Monica Sutherland has constructed swales across her Cosgrove property, capturing surface flows and ensuring the landscape maintains moisture.
Photo by
Nicholas Spandler
Monica Sutherland has farmed her 188-hectare property in Cosgrove for 16 years.
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When a heavy rain tore through in 2020, it took 30 centimetres of topsoil with it, washing down the hill and piling up against her sheds.
It was a confronting sight, and a turning point.
“I hated that it happened,” she said.
“I immediately looked for ways to stop it happening again.”
It is a pattern many Australian farmers recognise.
For generations, the standard practice was to move water off the land as efficiently as possible, an instinct born from farming roots in Europe.
Across much of the country, that approach left paddocks bare and given over to monoculture, with soils less able to hold moisture over time.
The answer for Sutherland came through her farming community.
She connected with David Spicer from Doc Spice Permaculture, who introduced her to regenerative farming principles.
At its core was a simple idea: Holding water in the landscape and farming with nature, rather than against it.
Sutherland built a series of contour banks, or swales, across the property using excavators and road graders.
The ridges follow the natural lie of the land, catching water and holding it in place.
When banks do spill in heavy rain, water fans out gradually down the slope rather than cutting erosive gullies.
Even morning dew hangs around longer, a subtle sign that the landscape is holding moisture differently.
The same regenerative thinking runs through everything she does.
She sows all paddocks on the contour so every seed row captures water moving downhill, runs multi-species cover crops, rotational grazing, and dung beetles, and avoids spraying and synthetic fertilisers.
Living roots stay in the ground, soil stays covered, and animals are moved before paddocks are grazed bare.
“Species never exist by themselves in nature, so they don’t on my farm either,” she said.
For Monica, the results are tangible.
Her soils and crops are healthier, and it shows in her animals.
Monica Sutherland said regenerative farming practices had made the soil on her property even healthier
Photo by
Nicholas Spandler
The last time she sold cattle they were shorter than others in the sale, but consistently heavier, carrying dense muscle rather than excess fat.
“Healthy and happy animals are really important to me,” she said.
“Regenerative farming helps me achieve that.”
Monica is not alone in rethinking how her land functions.
Earlier this year she attended a workshop run by Callum Lawson and Tarwyn Park Training.
Callum has been applying similar principles since taking over management of a 1214ha property at Avenel in 2021.
His focus is natural sequence farming, restoring the natural water cycle across a landscape so that rain stays in the ground rather than running off.
After early rains in March, one paddock illustrated the results plainly: a vivid green strip along the contour line, fed by water held in the ground while surrounding areas were still dry.
“You can see it with rainfall,” he said.
“Instead of it running off down the hill, it’s being stored in the landscape. That creates productivity.”
He describes the approach not as a single system but as a suite of tools, applied with a long-term plan.
“Ideally, every year gets better,” he said.
Four years on from the flood that started it all, Monica said same long-term thinking was pivotal to the way she farms.
A natural contour bank built on Callum Lawson’s Avenel property. The bank captures surface flows and retains the moisture in the landscape.
Photo by
Nicholas Spandler
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