It’s not easy being a farmer these days

TIMOR, NSW – 6-8 June 2026
In Australia, if farmers aren’t having droughts in our rural areas, there’s the occasional flood, wildfires and then there’s the government deciding that they’ll take over big swathes of their land, build horrific towers on it, give them a pittance for the land and expect the farmers to just roll over and agree. Not that they can stop it! Who’d be a farmer?

There’s a project in the works (supported by both Federal, State and some Local government agencies) to build a 500kva transmission line in a corridor from the Northern Tablelands (Walcha) through Tamworth, Rutherford and Timor (just to name a few areas) to an existing grid at Muswellbrook. The transmission lines are supposedly taking energy from a wind farm/solar project at Walcha that hasn’t even been built yet.

This is what the transmission lines will probably look like, the land under the lines is cleared of all vegetation, and this cleared zone extends way beyond the lines to ensure that trees don’t fall on the lines.

There’s also a law that farmers have to control the weeds on their property (you know, blackberries). When the government takes over the farmer’s land for the transmission lines, the government can on-sell the land to whoever owns the transmission lines, and then, who’s supposed to get rid of the weeds? An off-shore investor wont get rid of the weeds.  You can’t crop-dust them, crop-dusters can’t go anywhere near the towers.  The corridor will go through the farmers properties – looks like the farmers will have to clear the weeds somehow – property that they no longer own, the power company wont be doing that! Mind you when you have the towers going through your land, the weeds are probably just a minor issue.  Everyone is up in arms.

Originally, the corridor was going through the Timor Cave Reserve, but it was pointed out that you couldn’t erect these towers on limestone (big holes underground, how safe would the towers be?).  The caving community helped the farmers by pointing this out, so the transmission line company moved the proposed corridor, but then moved it onto farmland (it was probably already going over farmland elsewhere, but now it’s going through farmland in Timor).

In a bid to get the corridor moved again, we were asked to go to one of the properties and see if there were caves on it, or limestone, if limestone or cave are found, that would help their cause.  So, we headed up over the long weekend and did some surveying with the hope of finding limestone.  The property owners provided a house for the 11 of us to stay in over the June Long weekend. I wasn’t expecting to find big caves, some small ones would be nice, but if nothing else, I’d have a nice weekend bushwalking.

A lovely old home just near to the house we were staying in.

Horse in a paddock nearby, they have been in a bad drought for the last six months, just had rain last week, hence the light green you can see, but in the main they are hand feeding all the stock (horses and cows).

Really old barns no longer used.

The view from the house, the property I’m pretty sure is quite big and I think it goes to the hills on the horizon.

Horse near the front gate that came over so I could pat his nose.

The boundary of the property.

We started out around 9am on Saturday morning (most of us had arrived on Friday night). We had a guide for the day who took us around the property where they felt there may be limestone deposits.

This was the first of a few creek crossings.

We drove for about half an hour, passing a lot of cows and quite a few kangaroos.

We were in a convoy of about 3 or 4 vehicles, here we’ve stopped beside a creek to check out the hills nearby (cars in the background).

The first of many excursions looking for limestone.

They were hopeful with this slab or rock, but I’m pretty sure Cathi (in the photo) confirmed it was either sandstone, granite or something else – I’m not a rock person LOL.

The next big hill, again, granite rocks, but a nice walk up the hill, great views.

Sometimes a kurajong tree (the one you can see) is an indicator of limestone, sadly nothing to see here.

We were shown an interesting rock formation, someone in the past has made this “fence” but only one side. We’ve suggested they find out who made it, maybe this is a good reason not to put the towers through here.

Another creek to check out, mostly granite and sandstone.

A stunning creek, also, no limestone.

The paddock near the creek, they had a wedding here a few months ago, stunning.

By now we’ve got a doon buggy with us, what they usually use on the property, or horses.

The drivers of the cars, left us behind so that we could explore this creek, just beautiful, I could definitely live here by the creek.

This looked promising, but not limestone :(.

One of our group, Justin, took one for the team and climbed through the rubble to look in the hole – a wombat hole, no cave.

Another hole for Justine to look in, nothing to see there.

I suggested that if they wanted to have another income stream, people from Sydney would love a bushwalk down this creek, it is stunning.

The end of our walk.

We found a stick insect on one of the cars (a Phasmida), so we put it back where it belonged – high up in eucalyptus trees, must have been knocked down by the wind.

Saturday was a full day, and we all felt bad for the property owners as we hadn’t been able to find any limestone.  The leader of our group organise a visit to the Cave Reserve for Sunday, and then on Monday we walked another potential site for limestone.

The land we’d be exploring, in the distance are some wheat fields.

The exploration involved walking up this hill (went quite a long way), the property border is the fence at the right.

Very nice area with nice trees on the land.

Nice hills in the background.

So, two days of searching for the limestone, and none found.  Most of us went away depressed with the thought of the transmission corridor going right through the middle of such lovely country.  Unlike many rural properties, the owners of this property (right from when they started farming it), have left beautiful sections of natural bushland, it will be a crime to bulldoze it for a 140m corridor.  Not sure what their next step will be to try and stop it.

Big thanks to Murray for setting up the trip, I’m sure he was very disappointed that we didn’t find anything.

For more information:

Information on the project ​​Updated route for New England Renewable Energy Zone study corridor​ | EnergyCo

Map showing where the corridor will go EnergyCo’s Interactive Map | Energy Corporation of NSW