Jeff Johnson, a farmer near Geraldton, Western Australia, transformed his degraded 1750-acre farm using deep ripping techniques to improve water infiltration and soil health. This method allowed native plants like spring everlastings and mulla mulla to return. Eddy Wajon in the Great Southern region has also restored cleared farmland into thriving habitat with over 95% of revegetation surviving, supporting a diverse range of wildlife including 600 plant species, 260 moth species, reptiles, birds, and insects. Both farmers advocate for policy changes to better manage land use and conservation practices in Australia.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-09,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
On a goat and cattle farm inland of Geraldton, a region that gets around 335 millimetres of rain annually, the grounds are awash with colour and life.
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grounds → get → colour
When Jeff Johnson first purchased the Mullewa farm Tallering Views, in the state’s Mid West, the 1750-acre property was already degraded from overgrazing and poor water management.
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property → purchase → overgrazing
Johnson’s own 20 cows and 400 goats continued to strip the land further.
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cows → continue → land
After a particularly heavy rainfall in 2017, he said he had a lightbulb moment.
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he → say → moment
“Out of 25 millimetres of rain … about five millimetres of that water is sitting on the surface on the crust, the rest of it’s down the river and in the ocean, and everything’s dying,” he said.
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he → sit → ocean
“I stood back in the shed and said, ‘holy crap, if I don’t do something about trying to catch this water and getting all the plants to grow again, we’ll be in a desert’, so it really changed my mind.
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it → stand → mind
Johnson began researching methods to revegetate the land and discovered deep ripping or the ‘rip and tine method’.
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Johnson → begin → ripping
Machinery is used to dig long trenches in the soil, breaking the harder layer of compressed earth beneath the topsoil to improve water infiltration, boost nutrient availability and allow plant roots to grow deeper.
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roots → use → availability
It didn’t take long for Johnson to notice a change.
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Johnson → take → change
“All the natural plants that normally grow here for the last 300 years all started springing up where I got these rip marks,” he said.
“We even had earthworms coming out … in this dry, arid station country it was just mind-blowing because they’re the dudes that make it all happen under the ground.”
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it → grow → ground
He is now monitoring the return of each native species, including spring everlastings and mulla mulla.
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He → monitor → everlastings
But Johnson said he had concerns for the future.
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he → say → future
“The way we’re managing land now with the chemicals and fertilisers, and the station country that overstock, we’ve got about 30 harvests to go and we’re in the shit big time,” he said.
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he → manage → shit
“The land won’t be able to support farming because nothing will grow, and all those native plants will be gone too.
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plants → support → farming
“It needs a whole policy change.
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It → need → change
The state government doesn’t know how to do it.
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government → know → it
It’s people like myself that are prepared to change.
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that → ’ → myself
We are the ones that have to put this information out.”
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that → have → information
Eddy Wajon agrees.
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Wajon → agree → ?
In 2002 he became the first private purchaser in the Gondwana Link project with his wife Donna – a block in Boxwood Hill covering 572 hectares and another smaller block spanning 46 hectares in the state’s Great Southern region.
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he → become → region
The project is a large-scale conservation effort to restore and reconnect a 1000-kilometre swathe of fragmented habitat.
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project → restore → habitat
Wajon and his wife have now restored the cleared farmland they purchased into thriving habitat – in once abandoned paddocks, 95 per cent of revegetation has survived.
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cent → restore → revegetation
“We could see the land was rapidly being cleared, and we stepped in,” Wajon said.
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Wajon → see → ?
“When we started we saw maybe one mallee fowl in five years, now we can guarantee you will see one.”
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you → start → one
Wajon said they had also seen six different orchard species sprout – varieties they had not deliberately planted – at the end of 2025.
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they → say → 2025
This year the region’s rainfall has been minimal, with around 200 millimetres falling compared to the average of 400 millimetres.
But the early drier conditions also resulted in carpets of everlastings which usually don’t bloom until December.
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which → fall → December
Wajon said plenty of visitors had come along to photograph the spectacle.
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plenty → say → spectacle
The contrast between WA’s wildflower season and land protection
The state’s 2026 wildflower season was described as the “best in recent memory”, drawing in plenty of tourists to view carpets of everlastings, orchids, and rare native species.
But there is a contrast – the landscapes behind the internationally renowned spectacle remain critically underrepresented in Australia’s protected area network.
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landscapes → describe → network
While the South West is recognised globally as a biodiversity hotspot with exceptional flowering-plant diversity, parts of the Wheatbelt and Great Southern, have as little as 4 per cent of their area under formal protection.
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parts → recognise → protection
That is despite those regions being part of the Southwest Australian global biodiversity hotspot – one of 36 places on earth richest in threatened endemic species.
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regions → threaten → species
Wajon said it was “distressing” that efforts to protect and revegetate more of the land, or to keep areas including roadsides abundant with native species, had so far recorded limited success.
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efforts → say → success
The upcoming UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17), held across the end of October, will also test Australia’s progress toward its target of conserving 30 per cent of land by 2030.
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Conference → hold → 2030
Wajon said the state was no where close to that number.
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state → say → number
He said News South Wales and Victoria had schemes to compensate and incentivise conservation, and that WA needed something similar.
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WA → say → something
“What’s come from the government is a blank wall – we are going backwards not forwards,” he said.
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he → come → government
“We could do twice as much as we are now to revegetate the land with more support.
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we → do → support
“As a state we need to get serious about protecting the environment.
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we → need → environment
University of Western Australia Professor of Biodiversity Stephen Hopper also agreed that large parts of regional WA are on a “very poor trajectory” towards the UN’s 30 per cent goal.
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parts → agree → goal
He said the “uplands” – including granite outcrops, lateritic mesas and sand plains – across the Wheatbelt and Great Southern were “almost impossible to restore”, while “lowlands” along rivers, creeks, coastlines were much easier.
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lowlands → say → coastlines
“Botanical survey work in the 1980s established that two thirds of threatened plants were concentrated in uplands,” he said.
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he → establish → uplands
…and 5 more, not listed.
The Aporia
