Farmer Brian Phillips talks to Robyn Ballinger about changes in farming techniques in the Prairie district in northern Victoria.

Like other Victorian rural areas, the rural population of the Patho Plains is decreasing. When landowners move out of the district, they take a wealth of historical knowledge and experience with them.

The Patho Plains Oral History Project was developed to capture the historical knowledge of farmers and landowners to better understand the changing landscape. These interviews and photographs form part of that project.

Further Information

Patho Plains Oral History interview excerpt 15: Brian Phillips

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

ROBYN BALLINGER: Do you sort of think about the main changes between, say, your great-grandfather's day when he had 600 acres - and, obviously, you've got a lot more land now - but if you talked about things like the types of things that were grown on the land or the way that the land was farmed, what do you think the major changes have been over that time?

BRIAN PHILLIPS: Many things have changed. The machinery that we use is 200 times bigger and the tractors that pull it are 500 times stronger than one or two horses. We have the ability to cover ground very quickly. It's very expensive, but we do things at the right time. We conditioned our land with gypsum. We have a clay profile and we've conditioned it with gypsum. It brings it up nearly like a Mallee loam. It's a beautiful soil when you put the conditioning agent with it. That's only come in in the last 20 years. We get as much lucerne as possible. That enhances your stocking rates. And if something goes wrong, we've bought sheep from Western Australia. They bring them across without even unloading them, you could run the sheep back to Western Australia if you could get an agistment over there. So Australia's just a lot smaller. There's many things that you can do now that were never believable a generation ago.