Oct 13, 2026 · 12 min · 6 segments
Todays Guests: Cheryl Rogers - A Farmer from the Swan Valley Steve Thomas MLC Warren Henry - Ross's Auctions See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy…
Well, my husband and I, we farm in the Swan Valley in Swan and tree farming is part of our diversification mix.
40 species.
And now the big topic of conversation that I've been hearing about for the Swan Valley is the groundwater problems.
Can you give us a little snapshot of what's been going on on your property for a long time
now? There'd been a problem with groundwater rising in the proximity of the new urban on the adjoining land.
Back in 2014, he began installing a series of monitoring bores across this property and every month, on the last day of every month, he goes out and he measures the distance from the top of the soil surface to the top of the groundwater.
What he's found is that groundwater itself has risen by about 1.33 metres in the peak of the wet season, which for us is around August.
But even at the hottest dry times of year in summer, The groundwater is sitting around 78 centimetres or so higher than it was before development.
So every winter, every wet season, we're starting from a new low, if you know what I mean.
So what are the main ramifications of groundwater like this? If we get too much water logging, and we've had an arborist report that says that about one third of our trees are affected by water logging, and that's on areas where the depth to ground water before planting was at least a metre, because of course we didn't plant into a swamp.
So the depth to ground water was tested to choose those parts of the farm that were appropriate to plant trees into.
So we're now seeing land that was previously, it's produced trees to a saleable size, that's being taken out of production because it's too wet for too long.
exclude livestock from areas where there's new wetlands popping up because we can't have that as a trapping hazard.
Tourism, the table grape producer in Cavisham had such a flooded vineyard last year that she couldn't get on to prune her grape.
Well, my husband and I, we farm in the Swan Valley in Swan and tree farming is part of our diversification mix.
40 species.
And now the big topic of conversation that I've been hearing about for the Swan Valley is the groundwater problems.
Can you give us a little snapshot of what's been going on on your property for a long time
now? There'd been a problem with groundwater rising in the proximity of the new urban on the adjoining land.
Back in 2014, he began installing a series of monitoring bores across this property and every month, on the last day of every month, he goes out and he measures the distance from the top of the soil surface to the top of the groundwater.
What he's found is that groundwater itself has risen by about 1.33 metres in the peak of the wet season, which for us is around August.
But even at the hottest dry times of year in summer, The groundwater is sitting around 78 centimetres or so higher than it was before development.
So every winter, every wet season, we're starting from a new low, if you know what I mean.
So what are the main ramifications of groundwater like this? If we get too much water logging, and we've had an arborist report that says that about one third of our trees are affected by water logging, and that's on areas where the depth to ground water before planting was at least a metre, because of course we didn't plant into a swamp.
So the depth to ground water was tested to choose those parts of the farm that were appropriate to plant trees into.
So we're now seeing land that was previously, it's produced trees to a saleable size, that's being taken out of production because it's too wet for too long.
exclude livestock from areas where there's new wetlands popping up because we can't have that as a trapping hazard.
Tourism, the table grape producer in Cavisham had such a flooded vineyard last year that she couldn't get on to prune her grape.
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