It's said diversity is strongest at edges, those places where different systems meet: fresh water and salt, wetland to grassland to forest. Alligator Creek farmer Jason Bradford is the custodian of such a place. His mixed cane growing and grazing operation overlaps with Sandringham Wetlands, running across ponded pasture to natural savannah and mangrove wetland to an estuarine area at the confluence of Sandringham and Alligator Creeks as they meet the Coral Sea.

As a place where saltwater marine estuary environment meets freshwater creeks and lagoons, it's an area of delicacy, abundant with fish, migratory and resident birds, and increasingly diverse flora.

"This place is important, especially so close to town. I feel blessed: on any given day here, you can see things that people come a long way to see, wildlife-wise," Jason said.

The busyness of the Bruce Highway whooshes by the front boundary, some 20 minutes south of Mackay.

"It always blows me away, the interest that there is in this place. We get 12,000 cars a day go past that little lagoon, and it is something of a local icon, with the old Macs Truck Stop there. People use it for everything from appreciating nature to simply as a rain gauge: drivers will glance in there after a heavy night's rain to see if it's flooding. I enjoy seeing people pull into that service road with their kids, have a drink and have a look at the wildlife. Or I've had people pull in and set up easels, bird photography groups have come to visit. I enjoy the opportunity to showcase wildlife that you might not get to see in suburbia."

Wilder speculation heard over CB from passing trucks has included pinning the tranquil lagoon as a developing wake park or prawn farm.

Late last year, the CANEGROWERS member was awarded a QFF Reef Conservation Champion Award for outstanding wetland-sensitive management practices and infrastructure upgrades, including creating off-stream watering points, and enclosed pastures and laneway systems created with some six kilometres of electric fence.

In collaboration with Reef Catchments, the site has also benefited from mechanical removal of the weed species water hyacinth and hymenachne from ponds (a great fodder for cattle in ponded pasture systems but a declared weed hailing from South America).

There has further been the introduction of fish ladders, allowing fish to move from salt to fresh to complete lifecycles. Fish such as barramundi (and a host of 48 other species in the region) need to be able to do this to breed. Almost 4000 "fish barriers" have been identified across Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac region, and mindful landholders like Jason Bradford are facilitating the construction of passageways like fish ladders that let cultivated human systems work in tandem with natural systems.

He said it had been important to him to tackle issues like hymenachne on farm, and saw emerging natural resource management programs that he could access to deal with the problem.

"Hymenachne is a cattleman's dream but a barra's nightmare," Jason said. "I had a situation where the waterways were being taken over by hymenachne, and that didn't sit right with me. I knew the recruitment of local fish into that lagoon from the estuary, and I knew what the potential was for those fish to exit again if everything all lined up. I thought there was potential to enhance that."

The weeds were primarily infesting the farm's primary irrigation dam - a created 12.5ha reservoir that principally fills from adjacent highway runoff but links to the natural waterways, separated by a bund wall at the east and now a new fish ladder at the west.

"The knee jerk reaction is to spray it, but there is something that just doesn't feel right about spraying two and a half hectares of a body of water - that's covered in wildlife - a couple of times a year to keep that under control."

He realised the water hyacinth was drawing on nutrient runoff - nutrient he says he'd rather was in the paddock anyway - and so mechanically removed it to layer in windrows on a paddock.

"We wanted to do it in the most low cost, low maintenance way we could, so we made it into stockpiles, and let nature do the rest. And hey presto, nine months down the track it had mulched down into a lovely fibrous mulch! The paddock that we worked it into was a difficult-to-work gluepot paddock, and it turned out to be a wonderful ameliorant! Only problem was, I would have liked about 20 times more on the paddock."

It was a good cost-efficient weed management solution, with side benefits of a one-off useable resource that has offered food for thought. The paddock had its first planting post-mulch in 2022, and Jason reports there has been better strike in germination.

"And, a couple of months down the track, you can see the difference where it was planted. Overall, more healthy, and a visible height difference."

Trees are being returned to pasture areas by a process of natural recruitment. On a drive around the farm, Jason is proud to point out where native trees have naturally germinated, then been selected and had their development supported by mesh shrouds that prevent cattle eating them down. He can show stands of messmate gum that are increasing, and places where fencing is keeping cattle off damaged native grass areas to allow resting time. Farm-wide, it's a process of strong regeneration coupled with solid production and business-mindedness.

The farm is where Jason and brother Paul grew up, bought as a cattle block in the late 60's by his parents Allan and Beverley, a second farm from the family's then home farm at Racecourse. Cane was introduced in the 1980s.

The Bradford family all work roles in the operation: wife Sala, and their adult children twin sons Michael and Troy, and daughter Chloe, as well as working off-farm in their repective fields and bringing their particular expertise to benefit the agribusiness. Michael and Troy, 24, work in engineering trades, while Chloe, 26, has studied Environmental Science and works in aquaculture. Sala is a teacher at a nearby school.

Jason also works at Hay Point, enjoying a job share arrangement with another grower, enabling both farming time and additional income. The family has integrated succession, making sure that Allan and Beverley have been able to remain living on-farm in retirement. Multiple titles meant that, with some boundary realignment, the two brothers were able to operate adjoining independent farms on the area encompassed by the original farm.

"It's a good news succession story," Jason said.

Appreciating that heritage ties to Jason's view to the future.

"I have a bit of a philosophy:  you should always look back a bit and make sure that you are honouring things that have happened in the past -  in my case, the work that my family has done on this place over the last 30 or 40 years or so, and try to honour that work and that knowledge, and have a look at the challenges that we have to deal with now, and what we need to do to survive and prosper in this current environment," Jason said.

"Then there's another dimension: I want to focus on another 50 years ahead, too. I want to make sure the things I'm doing now are at worst neutral, and at best, enhancing. Conservation work is part of that."

Jason has brought that "looking forwards - looking back" ethos in the design of the conservation project: looking at what was currently in place, what should be there in terms of species, landscape and hydrology, and what could be there given opportunity.

The property is 117ha, with 70 head of Brahman in a weaner-based system, and around 40ha allocated to irrigated cane.

"Three of those [cane]paddocks I have taken out at the moment:  they come under a fair bit of wildlife pressure, near the wetlands, so I will use those as a bit of a buffer zone and put it back to cattle."

That 6-7 hectares have had historically low yields and been highly susceptible to damage from waterfowl, pigs or environmental factors. On analysis, diversifying these to cattle will offer better return on that land.

"I have done some sums, and taken a careful look at the history, and blocks that have been low, that have had hassles from things like waterlogging etcetera - something that is not easily rectified - I've decided I am going to work with nature rather than against it. Why waste energy and resources fighting that, whereas with cattle, I can work with the land a lot better. If it wants to grow para grass, that's a smile on my face, a benefit in the cattle game rather than a pain in the cane game."

With that approach in mind, the family is looking to diversify into aquaculture. Daughter Chloe is involved in the local prawn industry, at Ilbilbie, and is offering that expertise into the agribusiness as they develop a red claw aquaculture system. It will be at a sustainable scale for the family, capitalising on site soil and water qualities and location of nearby affluent markets.

"We had a look at the assets of the property. You ask, what can we do to harness those assets in a profitable way, and red claw seems to tick those boxes. And why red claw, when we could go down that marine [salt] route? Well, the big one is, wastewater from a red claw enterprise is freshwater, sweet water. That nutrient rich water can go straight onto our other agricultural enterprises, like cane."

That said, Jason Bradford sees cane staying in his farming operations.

"I enjoy growing cane, I enjoy the satisfaction of sending a good crop of cane off to the mill, and watching those rows go down being harvested. But there's an economic reality of being wedded to input costs."

"It's important to have a diverse base, even if everything is at a relatively small scale."

He's happy that both cane and cattle are currently showing a good price, injecting some extra cash flow.

"It's allowed me to put some ideas that I have had into practice, like setting up infrastructure in the cane side: I want to produce the same amount of cane, but on a smaller footprint. In order to do that, I need to put things in place, like addressing drainage, application of mill mud and more biological ameliorants in the soil. I try to introduce different sorts of practices: like, I run the cattle on the fallow ground now, in between crop cycles. And in order to do that you need infrastructure. So, some of this fencing has given me the ability to do that."

The laneway system readily allows Jason to direct cattle between paddocks and into pasture or fallow cane areas.

"Cows introduce a whole range of bio-stimulant activity through their rumen, through manures, so that adds another dimension to that fallow."

The fallow cane paddocks can be planted with legumes or millet for use as fodder.

Millet is suited to warm temperatures and tolerates moisture. He said the quick turnaround of the crop also makes it less vulnerable to the birdlife that is part and parcel of living with wetland country.

It is early in the system's development to have clarity on impacts to yield, but Jason said that they are seeing good results.

"We've been blessed with some good seasons, and some good varieties. SRA9 and Q253 are suited to this country. This country here is traditionally lighter yielding, but good CCS. Those varieties are allowing the best of both worlds. We are maintaining that good CCS that we enjoy, but we are able to get some more tonnes into the figures as well."

Jason works with his agronomy service, Farmacist, refining ag and environmental practices in the farming system. He's been involved in programs such as Bluewater and Project Catalyst.

"I've employed them to keep me at the pointy stick of it. As a cane farmer it is part of our social licence to abide by that. There's legislation in place, and we are abiding by that just like any business."

The proximity of such a biodiverse natural system is not without challenges to the farming enterprise, Jason says.

"Legume crops are a good example. You are often growing legume crops in a dry time of year," he said. "All of a sudden, you have this beautiful green paddock of soybean or cowpeas, but our local wildlife tend to have a birds-eye view of things. So they look and see this and tend to descend from the sky. It's quite heartbreaking to go to all the trouble of planting these break crops and then have literally 2000 geese drop out of the sky and eat it. That's about 5000 kilos of animal - of mouth - that drop out of the sky twice a day, and that's a challenge!"

He laughs ruefully: "You have to adapt. I try to plant nice easy quick things to grow, like millet. It grows fast. I can plant it and 45 days later, it can be done and dusted."

Given the challenges Jason says he's often asked by people why he has undertaken these restorative projects, what is in it for him.

"At the end of the day, there's really nothing economically in it for me, it's just about that desire to optimise what we've got here. It does come at a price to your productivity. I could get rid of a whole heap of headaches that are caused by the wildlife here with an excavator and drain those wetlands -they [up the top end of the farm] are all manmade anyway. The water could flow out to sea, I could have more space for paddocks, more money in the bank, but it wouldn't be as good an outcome for nature."

And leaving something magnificent for nature - and the future - is the spirit at the heart of this farmer.

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