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Michael Barrer, left, Peter Hendy and neighbour John Cockerell.

Mr Barrer seized the on-farm efficiency grant and modernisation firmly by the throat, until the following figures emerged:

●Bay lengths up to 450m;

●Bay areas up to 3.5ha;

●3m fast-flow bay outlets;

●Formed laneways 8m to 9m wide;

●21000m3 of dirt moved for channels and laneways; and,

●Minimum on-farm pipes and outlets of 600mm.

His mission to create a whole new farm out of three former settlement dairy farms north of Numurkah has turned into an all-consuming project for the past 12 months, and he’s not yet finished.

NVIRP wanted to remove about 1.2km of spur channel. This has been accomplished by Mr Barrer building his own 800m central farm channel, and his neighbour on the west side building a private channel on an easement on Mr Barrer’s property.

Mr Barrer wanted an integrated property with better flow rates. The project required a whole new farm plan and a submission for on-farm efficiency money and negotiation with NVIRP over what deal they could offer him.

Mr Barrer acquired the former spur channel, which added about eight hectares to his farm.

He has built in a capacity of 30Ml and has already achieved 25Ml/day, and uses wide bay outlets to get the water on and off quickly.

‘‘I’m pretty much sold on fast flow,’’ Mr Barrer said.

His water consumption had dropped on some paddocks from 0.7Ml/ha to about 0.3Ml/ha and in some cases his rotations have changed because the annuals have been growing better.

‘‘We’ve cut watering times on some bays from three hours to 20 minutes,’’ Mr Barrer said.

‘‘It’s made a huge difference to management practices and lifestyle.

‘‘But you’ve got to have a good recycle system to handle it.

‘‘If you’re late by a few minutes shutting a bay down, you’ve got a big amount of water coming down the bay.’’

His plan includes three recycle dams which can recover water from about 96 per cent of his land.

‘‘One of the issues has been maintaining a working farm while trying to do this work.

‘‘At the moment we’ve got one 30ha section growing a crop we can’t get the cows onto, so it’s turned into a cut-and-carry operation.’’

Neighbour John Cockerell has built a white rock-lined private channel on an easement on Mr Barrer’s farm, which he expects to deliver up to 20Ml/day through a new remotely operated mag flow outlet.

Mr Cockerell’s house is about 2km to 3km from his former wheel site, and he shudders to think how many kilometres he has driven over the years to manually open the door.

‘‘One wheel could only get about 10Ml/day; I will be able to water anywhere on my 300 acres.’’

Sharing channel

In what appears to be an unusual example of close co-operation, the two farmers are sharing the same private channel for a month.

Mr Cockerell has had to use his neighbour’s channel while a problem is sorted out with a drain crossing.

Mr Cockerell can’t use his new rock-lined channel until he gets pipes custom-made for a syphon, so the two have been taking it in turns to use Mr Barrer’s channel.

The two joke about stealing each other’s water, but the really tough test will be this month when new crops are going in and there are likely to be demand clashes.