Quolls and cows

Rare mammals and cattle coexist on The Scots College property on the NSW South Coast.

Story + Photo Ken Eastwood

Moving a small mob of Angus cows to fresh pastures goes smoothly. Three year 10 The Scots College boys on bikes assist long-time Queensland cattle workers Duncan and Kym McMaster on horseback, as the cattle quietly walk up a small hill, past a shed and a trailer racked high with canoes.

On the surface, there’s nothing unusual about regularly shifting stock in a cell-grazing system. But what is unique is the paddock they’re shifted to. At the top of this coastal property, near Culburra on the NSW South Coast, is an 80ha wildlife refuge that has just had some of the rarest mammals in NSW released into it. After being carefully bred in captivity by organisations such as Sydney Zoo and Aussie Ark, 15 eastern quolls (which had vanished from the mainland for 50 years) and a dozen vulnerable parma wallabies (the smallest of the wallabies) were rehomed here in the past 6 weeks. And this will also be home to the cattle for the next 5 days until they’re shifted to a fresh paddock.

“You can have rewilding and regenerative projects, and still have productive agriculture,” says Duncan, manager of the 300ha property called Bannockburn. “It’s not about making a zoo, it’s about bringing this land back to a productive state.”

Native animals such as bandicoots, potoroos and bettongs are digging into the soil, helping to recycle nutrients and reducing soil compaction, and the quolls are helping break down carcasses. “They’re like our little, tiny tractors,” Kym says. “They’re also eating grubs and the things that farmers poison such as mice,” says rewilding ecologist and Scots old boy Rob Brewster, who has supported the project. “Twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week these animals are working,” Rob says. “The world is becoming a very polarised place – the environment on one side and agriculture on another side – but this is a place where we can work together to get a really good result for agriculture and wildlife.”

Within the 1.8m floppy-top, electrified fenceline that was completed last October, the refuge has an interesting mix of open paddocks and sheltered woodlands of spotted gum, turpentine, bloodwood, scribbly gum, ferns and bracken. “It’s perfect quoll habitat for them to hide and breed in,” Duncan says. The quolls have been found moving all over the habitat, particularly the open areas. “Quolls like these slashed areas – they seem to be able to catch insects easier.”

Duncan and Kym have called Bannockburn home for a decade and, after 9 years of planning, are excited to see the wildlife sanctuary being used for such rare animals. Kym, a former jillaroo before she became a science teacher, is Scots’ coordinator of experiential education, and runs a range of science and outdoor programs here for students from year 3 up. A group of year 9 students camps on the property for a whole term. Increasingly, other schools are also visiting.

The couple previously managed a cattle property in Inglewood, Qld, and Duncan, a sixth-generation grazier and Nuffield scholar, worked as a contractor scanning sheep and cattle, as well as teaching agriculture at TAFE. “We’ve brought an element that we’re familiar with, and that’s the country element – the boys working with bulls, riding motorbikes and doing what young men do,” Duncan says.

“But the icing on the cake is the environmental connection,” Kym says, pointing at the students. “These boys helped build the sanctuary fence. They did small surveys of the insects and things that were here that the quolls would eat. They built the breeding boxes for them.”