When the River Murray floods hit South Australia in December 2022, one of the worst affected dairy farmers was David Smart at Mypolonga.
Originally from the York Peninsula, David is a second-generation dairy farmer and owns two other properties in the South East.
“My parents bought a dairy in Mypolonga on 16 May 1980, and I joined the business in October 1985 and became a part owner in 1989. We just kept building from there,” David said.
“We built a rotary dairy in 2000 and then in 2020, we went to robotics. We installed 10 robots in Mypolonga, milking 640 cows, pre-flood.”
David installed eight robots initially, with the intention of putting in 12. Two weeks after the tenth robot was installed, the flood hit.
“On 26 December, the levee bank breached and almost completely submerged our farm. About 512 hectares at Mypolonga filled up in three days and in some parts the water was three metres deep,” David said.
“We knew the flood was coming, so we’d spent two months building a levee around the dairy. On 28 December, we weren’t confident that the levee was going to hold. That night at 5pm we started pulling the robots out and had them out by 5am. The following day, it went underwater.
“So, two weeks after the last two robots were commissioned, they all got pulled out.”
David took the robots to a friend’s shed for storage and arranged to milk his cows at a neighbour’s dairy.
“We milked there for about a month, but that wasn’t a viable option, so we had to make the tough call to dry all the cows off,” David said.
“We sent some of the cows down to the other two farms in the South East, and we sold some. The property was underwater for five months and so we had to make some hard decisions.
“A lot of people think a flood just comes and goes, but because our levy breached, they had to wait for the river to drop and work out how they were going to repair the breach and get the water off. So, it was a waiting game.”
To provide some cash flow and fill in time, David did some odd jobs including truck driving. “I had to keep working as I still had the debts from the robots,” he said.
Finally, when the flood water cleared, the difficult job of rebuilding began. “It’s still ongoing – it’s an enormous job,” David said.
“We couldn’t get back onto the flats for another two months because it was black mud after they got the water off. Then the weeds started – we’ve got weeds that we’ve never seen before.
“I’m trying to get paddocks back into shape but because our main area is 60-odd paddocks, rehabilitating those is a time-consuming process and being by myself, it’s slow.
“I’m probably about a third of the way through the paddock rehab. I’ve been cutting the weeds and then bailing them up to get them off the property, then applying a lot of sprays, and re-seeding feed. Some areas need re-leveling because the soil shifted too much.”
A significant clean-up was also needed in the dairy to ensure it would meet food safety standards. As David had put the robots into storage, they were mud-free, but the building was covered in flood debris.
“I had some help from a volunteer group that came in and helped me clean the dairy out, with shovels and wheelbarrows, which helped a lot,” he said.
David started re-installing the robots in June 2023 and had them back up and running in mid-July. He started rebuilding his herd in September 2023 and was milking 15 cows on 10 robots initially.
“I’ve gradually built it back up to 320 cows. I committed to putting the robots back in because I couldn’t sell them, so I put bulls in with the cows to re-mate the cows and had to wait for them to calve. I’ve got about another 200 to calve over the next month or six weeks,” he said.
David said a silver lining to the flood disaster was the opportunity to rebuild his herd. “Our milk quality has improved as all the cows are fresh. I don’t have any stale cows and I culled a lot of older cows when I had to shut down. I’ve got a really young herd now with new heifers coming through,” he said.
David is considering leasing or share farming the dairy to assist with operations while he continues to rehabilitate the land.
“Financially, this has put me back five to seven years.”
