Rob “Goondicum is situated right at the head of the Western Branch of the Burnett river in a big volcano crater. The Campbell family’s been here for five generations, and we run timber and cattle, and everything’s living quite comfortably together.”
Nadia “So our operation here at Goondicum is largely focused on co-existence grazing, seeing us run Brangus cattle in conjunction with looking after our environment and the wildlife.”
Nadia “The LRF and carbon farming presented an opportunity for us to build on what we’re doing here and create new regeneration projects.”
“We’re a member of our peak natural resources group, the Burnett Mary Regional Group, and they introduced us to the concept of carbon farming some years ago and that’s how we met GreenCollar, and in that time we’ve been working closely with GreenCollar to bring this project together.”
Jane – “GreenCollar can help landholders looking to do a project by assessing their property to see if they’re eligible for a project, by registering their project with the clean energy regulator, and then monitoring their project to make sure it’s on track”.
Nadia – “So the beauty of our carbon project working with the LRF is that they’re not two mutually exclusive things with our production of beef. They co-exist and we’re actually seeing and we’re actually seeing an improved environment for our beef because of the project.”
Linda – “The Land Restoration Fund values projects like the one here at Goondicum because over and above storing carbon, it delivers multiple benefits. It delivers benefits for the farm, the land, for regional communities like employment and training, and also benefits for the broader Queensland community, things like creating threatened species habitat and improving the quality of water that flows into the Great Barrier Reef.”
Nadia – “Not only is it great to know that you’re increasing the habitat for these threatened species, but it’s also great to be able to look out your front door and see the environment improving and that’s certainly great from a mental health perspective when we’re seeing drought occur more and more often”.
Rob – “The best part about carbon is it gives you a backup on-farm income. It’s a bit like a check coming in every year so you can develop more land sensibly, you can educate your children at school, you can set up better water infrastructure like we are at the moment.
Nadia – “A better quality environment means less overheads for us in terms of land management, and so by improving the canopy coverage and increasing the tree growth and regenerating large areas of forest, we’re seeing those rewards.”
Nadia – “I’d encourage any other landowners and especially graziers to look into the LRF and what’s available, and enhancing the biodiversity on their own properties and the benefits they can bring from that.”