A few years ago it was only April and May that were totally consumed by fireweed picking.
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Now it’s like painting the Harbour Bridge.
Rowley Beckett does it year round, for six to eight hours a day, moving diligently from one paddock to another, keeping careful records of where he has been.
Despite being troubled by a bad hip, his wife Clare makes sure she does a shift every day as well.
“I force myself to do two hours to be supportive,” she said. “But it’s quite painful.”
The Becketts moved to their 96-hectare property a few kilometres out of Dorrigo in 2005.
They fell in love with the landscape while on holidays and decided, after 12 years of living in North Sydney, that they wanted to return to being farmers again, as they were in South Africa.
They remodelled the house, adding extensive verandas, established a garden, and got the fireweed under control.
Clare is 68 and Rowley is 70 and they planned to live here till they die.
But now they are starting to despair.
No matter how hard they toil, the fireweed keeps blowing in.
This year has been particularly bad in their region, and from some spots, you look out across a sea of yellow flowering plants, each one producing up to 30,000 seeds in a season.
Fireweed is a noxious weed containing pyrrolizidine alkaloids that are toxic to livestock and cause liver damage and sometimes death.
It is classified as a “weed of national significance” because of its invasiveness, potential for spread, and economic and environmental impacts.
The Becketts have a zero tolerance approach, zipping around the paddocks on their trusty Kubota farm vehicle, plucking the weed by hand.
They have purposely understocked their farm, carrying a maximum of 60 Shorthorn breeder cows, and spreading lime and super annually to promote dense grass growth.
But over the past two or three years, fireweed has taken over some other properties to the point where “it looks like a crop of canola”.
When it gets that bad, the only thing that will help is boom spraying.
“That’s a last resort,” Clare said. “You shouldn’t have to get to that stage. We don’t like using herbicide because it damages the legumes we’re trying to nurture.”
Also, Rowley said, much of the terrain around Dorrigo does not lend itself to boom spraying.
“It’s too hilly. With a boom spray on undulating ground, your nozzle hits the ground and breaks off,” he said.
The local control authority is Bellingen Shire Council, which has the power to issue warnings and penalties to those who do not at least try to achieve satisfactory control of noxious weeds.
Council’s weeds officer visited the Beckett’s property on March 29 and agreed the infestation in the area was “shocking”.
In the two months since then, they’ve heard nothing more, and a letter dated May 17 to council’s general manager has gone unanswered.
Questioned about this by the Courier-Sun, GM Liz Jeremy confirmed council staff had visited Mr Beckett’s property as well as neighbouring properties in March.
“Inspections have also occurred in previous years and follow up activities are in process,” she said.
“Council is also finalising its response to Mr Beckett’s correspondence.”
She noted that if landholders do not meet their weed management responsibilities, council can issue a Biosecurity Direction detailing requirements for weed management.
In accordance with the Biosecurity Act 2015, a person who contravenes a biosecurity direction is guilty of an offence and a penalty may be issued.
“The majority of farmers work hard to keep their properties clean,” Rowley said, adding that he’d like to see council come to the party in terms of enforcing the regulations.
Along with other ageing farmers besieged by fireweed, the Becketts are starting to wonder how much longer they can keep up the fight.
“We’re diligent because we want to manage this property well,” Clare said.
“We want to leave it to our daughter. But why should we have to spend our whole day on this? By the time we’re finished there’s no time or energy left to do anything else.”
“When it all got so bad, we said to our friends, what are you thinking? They said, when it gets too much for us, we’ll move.”
Rowley and Clare’s daughter knows how hard they work.
She lives in Tumut and is planning to come and help pick over the worst period next year.
“She’s moving up, she’s got two small kids, she’s going to come for a whole term and put them into the local school. And give us a hand.”
They don’t want to sell and relocate elsewhere.
“We love being here, with the quiet and the sky,” Rowley said.
“This is the nearest I’ll get to heaven.”