While not disappointing, it did come back a bit from last year.

The dry weather in NSW and parts of Queensland doesn’t help. 

But, all in all, it was a satisfactory year.

We have sold our Heywood property and while there is a touch of sadness, you can’t farm forever.

It was a difficult property to run and even the smooth parts were nearly too rough to run a motorbike over.

We never ran a smudger over it – something that should have been done every couple of years.

The flow country, whilst rocky, was extremely fertile and great for stock to forage through.

Cattle never came out through the winter because it was also warm.

As a property, it had the greatest environmental credentials and Aboriginal heritage sites that you would find anywhere. It contained a 50-hectare wetland that filled every year.

In the winter it was full of eels, in the spring it was literally black with ducks and swans, and in the summer the snipe turned up.

As it is part of the Lake Condah area, it was one of the few areas that had Aboriginal settlements, so there were hut sites, fish traps and various other indicators of pre-European settlement.

Down near the Fitzroy, there were 17 stone cairns that no one seemed able to explain.

None of this made any difference to how we farmed it. It never caused any problems and the stock grazed merrily.

We had the full co-operation of the environmental groups, who felt it is better to graze these areas than to lock them up and then watch them become overgrown, where no one benefits.

We have watched this happen next door, as it was it took five attempts to muster the farm and get the cattle out.

I still have the blue gum block.

The stumps are dead and busy rotting, so I’ll get that fenced and sown down. It’s already got a dam full of water on it.

So, where to from here?

I spend half my time in Edenhope and half in Brisbane with my partner.

Hopefully, we will have more time to travel and enjoy life. As for maintaining this lifestyle, we had to look for investments and after much consideration have chosen Horsham.

I’ve decided after looking at other places it has got a lot going for it – a good, reliable income stream, and whilst not astronomical a steady, reliable growth.

As this is my final column, I wish to thank all those who have commented on one thing or another.

I’ve felt maybe I have been a bit repetitious or boring but I’ve hoped by sharing my farming life, it may have helped others to appreciate the great lifestyle farming can give us.