00:00 Hi, I'm Jan Hepner. I'm here at Lock Hill. I've been involved in the family farm majority of my life,
00:09 along with my brothers and the next generation as well, my nephews. So we started this,
00:17 we probably had it in the background from a sustainability point of view, just the boys
00:23 wanting to reduce their own footprint. And then we saw a post through the Wakefield Regional Council
00:31 and we discussed it and said, do we have some land that we can utilise and go into this?
00:38 So there's twofold for it. One was we want to be our own emissions free or equal, but also just to
00:49 plant more trees around the area and up in the hills for the native wildlife and the bird species.
00:55 What was the application process like? Lengthy. Initially very daunting. There's regulatory
01:02 bodies through the Dewar and also the Clean Energy Regulator. So consultation with the boys,
01:09 plus an accountant, plus lawyers initially to set it up. And then with Matt from the department,
01:16 he assisted us. And yeah, it was quite daunting, but we got there in the end.
01:23 How long did it take? The paperwork, probably about eight months from the get go to actually
01:30 getting it signed off. And then we've got nine months from that to finish the project.
01:34 The boys are very interested in the carbon regeneration so that we can reduce our footprint
01:40 and thinking ahead that going forward as farmers is probably something we have to do. Otherwise
01:46 they'll start taxing us basically for our own emissions. In terms of a timeline, can you walk
01:52 us through when you started to where you are now? So probably about February. The application was
01:57 October 21, I believe. We got notification. We then started really planning in the January,
02:06 February, March. And then by the time we got all the paperwork in, then we signed off,
02:11 then started a start date for March 23. And then we've got nine months to finish the project.
02:18 And then we can have an extension for whatever reason, if it's beyond our control,
02:24 whether it's weather or having to replant or which we're hoping not to. And yeah.
02:30 Any advice for anyone else wanting to do a similar thing?
02:34 Advice? I think that the program from my own personal benefit needs to be a bit longer in the
02:40 timeline from the get go from once you commence, because the nine months is quite a short period
02:47 to be able to get organised and to work around rain events and stuff to get the best
02:52 effective outcome. Because ultimately we want the trees to grow and not to be too
02:58 struggling with the weather. And unfortunately this year is not great with
03:05 rain naturally. So we'll see how we go. Can you give us an overview of the project?
03:10 How big is it? What was it before? What are you doing? Where is it going to go?
03:13 So previously in '91, as you can see here, we had done some direct seeding. The boys had done that,
03:22 which has flourished really, really well. Then in '94, '95, we did some tube stop seeding on our
03:30 own back just to do what we needed to do. And then we engaged or spoke to the York's
03:40 Landscape Board and they come and visited where we were thinking. And they then gave us advice
03:47 into what would work, where we could plant, what we could plant, where we couldn't plant,
03:51 because it was already native existing. We shot that through to Trees for Life for David Heen.
03:56 He then scoured through for the local seeds and then we set sail and started planting.
04:03 And there's about 20 hectares of direct seeded so far. And then we've got a backup of another
04:10 500 tube stops coming hopefully in March, should we have any mortality. We'll throw them down as
04:16 well, or we'll put them down anyway. But it'll also cover just in case, because of that nine
04:21 month period, we've sort of got to make sure we're making provisions for a backup plan.
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