On the Land

1. 0:00 Katherine Taylor

   Hi, my name's Katherine, I live in Uralla.

2. 0:06 Jon Taylor

   And I'm Jon Taylor, Katherine's Dad, and I live out at Kentucky.

3. 0:11 Katherine Taylor

   Today's the 16th of August 2012. Where in Uralla and we're recording as part of the Uralla story project. We're going to talk about Landcare, Treefest, and revegetation around the Uralla area. So I'd first like to ask Dad how long you were farming here before you started up Landcare, or before you were involved in that.

4. 0:42 Jon Taylor

   Okay, well, it's probably about 30 years into my farming career that Landcare started up... Just doing a quick calculation, yeah a little less than that - about 25 years perhaps. And I guess it was a stage when I'd taken over, running my own farm, and I had a particular interest in developing it the way I wanted to. And we had we had a group of farmers in the area that had heard about this Landcare movement that was starting up.

5. 1:20 Katherine Taylor

   Was Landcare started by government originally?

6. 1:24 Jon Taylor

   It was actually.. it was a government initiative and it started really I think because there were already a few groups of farmers that had become probably quite conscious of ecosystem management and the need for conservation. In my lifetime I've seen a couple of times the conservation thing become a major, important thing. In my youth I remember land, you know soil conservation, was a big issue and I remember my parents talking about it. And then it went through a period when it wasn't so important, and then in that sort of 1980s period it started to become an issue again, and people were doing Landcare work, and the government saw a need to enhance this and they tried to Foster the Landcare movement.

7. 2:16 Katherine Taylor

   Do you think it became important in that period because of the dieback, and the droughts?

8. 2:25 Jon Taylor

   I think in this particular area we were very conscious of it because there was a lot of pasture improvement went on in the New England and that pasture improvement actually led to a major decline in the health of the native vegetation. And as White settlement here had reduced the tree cover from perhaps a 40% tree cover down to maybe a 20% tree cover or something like that, and then with the advent of applications of super phosphate a lot of the trees became unhealthy. And there were a variety of reasons for that, but one of them was that the insects thrived, and another was that there was a reduced number of trees to feed the insects, and little seedlings coming up were actually being eaten by livestock, because the pasture improvement increased the stocking rate dramatically.

9. 3:29

   And consequently we went from a 25% tree cover down to, you know, some areas were getting down towards 2% or less of tree cover. It became quite a quite a major problem. And we'd actually ourselves started - even in my father's management - he started doing some tree planting to try and counteract some of the tree loss.

10. 3:54 Katherine Taylor

    And who else was involved - it was the Harnham Landcare group.

11. 4:00 Jon Taylor

    Yeah, well the Harhham Landcare Group... Probably the the instigator of that that I remember most clearly was Ross Roberts, and he lived on a property: Lake View - which is just behind the Thunderbolts Rock on the New England Highway. His country was fairly open and bare, and he was very conscious of the need to try and return some cover to it. And when he heard about this - the government sort of fostering these Landcare groups - there was a certain amount of government assistance available. And he got on the phone, and he rang around the people who he knew were already taking an interest or doing something about this sort of conservation movement, and he encouraged us all to go to a meeting and and we started up. What was later known as the Harnham Landcare Group. And it was the very first Landcare Group to start up in the New England area, and we named it after Mount Harnham, which is the mountain with the trig station on it just to the east of the settlement of Kentucky.

12. 5:14 Katherine Taylor

    And it was mostly the Landcare people that came up with the idea of Treefest?

13. 5:20 Jon Taylor

    I think - yes. You know, without wanting to claim too much glory out of it, it was actually my baby I guess. I was thinking that there was a lot of things happening with tree planting, and at that stage we'd been experimenting quite extensively with methods of tree planting. And I saw the possibility of having a fairly exciting event where a lot of people could come together with various inventions, various methods, various skills and knowledge - and if we could bring it all to one place, we could have quite an interesting field day or exposition.

14. 6:04

    And then I started talking to - I should say at that stage that Greening Australia had just started up, also recognising that the strength of the conservation movement rising - and they had an officer in Armidale and I ran him and talked to him about it. But even as I did that, I saw that it was something that I particularly would like to do myself and so - selfishly - I discussed it with Vicky (my wife) and we called together a group to make up a committee.

15. 6:45

    You know I thought about this a bit before we did it and I rang up probably. About six people who I thought they were good friends of ours or all of them and they once we knew well and I knew they had this. this caused at heart and I rang them up. You've got to remember this is before. Landcare movement had really sort of got going and and I asked them to come and perhaps assist. We had a meeting and that meeting I explained my my vision and I asked them to take on particular roles, and there was one person. That was particularly good at booking and record keeping so we made him the treasurer.

16. 7:28

    And there was another guy that was very good being diplomatic with. with organizing people Coming along to display equipment, and there's often sort of difficulties. You know catering for all their needs. And so I've got Chris Everley to do that. I must say that the person we chose is a treasure was Gordon Williams from Eastlake and Chris evil he had been planting trees with me quite a bit and he had established a nursery to supply us with trees for our contracting business that we had already started then and yeah, so Chris evolving was going to organize the exhibitors and then I had a sister Elizabeth and her husband Bruce Lee's gardener and they do quite a few people from their University studies who national authorities probably on various aspects of Conservation and found management And we got them to be in charge of getting together all the guest speakers.

17. 8:40

    Greening Australia David Curtis to to join us and he was a very strong supporter of the movement in many ways, but he he helped a lot organizing from memory. I think a lot of the school stuff, but also the supporters of bringing Australia put together. An exhibition for it, and and and and yeah there's others. I would just don't they don't come to mind immediately, but they were there were several other people. Also that provided a lot of expertise to do this and Vicky did the secretarial part of it keeping that the records of our meetings and and as a hand picked and committee everyone was sort of everyone knew each other and knew each other strengths and We were very fortunate in that everybody put a lot of effort into it. Look off. Yeah 6000 people turned up for a one day, event and We had 90 exhibitors.

18. 9:52

    and we had I think something like six different tree planting machines we had three three or four different seeding machines we had about

19. 10:10

    10 maybe a dozen there might have been a dozen nursery stock along and we had chemical companies Monsanto being one who actually became a major sponsor with. And they're interested seeing us use Roundup to control the grass in establishing the trees, so they came in as a major sponsor, but they took a stand and yeah,

20. 10:40 Katherine Taylor

    do you think that truth is did its job at the time like it got the information out there you needed it to.

21. 10:51 Jon Taylor

    I think I think it did rather well, actually it. Just seemed to catch the crest of the wave and and the publicity sort of self-generated. Once we've got the word out to the right people and everybody seemed to want to get behind it and they all came and chased us for information and we had. You know quite unique we had three politicians came to our. Press day, which was virtually a launch for the tree fest they and it was nearly. It was nearly four five months ahead of the event if I remember correctly and yet we were able to get three politicians to come along and the television and radio and written press and they all came along and they are politicians or played at the tree and cut a ribbon, and there were only 10 of us there, and you know and that all lent a lot of weight to the to the publicity for the event.

22. 11:53 Katherine Taylor

    Here and you said earlier that you had a treatment in business. As well as running the farm. What how did that start? What was the the reasoning between behind having another side business and and that being treated in not something else?

23. 12:13 Jon Taylor

    Yeah, really, I think. The person who started that was probably my father Walter Taylor had been planting some trees since I could remember. being involved with watering trees that he planted in probably 1956 or something like that and He went on to plant more trees at you know regular intervals, but not very large amounts and this is planting trees right out in the Paddocks rather than just around the homestead area. and I think I think probably it was in the mid-70s that the dieback had been at its worse during the 60s and into the early 70s, and he was determined to sort of increase his efforts, so he did a big project one year where he fenced in six sort of one acre plots and planted trees in those with netting fences around them and did some research with the forestry commission as to what trees to plant in that.

24. 13:17

    And I can remember being there helping them to water the trees and put mulch around them and all these sort of thing and I guess leading on from that when I started working on the place in 1967 when I left school. It was fairly easy to to be conscious of what we were doing and we did a few. We did a few planting sort of ran along fence lines in some of the more exposed areas and as the success of that. Improved I started doing some research myself trying to find other varieties. We could plant that were sort of interesting and exciting.

25. 14:00

    and then there was there was also the possibility of trying to get better seedlings and that stage a lot of the seedlings that were available were tube stock and they were quite laborious to plant and and deal with they had came in wrapped in a little metal tube, and then we got onto the New South Wales state forest. We're doing a lot of planting of their room forestry plantations and those were radiator pine seedlings, and they were grown in a in a paddock. Full of seedlings and they were quite often you know and a production of 10 or 15 million trees a year at Walker and those seedlings were quite cheap. They came very rooted in bags. You know a thousand trees in a in a potato bag, and they had bare roots around them, and they were only costing about 10 cents each. So that compared with a cost of $2 a seedling for the tube stock.

26. 15:10

    So we started planting a lot of radiator pine. And of course. They weren't susceptible to the dieback. That was causing so much trouble. and so we gradually increased the number of varieties and

27. 15:34

    I at the time. I used contacts with between a lot of the old established farms in the area. They knew myself and and I knew them and I contacted them, and I said where we're going to do some some extensive planting, and I can plant seedlings for for a certain price, and and would you be interested in you know having a thousand trees planted in a wind break or something like that, and I think we had about 10. 10 of the largest stations at that stage obviously immediately sympathetic to it, and that would have been probably in.

28. 16:17

    about 1980 to something like that And then during the 80s we we went on to plant for not only a lot of those landholders repeat plantings, you know fresh ones. but also there were a lot of a lot of you know new land holders as far away as deep water in the north and 20 kilometers south of Tamworth and now to Dory go and west to kingstowne and so we planted a lot of those and most of those were radiated start with but then once we started getting other seedlings available Chris Evans Nursery at Kentucky that Kentucky tree nursery.

29. 17:09

    They started growing a lot of seedlings for us in containers and as well as being rich ceilings.

30. 17:16 Katherine Taylor

    You crazy.

31. 17:33 Jon Taylor

    one of the problems of planting Beirut seedlings, is that the trees have to be quite dormant when they're planted and There were a lot of varieties. We wanted to plant that were not ideal to plant in the middle of winter when they were extremely dormant. And if you planted them in the summer, and they had no soil around the roots a lot of them were had a lot of Trouble trying to survive and establish a new root system and in some trees. Just wouldn't take that sort of treatment at all. So the answer was to try and get them in some sort of a container.

32. 18:15 Katherine Taylor

    Um, I can't do what we talk about, but I was asking you a bit about the high Coast because you've had a few side businesses. You have the tree planting and then that went on into your high Code business.

33. 18:27 Jon Taylor

    Yeah, there were there were a couple of things that sort of came out of the of the tree planting, and I guess we've been lucky enough to take a trip overseas and amongst other things. I was interested in collecting different exotic tree species where I could to get some more seed to bring back because we had a very strong belief at that stage and still do that increasing the diversity of the varieties of trees. We planted was one of our best protections to to future disasters like diabetic and when we were traveling in the states.

34. 19:11

    We were looking for some of the the Quercus species. That's like the English Oaks that people know and we had by then discovered that there are a lot of different oak varieties, and so we decided to try and get more of those varieties, because they are very very Hardy tree and very adaptable to a lot of different environments some of them. Very harsh some very cold some very dry some very hot all those sorts of things and yeah, one of the nurseries. We went to searching for seed. They took us for a tour of their Nursery and they had a container system there. And that container system came out of Sweden but it was it was consisted of a tray that had various numbers of sales in it in particular the tray.

35. 20:03

    We took a show into which one that had 40 cells in it, and it was made under the brand name of haiko. And we got hold of a few of these trays second hand from them, and we brought them back, and we were convinced it was going to be. The help to us because if they had a way of getting a good root system to grow in the cell without circling around like so many potted trees do and also it was very light and easy to handle for mass planting and for growing very large numbers at high density. So these hiko trays were then ordered a little 20-foot container with I seem to remember about ten thousand pieces from Sweden and we had a ring from the manager at the factory, and he said you know what sort of nursery project.

36. 20:56

    If you've got and I guess they were thinking they'd be able to sell us a few more trays, and I said well. They don't really have a nursery. I'm just a farmer and I'm just trying them out and they were kind of a bit Blown Away by that but I knew that the system was or I was convinced that this system was so good that we would be able to sell off excess trays to to other nurseries, and I was prepared to take that gamble and

37. 21:29

    I think grandfather Walter Taylor had already felt that he'd lost control of me and and I was already eyeing up larger tracks of land on the place wanting to plant that we're mostly planting. You know Rocky outcrops, and some of the less productive areas, but We were we were starting to transform the amount of shelter on the place and he was he liked that idea too, but a little horrified at the thought of shutting up more land, but at the same time. He liked the tree planting, so he was giving me a bit of a free reign.

38. 22:05 Katherine Taylor

    and

39. 22:06 Jon Taylor

    of course I'm trying now to do the same thing from The Next Generation Katherine

40. 22:11 Katherine Taylor

    and

41. 22:13 Jon Taylor

    yeah, so we brought these trades back and and they worked we set up a little bit of a nursery ourselves, and we used some of them and it worked really well, and it just so happened. That was just before treefest, so we were able to we had seedlings growing in the containers treefest. and we're actually able to promote that Trace estimate tree fest ourselves and that that was good because

42. 22:41

    People are groups like like state forests were exhibiting at our tree fest. You know lending support to the To the tree regeneration movement, that was happening and Landcare and some of the nursery people that came along brought the seedlings. They were quite interested when they had a look and later on state forest was one of the first larger bodies to take up the use of this particular height for supplying trees in Australia and that's going on to the point now where they're The bear what were bare root seedlings they were growing radiata pine for timber.

43. 23:21

    They're now growing quite a larger number of those trees in High Court trays, so it's come the full circle there and and

44. 23:37 Katherine Taylor

    a bit of a 20 year reunion for treatments

45. 23:43 Jon Taylor

    well, I think that's a An interesting thing to do because the tree fest site after we had held the event we had probably two and a half thousand trees planted in a small area all sorts of different varieties of trees a lot of them identified with with signage and records of you know, what varieties had been planted and they were all alongside each other on a common sight and all planted on the same day, and there was a variety of methods used to plant some of them. And all this information was recorded and that respect in March 1992.

46. 24:26

    And now those trees have grown to considerable size and what was a beer Patek is a is a forest. And it's possible to go back there now and see which trees have actually thrived and dominated in which ones that may well have grown in the early stages have been suffered for one reason or another because they were unsuitable or because the density was too great for that particular variety all that sort of. Information is there for people to to go back to and it's also exciting obviously with Tree Festival a lot of photos taken of the background when it was planted.

47. 25:05 Katherine Taylor

    and

48. 25:06 Jon Taylor

    now we can go back and stand in the same spot and look in the same Direction as those photos and say well that's what you can do in 25 years and And 25 years is a is a foreseeable distance from a lot of people who take up land management. They can they can imagine their position sure things will have changed a lot, but they can imagine up to 25 years ahead being able to stand back and enjoy the rewards of their labours.

49. 25:37 Katherine Taylor

    And in that particular site. There's been quite a bit of research done by some of the University's groups, and they've also done a bit of research on the rest of the property. Did you organize that to happen or did they contact

50. 25:53 Jon Taylor

    know the university actually came to us, and I think one of the people that we made contact early on I was talking about collecting acorns for the oak trees and actually. Dr Nick Reed at the university, and what's the department that's ecosystems management. He he had actually spent some time in Mexico and there's a lot of eucalypts go to Mexico but there's a lot of oaks native. In Mexico and he was studying. I think the the Mistletoe that grows in the oaks, just like it grows in the eucalypts, so before we went over there and collected seed we were in touch with him, and he gave us a contact to help us collect some of that seed.

51. 26:48

    and after we came back and that that contact with Nick Reed continued and Nick eventually was coming to us and saying look a lot of these trees that you planted out their native ones and exotic ones. It's pretty interesting. What's happening. We'd like to bring some students out and have them do a little bit of research, and and you know measures some results and make some observations. And that that just grew over the years to the point where they were doing virtually a whole property by OTA survey and and those figures from that are obviously been kept and they'll be records for a long time to come as to you know, what changes occurred.

52. 27:34 Katherine Taylor

    positions yeah,

53. 27:49 Jon Taylor

    I was I was not really taken with the idea of trying to differentiate between native and exotic vegetation and I we often argued that you know diversity was was our best diversity in the vegetation was going to be our best strength against future disasters, like the dive back as I said before but The native trees were still being attacked by a lot of the insects that naturally occurred and because the ecosystem had changed with the fertilizer application.

54. 28:33

    The insect attack. Had increased to a point where the native trees weren't doing so well, so we felt we had to increase the tree numbers. And we had to increase that a number of varieties, and then cost was the was the third thing the native trees at that stage was still the more expensive ones to grow and made more expensive also by the fact that the survival rates were not as good as a lot of the exotic trees. That didn't have natural pests and So the more exotic trees. We we put in the better results. We were getting and we argued that with people who wanted us to play it native vegetation that all the grasses that we use in this area or virtually all the grasses were used in this area exotic to the area.

55. 29:28

    The the animals that were producing the livelihood. They were all exotic to the area. the farming practices of fencing and roads and plowing and and many other processes, you know putting buildings and drainage systems and things like that. That was all exotic. So why why wouldn't you change the trees as well? And then once that it started we found there was plenty of evidence that. That the native birds nested and roosted quite happily fed amongst the exotic trees and even the animals.

56. 30:11

    we even discovered that we had koalas on the place again, my father. Never saw a while on the farm.

57. 30:20 Katherine Taylor

    in

58. 30:20 Jon Taylor

    his whole life and yet not too long after treefest event the trees that we planted on the place where actually the location of the sighting of some koalas, and we went on to see quite a few hours he

59. 30:40 Katherine Taylor

    hmm and do you ever get any of your neighbours looking over the fence and and wondering what you're doing, or I definitely asked the wondering what we're doing.

60. 30:51 Jon Taylor

    I think now they probably know that John and Vicky Taylor are pretty avid tree planters, and and we forged on and collected plants and planted all sorts of different things in different places with different methods and and they a lot of them. I think watch sort of fascinated, but wondering where it was going to end up. but we have seen we have seen quite a few neighbours who have extended their tree planting, and I think it's largely because they have watched and they can see that you know certain practices are working and economically viable and it'll say gives people a good feeling to have trees on their land.

61. 31:35

    They feel kind of proud of their. achievement in contributing something back to their land one of the most noticeable neighbors was another Person who was involved with the original treefest Jim Street on Blaxland he's planted a lot of trees and a similar sort of methods to what we've done and his farm. That was very much devoid of trees is now like ours. You know probably has a 10 or 11% tree cover again, and the original vegetation was less than 1% and it's takes quite a few trees to do that sort of make that, sort of Change

62. 32:22 Katherine Taylor

    Does that make you feel like? well

63. 32:38 Jon Taylor

    I don't I don't feel that I take credit for it, but I'm pleased to see them doing it. And I as I travel around the the area. I keep looking at trees that we have planted for some people and ones that they have gone on to plant themselves and and I must say even when I get on the plane. And fly to Sydney over the New England area. I trained to look out that window and and admire all the farms that have now got a lot of vegetation on them and and I think it's just so good that people have made that effort to. To do something about the fact that the New England had changed from a nice.

64. 33:20

    Park like situation when it was first recorded by white man to a what was you know in a sense getting to be a bit of a desert and and now it's once again taken on a more parked like. appearance and of course lots more birds lots more shelter for their kangaroos and the blackberries and all those problems as well. But but there's a lot more resource there now. That's you know to look after the land in the future a lot of shelter. and

65. 34:02 Katherine Taylor

    you

66. 34:12

    and I just want to have that 15 with the whole pictures tree planning to pots and I

67. 34:24 Jon Taylor

    guess I guess I've always liked looking for a new challenge and something a bit innovative so So it was tree planting and it was a contracting business and then a developing tree planting machines and and then importing propagation equipment from Sweden and then when I after 40 years handed over the farm to you guys. I needed to get out of your hair and give you a chance to have a go like my father did for me. And I needed to find something else to do and as a an avid motorcycle rider over many years. I had experience with sidecars, and I wanted to teach people to learn how to ride sight cars because it's a bit of a challenge for people that haven't done it before.

68. 35:14

    And to do this we needed a different motorcycle, and so yeah to cut a long story short. I've ended up being the Australian important for a Russian sidecar motorcycle. Yeah, that's my current. challenge

69. 35:42 Katherine Taylor

    fairly diverse, but it's a completely different track to

70. 35:50 Jon Taylor

    it is I don't I don't know how to answer that question it's

71. 36:02

    no, no, I've always liked mechanical things and one of the good things about farming is that you can turn your occupation towards what you like some people really like horses or stud stock, and they can concentrate on that aspect in my case I like machinery so and I enjoyed the the plants and so did Vicky so and we're concentrated on the things that we enjoyed and we learned a lot about plants, and once we've sort of done that we moved on to something else. It's At I guess it's pretty fascinating for people in Australia that want to buy these Motorcycles because they come to a farm to do it.

72. 36:50 Katherine Taylor

    So we've pretty much covered everything I wanted to ask you, I guess. Lastly I will be the sixth generation of the file. and I wanted to to know what you think some of our ancestors were thought of the direction that we've taken and

73. 37:13 Jon Taylor

    Well, I think I can tell you that one thing that I've always noticed in the family, and I can notice it again in your generation. Is that we're all quite proud of the fact that we've managed to survive that many generations on the farm. And I think the ancestors would be very proud of the fact that we're up to having seventh generation children on the farm. and I think I think that they like every generation would be somewhat horrified at the way some things have gone but they would be pleased that they were this same effort being put in.

74. 37:54

    To maintain the farm in such a way that it was as tools of trade if you like. It would be passed on. From one generation to the next hopefully in at least as good a condition. Maybe better changed undoubtedly changed because that's the way land use goes there's always change with it. And I think that they'd be quite happy to see that it was still quite productive and raising more families. continuing the tradition

75. 38:34

    thank you, Katherine

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