Ginny Stein

The Big Cheese

Broadcast: 3/08/2014 12:43:46 PM

Reporter: Ginny Stein


The Big Cheese

The Big Cheese

PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: This story is located in the Northern Territory, where buffalo producers are on the lookout for new markets.

After years of mixed success with buffalo meat, the industry is now on the verge of a breakthrough in dairy products. For one pioneering buffalo family, the greatest challenge is building a business big enough to survive, as Ginny Stein reports.

GINNY STEIN, REPORTER: These aren't your ordinary swamp buffalo. They're stellar river and dairy buffalo hand-bred and raised for their milk.

BARRY LEMCKE, BUFFALO RESEARCHER: There's even a chromosome difference between the Swampies, which are the tractor in South-East Asia, and these dairy ones that come from India.

GINNY STEIN: While Barry Lemcke may not tell you, those in the know recognise him as the foremost authority on buffalo in Australia. At this Territory Government-backed research farm, he's been quietly working away at producing buffalo that are now being used in dairies across Australia.

BARRY LEMCKE: The numbers of dairies have risen. There's now four in Victoria, a couple close to starting up in NSW, two in Queensland.

GINNY STEIN: The reason he has high hopes for dairying in the Top End is all about proximity to market.

BARRY LEMCKE: A lot of Asian countries want self-sufficiency, particularly in dairy, and dairy's traditionally a Mediterranean, southern-type industry. If we can prove it here, then it's got sort of ramifications for being able to export to tropical Asia, basically.

GINNY STEIN: Some of these buffalo come from the NT Government's Beatrice Hill Farm.

Geoff and Sharon Arthur have been at the forefront of dairying in the Territory for decades. They reckon they've got dairying in their blood.

GEOFF ARTHUR, BUFFALO DAIRY FARMER: We've had dairies with large numbers of cows in various parts of the country. I think once you work in intensive agriculture, there's something about it, you want to stay somehow near it.

GINNY STEIN: The Arthurs have spent more than a decade building up this herd.

SHARON ARTHUR, CHEESE MAKER: We just wanted to make sure that it would work and that the product was good, that we could make it consistently and that people wanted it and we don't have any reservations in that area at all.

GINNY STEIN: After successfully testing the waters with a small herd and a cheese-making business on a 20-hectare plot close to Darwin, they realised there was only one answer. To survive, they had to grow.

SHARON ARTHUR: Numbers - I think you do need a minimum amount of numbers. Boutique on a smaller scale in association with something else, yes, but there was no way it was going to work long-term on that small scale. And plus, when you breed them, you don't want to give them away, so you need a bit more ground so you can keep them all.

GINNY STEIN: A year ago, they moved their herd to a new site at Rum Jungle, an hour south from Darwin.

SHARON ARTHUR: I don't know the exact kilometres, but we've put in all the fencing.

GINNY STEIN: From a site overgrown with three metre-high weed known as gamba grass, this dairy has been carved out.

SHARON ARTHUR: You couldn't see anything. You couldn't work out the lay of the land at all. So, the first thing was to sort of make a few pathways, and I guess from there, work out: where can we put stuff?

GEOFF ARTHUR: This is basically what you call a chute dairy. Not being used at the moment. But it's, um - the idea is the - it's a cheaper way of keeping the buffaloes as individuals.

GINNY STEIN: Starting up here has not been without pain.

Setting up here: it's been tough, hasn't it?

GEOFF ARTHUR: (Laughs) I guess that's one way of putting it.

GINNY STEIN: But the reason you went from a small enterprise to this - I mean, it was no other option, really.

GEOFF ARTHUR: Well, you know, we had to make a decision whether we would throw everything we'd learnt over all those years away and put it down to fun and experience and go on, or whether we would do what we really wanted to do, I guess, and that was turn it into what it needed to be turned in. We'd proved it can work in the semi-arid tropics, now let's do it.

GINNY STEIN: To understand how difficult that decision was, you need to know about what happened to Geoff in 2012. He was almost fatally gored by one of his buffalo when it struck him once and turned and came back again, injuring him in his groin, knee, arm and chest.

GEOFF ARTHUR: It's the equivalent of, I guess, having a star picket driven into you.

GINNY STEIN: He may have forgiven, but he's not forgotten.

SHARON ARTHUR: You've got some that are bomb-proof, almost trust 100 per cent, or basically could, but you always have to have some reserve. Then you've got others that you can work with, but they're just boisterous.

GINNY STEIN: For the Arthurs, there's always been respect and love for their herd.

GEOFF ARTHUR: Although it's a business, you become attached to the individual because they actually respond to you and they're more like - I always say their personality is somewhere between a dog and a good horse, because they've got spirit, but they also have intelligence and they are just phenomenal animals to handle.

GINNY STEIN: But it's not just the love of buffalo, but their product, that has kept them both going.

Buffaloes can be milked using the same equipment as dairy cows, but it's not a simple exercise. Buffaloes need time to settle to let down their milk. It's a matter of training and trust.

In this operation, Sharon Arthur is chief cheese-maker.

SHARON ARTHUR: The Italian word for buffalo milk - and I'll try and get the pronunciation right - "oro bianco", which means "white gold".

GINNY STEIN: She says as a product, buffalo milk is high in energy and calcium and low on cholesterol and easy to work with.

SHARON ARTHUR: The cheeses and the yoghurt are really firm. So it's not like a sloppy yoghurt, it's a really firm-set yoghurt without putting anything extra. And everything we make is essentially just milk with as little as possible to make the product.

BARRY LEMCKE: The beauty of buffalo milk is that it's twice the solids content of cow's milk. So instead of a 10-to-one recovery rate from cow's milk, you get a five-to-one recovery from buffalo milk. So the cheese-makers are prepared to pay a premium for buffalo milk, and at the moment, they're sort of paying in the range of sort of $2.50 to $3.00 a litre, whereas your best dairy farmers are probably getting probably 60 cents for cow's milk.

GINNY STEIN: Training and settling their growing herd has been a steep learning curve, but some things remain the same.

GEOFF ARTHUR: Buffalo - well, virtually any animal, to get the best out of it, you really want them to be at home and you don't want them having the memory of being hurt, being knocked around.

GINNY STEIN: And if that means spoiling them to get them into the yards, the Arthurs are fine with that.

GEOFF ARTHUR: When it's really hot, we'll keep it going all day. They come and go and they want to come. The idea of putting it here, it helps.

GINNY STEIN: The Arthurs are yet to begin milking on a commercial scale at the new Rum Jungle site.

GEOFF ARTHUR: We're going to have to burn this pretty shortly, before someone else does it for us, bless their little hearts.

GINNY STEIN: Setting up a new dairy and building a new home in what was a jungle takes time.

GEOFF ARTHUR: Fenced off, it'll make life a lot easier and they'll get some weight out of that green grass, because there's still green in there. Still got a little reasonable flow in it, so that's nice. Wow, isn't it beautiful whenever you come down here? Doesn't it make you feel good?

GINNY STEIN: With the dry season settling in, these buffaloes are showing what makes them superior dairy animals for the tropics.

GEOFF ARTHUR: The little girls are looking well. They need a little bit more condition, but that's the time of the year, I guess. So they're - yes, they're good.

GINNY STEIN: For Barry Lemcke, who has devoted his life to buffalo research and is soon to retire, the first signs of cheese from this dairy will be a welcome sight.

BARRY LEMCKE: They're an animal that you can get milk off grass, whereas dairy cattle, particularly Friesians, need a lot of good nutrition and supplement and stuff to get the production. I mean, dairying's tough, but I think of all the animals, buffalo are the ones that are going to be able to achieve.
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