In 2003, we had a dream. A dream of country air and rolling hills, of kids playing in wide open spaces,
of green grass and healthy livestock. A dream of crystal clear blue skies and a chandelier of stars,
where the warble of the magpie hangs over the dawn mist as the sun peaks over the horizon. A
place to set down roots, a place to call home. We found such a place, a property called Oxenthorpe
in the Central West of NSW, Australia.

We just didn’t know anything about how to look after it.

And it turns out, neither did others who had come before us.

Oxenthorpe is a truly unique property. It doesn’t sit in the normal agricultural paradigm. Unlike most
properties that boast of black or red soils, basalts or river flats, Oxenthorpe is sand…and sand, and
more sand. Sitting atop fractured shales, a fragile matrix of granite sand (up to 18metres thick) is
what we have to work with. An acidic environment, with nutrient levels consistently in the ‘LOW’
category, this is not the type of farmland for the locals to get excited over. But we were.

And so began a journey. A joyful journey, a painful journey, a journey of terrible mistakes and
valuable lessons. A journey of cows and calves and bulls, of grasses and locusts, through dusty
droughts and flooding rains, scorching summers and icy winters seasoned with snow, we learnt to
look, to watch, to listen to what Oxenthorpe could teach us each day.

After a lot of false starts, the lessons really gained momentum in 2010, when a spreader truck,
ladened with 10,000 kgs of synthetic fertilizer destined for broadcasting on Oxenthorpe, arrived on
site. It had been an average summer, and autumn was looking to be the same, and we were
attempting to bolster our pathetic excuse for “pasture”. Perhaps some little grey balls in a bag might
be the answer. Well, Oxenthorpe had other ideas. Not 5 minutes in to the job, the phone rang…”I’m
bogged”. Proper bogged. It was down on all fours. The diffs were down, even the bullbar was having
a go at making holes. It took 48hours to get him out, and the damage to our fragile land is still
evident 12 years later. Perhaps little grey balls are not the answer.

Meanwhile, we’d been experimenting with some compost in the garden. Over the fence was our
paddocks of cardboard, but where we had tried some compost on trees and flowers and lawn, there
wasn’t a whisper of life, but a blooming of green and yellows and reds, of bees buzzing, and the
magpie’s warble. Sand didn’t need synthetic, it needed nature. It needed carbon and biology, it
needed long-term vision not short-term profit. And so we went looking for a way to bring compost
to Oxenthorpe.

It took 3 years, but finally we connected all the dots, and 200,000kg of compost arrived, to be
applied to one 18Ha paddock that was in the ‘seriously unproductive” category. Three months later,
for the first time in 10 years, we had a “seriously productive” paddock. We had awoken the sleeping
giant. Fast forward another decade and 3,000,000kg of compost has now been applied to
Oxenthorpe.

As paddocks started to change, we went searching for a perennial pasture (mixed species) that could
capitalise on our efforts. We found the answer in sub-tropical grasses. The paradigm was challenged
once more. Finely seeded nutritious perennial plants that love the summer sun and heat, driving
root systems deep into our sands, and producing bulk dry matter for livestock or to crash back to the
ground and self-mulch our paddocks. Married to a plethora of winter clovers and legumes that
would store nitrogen for the sub-tropicals, Oxenthorpe had truly transformed. A natural system,
powered by nature.

And so we needed something to now eat our yummy paddock salads. As our compost journey began
a decade earlier, so did an experiment in a newly developed breed of sheep, the Australian White. A haired breed (no wool), that had been developed with a polarised vision of high quality meat from a
highly fertile animal. It was experimental, it was outside the agricultural paradigm, it was perfect for
Oxenthorpe. A decade later, Oxenthorpe is home to a highly fertile flock of Australian Whites that
produce the most delicious lamb the world has every tasted.

Maintaining the natural mindset, we set down micro-paddocks within our larger paddocks, enabling
us to rotationally graze our livestock, so that they “migrate” through the property, with lush, fresh
pasture always in front of them. On moving day each week, a whistle sounds when the gates have
opened to the next micro-paddock, and the Whites begin a leisurely stroll into greener pastures,
often with their newborn lambs in tow.

The natural ebb&flow of our pastures through the seasons, void of heavy chemical or synthetic
fertilisers, with the migration-graze of our livestock, is fostering deep transformation on Oxenthorpe.
Carbon is being naturally sequested into the ground, slowly but surely changing our sands to soil.
And in doing so, we are extracting carbon from the air, and storing it in the soil for microbes and
bugs and plants to utilise. Nature is nothing short of amazing.

Oxenthorpe is the watershed (or source) of a watercourse called Norah Creek. A twin flow creek,
with ‘above the ground’ (what we call a creek), and ‘below the ground’ (an aquifer). As rains fell,
Oxenthorpe taught us once more. No longer does water sheet across our ground, gouging out gullies
and eroding our sands, but instead, water is absorbed by the soil, held back by the carbon sponge,
and slowly but surely it meanders it’s way downhill to the creek, but moreso, it trickles straight
down to the aquifer. And so our sands have become a 10 million tonne biological filter. And so was
born a name for our journey… Norah Creek Pastoral Co.

As people came from across Australia to see the transformation of Oxenthorpe, the consistent
remark “people would love to buy food from a farm like this” became a challenge to us. How can we
get the end product, our delicious lamb, to people near and far? And so the next chapter began. In
2022 we launched Norah Creek Pastoral LAMB-in-a-BOX. A full Australian White lamb, born and
grown on Oxenthorpe, processed at a local abattoir, butchered by a local butcher, and frozen in user
friendly bag sizes, labelled (yes, no mystery meat), and able to be delivered Australia wide. High in
Omega3-long chain fatty acids, incredibly low in saturated fats, high in poly-unsaturated fat, finely
textured, melt in your mouth, grass fed lamb. To the door.

What has occurred on Oxenthorpe, and the calibre of our Aussie Whites, has caused a stirring in
other farmers. We regularly have large and small groups visit Oxenthorpe to “capture the dream”,
and every month small groups of our ewelambs head out near and far to enable other farmers to
begin their paradigm-breaking agricultural journeys.

We had a dream. The magpie warbles, the mist hangs over the dawn, the kids have played in wide
open spaces, the lambs frolic in green pastures, and our little piece of the world is healthy and
happy. This…. is home.