autumn. It would just take the stress off everything Lismore, I was in town a couple of days ago and there’s cars in the streets and people getting at the cafes – the For-Lease signs are popping up on empty buildings and buildings are being leased!

I think there’s been a little too much negative talk really, like people talking about how many people have left town – and what are we going to do with all these empty buildings, but it will come back. I think Lismore is quite phenomenal like that. I think we need to start talking to some of the really well-established old business owners-every time there is a flood. They pack up, they get everything right and they’re trading in a few days for five days.

Where other businesses are not paying attention to the water coming down the systems. Historically, I know myself if I look up at Repentance Creek and it hits the 5m mark - I know I’ve got to get everything off the flat because there’s a lot of water coming this way in 10 – 12 hours and we’re going to get flogged!

You know you could just see the amount of water that was falling in the catchment. Those established business owners you know, they ring people up the creek and have a chat to people - and I don’t know… I think we need to have a little bit more of that going on again. As it has been established, locals can’t solely rely on SES (you can’t rely on people down in Wollongong trying to give you advice) I’m here – I look at the land look at the creek and talk to community. We had 1000 mils in every catchment from Melanie to Mullumbimby, that’s a lot of water coming down. If you get a metre of rain in 24 hours in that massive catchment historically you know it’s a big flood, but you can deal with it.

The constant wet weather after that second flood liquefied the paddocks. Our paddocks just turned mush and the cows couldn’t sit down to sleep. Sadly, I lost a couple of old cows, they just gave up. We had a lot of hay bales brought in and a lot of grain, so we just kept feeding and feeding them without milking costing us a fortune.

Gratefully, the State and Federal Government gave us two grants of $75,000 to buy food and supplies for the farm. We used it all and hay just to keep the girls alive! I think all dairy farmers did that, all the beef farming guys had had it a little easier perhaps. Dairy Farming is all about keeping and maintaining the condition of the cows - keeping them healthy, so they go back in calf next year. Whatever the cost I had I had to do it to keep the farm and business going.

I think everyone was a bit shocked when we heard that Norco might not open again. We were shocked. Chairman Mike Jefferies came out here to the farm, sat with me at this table here …

“So, what would you think if we didn’t open the ice cream factory?”

I told him he might get lynched by the Lismore community! Norco’s gone through a lot of floods and the ice cream factory provides many jobs and is a Lismore icon. I think it’s been there on that site for 130 years and tallied 99 floods or something…?

In the 1974 flood from memory, I think it was 400 millimetres. The 2022 flood was two-and-a-bit metres tall and the electrics wiped-out the computers and that was extremely costly to revamp. The electricity had to be up high on the top, all the wiring (or the mechanised brains of Norco) the expensive parts needed to be built right up high. Norco provided money coming back into Lismore through jobs. Tourism strangely enough is linked to Norco - people come up to the ice cream factory, stay in Lismore stay at our motels and eat at our cafes.

We are very lucky we’ve got several large businesses, the hospital and the courts here in Lismore. Otherwise, the council and other powers to be, may have decided just to relocate the entire town… and that would be a great loss.

Lismore does have a lot of hills surrounding, so building housing in these surrounding areas maybe new future plans. Strategies really need to be enacted, we’re heading back into another wet season. On the other hand, I have never seen so much homelessness in Lismore. If you go out past the racecourse along the Wilson River there, it’s like a shanty-town. From a boat you can see this more clearly - the realities of homelessness in Lismore along that river back. I reckon hundreds of little temporary shelters housing our displaced community – it’s shocking to see. It needs to be sorted, people can’t live like this.

Governments are there to make decisions for the people. When they don’t make decisions on both sides of government they need to get together in Lismore Council. The Council really need clarity in leadership for the community - a council parity. It really is embarrassing. It’s all this party politics and they’re not making decisions that are not best for our community. Get it done, come up with consolidated strategies that best serve the community of Lismore. 

When people work together we can save a community.