The Mosely family have been in the Cobar district since 1949 and now own Etiwanda and Manuka stations in the Western Division. Situated about 100 kilometres south of Cobar, the 28,000 hectare property is used to produce white dorper sheep, Shorthorn/Santa Gertrudis/Charolais cattle and goats for the domestic and export markets.

Etiwanda is semi-arid, with an average rainfall of 400 mm per year, however the annual totals are highly variable and range between 100 mm and 800 mm. The country ranges from rocky hills to creeks, with red sandy loam soils. The main trees and shrubs are bimble box, white cypress, wilga, belah, kurrajong, red box, mallee and invasive native shrubs such as turpentine, hopbush and budda bush. Prominent grasses include speargrass, wire grass, white top, paspalidium, panics and digitaria. The more palatable grasses are making a comeback on the restored country.

Etiwanda is managed using a Holistic Planning approach. Holistic Planning looks at and integrates all aspects of the enterprise including land, livestock, economics and people. The decision to implement this approach was made after the family attended a Holistic Management training programme about ten years ago. Before that, the Moselys had been trying to work out how to deal with the scrub problems on Etiwanda. They had been running goats to try and fix this issue but it wasn’t working so they started looking for new ideas. As Andrew Mosely explains, “with the new knowledge we started to look for the root cause of the scrub problem. We then began to focus on the soil health and the health of the perennial grasses as the best way to deal with the problem. We then started on the fence development program to enable us to manage our plant recovery periods”.