Craig has been in farming all of his life – in fact, he’s the third generation and with his daughter now at home on the farm, there might even be a fourth!

Originally he got involved in the program because of droughts.

“The powers to be wanted us to fence off all our creeks so that water would go into the reservoir so there would be more water for Adelaide and that meant fencing off swamps and all waterways basically,” says Craig.

“We got involved with that program, which was subsidised, and it just sort of progressed from there.”

On top of this, Craig has always been interested in ecosystems and “what we have right on our front door.”

For Craig, one of the main benefits of fencing off the swamps has been drought-proofing his farm, with tanks and troughs.

“In bad years when our dams were running dry and the creeks were stopping and we didn’t have any water basically we had to shift the cattle to places where there were but now we can still use all of our paddocks because we’ve got water in them,” he says.

Protecting the habitat “whatever wants to and may live in there” is also another major benefit.

“I think it’s a very important part of our whole ecosystem, is the swamp area, there are critters that live in there that can’t live anywhere else.”

“And of course, let’s not forget about the vegetation that only grows in swamps,” says Craig.

Unfortunately, Craig doesn’t have any Emu-wrens on his property.

Craig says, “We have fenced off some swamp very close to the emu-wren area hoping that they will move in there.”