Mr Brown, his wife Brooke and four children have been based on the 90 ha property for 13 years.
The family normally milks 240 cows, but reduced numbers to 180 this year largely due to high temporary water prices and a reduced allocation.
Knowing things needed to change, Mr Brown decided to look into the process of establishing a bore and approached Goulburn-Murray Water.
After going through a seven-month long process, including a triplicate licensing procedure, the bore is finally up and running.
“I understand things don't happen overnight but the process dragged on so long we ended up using all the hay stacks we bought to get us through winter; in the end, the delay was probably costing us around $1000 a day,” Mr Brown said.
“There’s not many bores in this area, this is the third one to go up because historically we’ve never needed it.
“There’s at least 15 or 20 farmers who have explored under their properties recently, the sheer magnitude of how much water is down there was probably a surprise.”
Mr Brown started the process online mid-August 2019 and paid for a construction permit of about $1800 — works didn't begin until the third week of January.
“Our 10 inch bore pump is throwing about 12 Ml a day, the submersible pump runs at 70 per cent capacity,” he said.
Mr Brown said unnecessary red tape was preventing other farmers from accessing groundwater, as G-MW completes an independent review.
G-MW groundwater and streams manager Matthew Pethybridge said G-MW had received a record number of licence applications from irrigators in the Gunbower region to extract groundwater.
“G-MW will assess possible environmental impacts and impacts on productivity to control volumes, set conditions or assess the new applications for cumulative impacts on the resource,” Mr Pethybridge said.
“This review will be complete by the end of April and new licences will only be granted once the review is finalised.”
Mr Brown said his bore had been put in to replace lost sales water farmers historically could access.
“We’re operating on a third of the water we’ve had for decades,” he said.
“It says a lot about the resilience of our industry; I’m surprised dairy farmers are still here.”