162. Roland Pell

Tonight we're fortunate enough to be speaking with Roland Pell from Roland Pell Working Dog Training.

How you going, mate?

G'day, Dan.

G'day, Laura.

How was your day, buddy?

Yeah, quietish one today.

Worked a few dogs, drafted up a few lambs, checked a few mouths, found a few hoggets, which we'll have to find new homes for.

Might end up in the training pen maybe, but yeah, no quiet-ish day.

Whereabouts is home,

Roland? I'm at Undera, which is between Shepparton and Echuca in northern Victoria in the Golden Valley.

All flood irrigation around here was all dairy farms when I was growing up, and I was one of those for about 40 years.

But the water policies of our wonderful governments have changed all that, and there's not many of us left up here now.

Yeah.

Yeah, because what's the river? Actually, I had a bucks party on the river down there at

Echuca.

Well, three rivers meet at Echuca.

So the Campaspe and the Murray and the Goulburn all meet at Echuca.

So that's why it's such a big river port there.

And you can't pump?

water oh so we've got um it's a gravity system here so lake eildon um upper uh past yay and alexander up there um between and there between there and mansfield lake eildon it's sort of nine times the size of sydney harbour um so we still get water out of there but government buybacks don't allow access as just not as much availability of water now um you know this year water is running at around 400 a meg you can buy a ton of hay for about 200 bucks a ton And it takes a megalitre of water to grow a tonne of feed in round numbers.

So that doesn't make sense.

You're better off

to

either sell your water if you had some or just buy hay.

Yeah, just use what you can just to, you know, it's good.