Scott and Melissa Dowling own a 300 hectare cropping property on the Three Moon Creek Floodplain of Monto. The highly productive alluvial soils allow the Dowling’s to grow a range of crops such as lucerne, sorghum, mungbeans and barley.

The Dowling’s were left with “holes full of fish” on cropping paddocks that resembled a moonscape after the flooding events of ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald in 2013. This extensive soil erosion caused significant financial and production losses. Like many landholders in the North Burnett region, it has been a challenge for the Dowling’s to keep going after losing so much in the floods, and seeing highly productive paddocks becoming unusable overnight was heartbreaking.
The funds were made available through the Queensland and Australian Government’s On-farm Productivity and Riparian Recovery program to assist primary producers to recover from flooding caused by ex-Tropical cyclone Oswald. The project is managed by the Burnett Mary Regional Group and coordinated locally by the Burnett Catchment Care Association.eaking.

The Dowling’s were one of more than 30 landholders who received grants last October to help bring their land back to productivity on the severely inundated Three Moon Creek Floodplain. “I might have been too scared to do it otherwise. Money was so tight after the floods,” Mr Dowling said. “The funding really took the bite off when I came to repair the paddocks.”
The funds were made available through the Queensland and Australian Government’s On-farm Productivity and Riparian Recovery program to assist primary producers to recover from flooding caused by ex-Tropical cyclone Oswald. The project is managed by the Burnett Mary Regional Group and coordinated locally by the Burnett Catchment Care Association.

The Dowling’s used the funding to remove a diversion bank, fill the huge holes and laser level their severely scoured paddocks. These paddocks, like many across the Three Moon Creek Floodplain lost valuable top soil and gained significant amounts of infertile sand.
The laser levelling has helped bring the land back to productivity by redistributing good soil and making it possible for the Dowling’s to replant crops again.