Paul Weir is a fourth-generation dairy farmer. He has been a dairy industry advocate, sat on several boards, and even had a short stint in music. Paul spoke with Dylan Butcher about his life, farming, raising a family and the impact of last year’s flood.

I was born in Lismore Base Hospital back in 1972, and was the youngest of four, we dairy farmed at Eureka, just outside Clunes, and three previous generations had milked cows on that farm.

We had just a typical country upbringing.

My parents split up when I was seven, and my mother and my next eldest moved to Ballina. So, I actually did the rest of my schooling from third class on, up to when finished school in ’87, in Ballina.

I got heavily involved in music, played the trumpet and was in the Ballina Public School band, and then went into high school and played trumpet all the way through high school.

Music and sport work were my passions. I played trumpet in the Ballina High Stage Band, back in its heyday, where we actually played with people like Ricky May and actually did a tour of California with the band.

I toyed up with playing making music my career, but then I chose to head more into farming.

I left school in Year 10, and did an auto electrician apprenticeship in Woodburn, and did the four years down there - my father always said that if I wanted to come back on the farm, I needed a trade or a uni degree, and that I needed to get some type of qualification before I came back - so that's why I did the auto electrician apprenticeship.

During that time, we were heavily involved in churches back in the day, in the Presbyterian Church and I met my wife when we went to a youth camp in Kyogle, run by the Kyogle Uniting Church.

I was 16 at the time, it was actually just after I left school, and I was in the first year of my apprenticeship. So, I met a young girl called Sharon and the rest is pretty well history.

We dated for six years, and we were married in 1994, she was 20, and I was 21.

Back the same time, my father sold the property out at Eureka, it's fairly hilly and it was small, so we looked for a place where we had better water so we can irrigate, and so that’s how we come to Tuncester.

He bought this farm as a dairy farm back in ’89, just after the ‘89 flood. There were a few wet years leading up to that, and the farmer who was on the on this place at that time, had just had enough of the wet.

I also finished my electrician apprenticeship, and then I did two cane harvest seasons down in Broadwater. That gave me enough money to come back onto the farm, and I set up the dairy. So, we turned it from a beef farm, back into a dairy farm in early 1993.

I love animals, they are really my passion, and to be a dairy farmer, you've got to love working with animals because that's what you do all day, every day.

My father and I we were in partnership until 2008, and then Sharon and I bought the bought the farm off Dad.

Previous to then, in 1997 our first son was born, we have four boys, who have all grown up here on the farm, and all went to Blackbrook Primary School, and then to Richmond River.

They played all the sports in town, I have up until the flood played soccer at South Lismore, and all the boys played through South Lismore Soccer Club. So yeah, just a typical Lismore farming upbringing.

After we had bought the farm, we also bought the next-door neighbour alongside us, and then we've been fortunate enough in farming to actually be able to purchase another two farms close by that we use as part of our dairy business.

We've grown the farm from when Dad and I started, we started milking 60 cows and then we got up to 80 pretty quick, and then now we milk around 400.

There's only been a few years - and last year was one of them - where we've actually gone backwards in our milk supply. So we just plan to improve and grow every year. That's how we like to look at it, and that's why we've been pretty successful luckily.

During all that time, I’ve also been pretty involved as an industry advocate. I got into industry advocacy through representing dairy. I started on the NSW Farmers Association Dairy Committee, representing the North Coast. I did that for 11 years, then that merged into Direct Connect, which I did for another seven years.

I went from advocacy into research and development for the dairy industry, where I was for nine years, with Subtropical Dairy, which is the research development arm of Dairy Australia. I ended up being chair of that committee, which is where we dealt with regional issues, and money that come through to our region through from Dairy Australia. We were in charge of allocating that money to support farmers.

More recently, I've just finished my first three-year term on the Norco board. I've been very passionate about the industry, and sustainability of the industry, and certainly growth of the industry.

Last year with the flood was pretty devastating to our family - but we have to put things in perspective – although we lost a lot, there was just thousands of people, my neighbours and friends, that just lost everything. That put a lot of things in perspective for us.

We lost a lot of cows, and then we lost a second business in town we had for eight years, it was a fertiliser spreading business, we lost every asset there.

We lost around 130 cows - unfortunately, or fortunately - whatever way you look at it, I took some footage the morning of the flood of our cows actually being swept away. I shared it with a few family members and a few close friends, not thinking they would go on and share it, and it just went global.

This is a screenshot of the devastating footage Paul took from his home as his cattle washed away.

I ended up a face or a first point of call for the flood in agriculture, just because that was very visual.

So we ended up having everyone here - the Prime Minister, the Premier, Bridget McKenzie who was the Emergency Services Minister, and our Federal Member Kevin Hogan – they were actually all here on the same day one time.

We've had our insurance company send up their heads from Sydney, I've had Dairy Australia CEO has been here. You name them, they’ve been here. Certainly with that footage going viral, everyone knew who I was, and I made sure they knew what everyone had been through.

It has been both a negative, but also a positive experience, being able to be a local ambassador, if you want to call it that. Not only a spokesperson around agriculture, but for Lismore also.

I'm very passionate Lismore local, who supports the town in numerous ways, through the two businesses that we had, and certainly through the dairy. I'm very passionate about Lismore, and its future.