Rebecca & Steven Cadzow, Mount Riddock Station, Alice Springs, Northern Territory
At the Cadzow family’s 2635 km squared Mount Riddock Station on the Plenty Highway, North East of Alice Springs, the closest water tank is a 15 km round trip from the homestead and the farthest is 140 kms.
This means that a lot of time and diesel is spent travelling to these tanks to make ‘just-in-case’ checks on the water.
When Rebecca saw Observant Pty Ltd’s Remote Management System on trial at Pigeon Hole Station, she knew the system had the potential to save a lot of time and worry.
Since installing their Observant Remote Management System™ in April 2007 for an initial investment of $16,000 they are checking the computer three-to-four times each day to see the water level of the tanks, turning the pump on and off and checking rainfall from their homestead computer.
Steve and Rebecca estimate their savings in the first 9 months to be around $20,000 (because solar bores where also introduced at the same time to reduce fuel costs) and as a result, they have installed five more units during the summer of 2007/08.
“The basic style of the system appealed to me straightaway,” said Rebecca. “It’s so simple—the base unit and the C1 units are just about one piece and have their own solar panel and you literally put them together, put them in the ground and you are up and running.”
“This was a system that allowed me to keep track of the water and any problems with it. I was the one to go ahead with the ordering and installation of the initial units (of which there was one motor controller, four tank level sensors, one repeater station, one base unit and computer program and six C1 units), and since it has well and truly demonstrated its worth, my husband, Steven and I are now looking to install an additional five units so that more of the property can be monitored from home.”
“We have been out and checked it a couple of times to see whether what it’s telling us on the computer is what’s going on at the site and it’s been the same every time—which is a great relief that it does what it’s supposed to do!” says Rebecca.
The Cadzows now check the computer three to four times a day to see what their water is doing. Instead of doing a bore run of up to 140 kms round trip every day, they now do the bore run twice a week.
Water is a critical part of farming in the pastoral region, and the Cadzow’s, who graze their 7,000 head of cattle in large mobs must have certainty about water in particular paddocks at particular times.
“At any one time we can have up to 400 steers on one watering point so knowing the water is secure is crucial. It will only take one summer and if there was an incident whereby our cattle are without water then we would be in serious trouble.”
“Four hundred animals at one watering point means we have to be right on top of what is going on from a water front and we are confident that Observant helps us with this,” says Rebecca.
The Cadzow’s consider this knowledge and security to be one of the biggest returns on their investment.
However, Rebecca has also captured the dollar savings associated with the Observant system in a recent review of the time and money spent on monitoring and managing their waters and bores for the period March 2006 to March 2008.
The results show that the Cadzows and their staff in the 12 months since they installed Observant, they have; travelled 27,768 less km on bore runs, generated savings of $8,000 on diesel alone; realised significant savings in labour costs, vehicle costs and vehicle maintenance (poor corrugated roads are a big issue); and, reduced diesel by 13,000 litres, a saving of $20,000 (but notes that solar power also contributes to this saving).
In addition to the cost effectiveness and robustness of the system, Rebecca said the honesty and integrity of the Observant staff was remarkable.
“This was a fairly new system that I saw at Pigeon Hole in 2004 and I know that every application in the pastoral zone is different for every property owner, and the Observant staff have been incredibly helpful with any of our questions or problems and been able to fix them for us, or direct us as to how to do it ourselves,” she said.
“We haven’t bought a unit and been left to figure it out ourselves, the backup has been excellent, and one of the reasons we are growing the system.”
“The savings are speaking for themselves, it’s so simple that anyone can use it and it’s the best way to do it. If we’re out, the children’s nanny can even check it – it’s fantastic.”