AFTER decades of hard work on their dairy farm, the Blanch brothers didn’t think twice when they were approached by a “renewables” developer with what appeared to be an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Industrial solar and battery developer Libra Energy wanted to buy up the Blanch’s dairy farm at Lower Mount Walker to reportedly install tens of thousands of solar panels and lithium megapack batteries (BESS).
That was 18 months ago and since then the news has caused a rift in the close-knit community.
“After plenty of family discussion and the thought of finally having a life outside of the dairy, we decided to engage in a ‘call option’ contract [allowing the buyer the right to buy an underlying asset at a specified price within a specific time] on our farm which had an expiry of September 26,” Steve Blanch said.
Now in his 40th year of milking cows, he said the decision was based on the fact the family was at a crossroads in life.
“My brother Ross and I thought we might be able to get a well-earned ‘sleep-in’ after years of feeding the Australian population,” Steve said.
But Steve said events took an unexpectedly dark turn when rumours spread in the rural township that the farm would become home to solar panels and container sized batteries.
“Pointed signage began to appear and social media conversations began to make the family feel like villains, including our dear 93-year-old mother, in a community that we have served continuously for 70-plus years,” Steve said.
“We were so thankful for other genuine farming families, contractors and the continuous support from the wider community who treated us like normal human beings – you know who you are.”
But, in January this year, Libra Energy told the farmers they had rethought their proposal and would instead find another block of land.
The contract was torn up on January 8.
Steve said he urged landowners facing similar circumstances to do what they thought was right.
“Don’t listen to other people,” he said.
“In hindsight, I would have sat down and told the community who it was who wanted to come here and what it would involve.
“Now, if someone came out here and told me 15 years ago – when I had three boys in school and the milk price was reasonably fair – I would have told the solar company to take a hike.
“But 15 years on, after we’ve had a flogging with milk prices, the weather, all sorts of things, the situation has changed.”
Steve said Libra Energy should have been more forthcoming with locals.
“Instead of throwing us under the bus, the developers should have told the community a lot sooner; that would have helped,” he said.
“We never imagined we would see protest signs at both ends of the road, especially because of the relationships we had with those people who put them up.”
Libra Energy said the dairy was on degraded farming land.
“At one time, it would have been some of the richest, most fertile soil, but not so much anymore,” Steve said.
“However, that hill country where they want that BESS at Lairhopes Road is some of the worst quality soil between Rosewood and Lower Mount Walker.
“Where you might run a cow on three or four acres on flat black soil, you would be flat out running a cow on 10 or 15 acres on those ridges.
“The Lairhopes Road land is not much good for anything else than industry or housing.”
Steve said he didn’t think battery or solar proposals would affect property prices that much or that a BESS installed a few kilometres down the road would be a problem.
“I wouldn’t want my house right beside a BESS, but these container-sized batteries would be behind trees, and you wouldn’t notice them; there seems to have been a lot of scaremongering going on,” he said.
“If there were such a thing as a battery fire, it would be an isolated fire; having said that, I wouldn’t want to live within 100 yards of one of them.”
He said perhaps half of the farm would be sold soon, and that solar facilities would not be on the agenda.
“In the past three years, other solar investors have asked us about our farm, but we won’t be selling to one of those,” Steve said.
“We only want to sell enough of it to give ourselves a life.
“Our family feels like it has done its bit for the community, and it is someone else’s turn now.”
Ross and Steve Blanch’ father, Eric, first arrived in Lower Mt Walker in 1954, marrying wife Esme the following year, and them eventually having 10 children.
The 560 acres of farming land has remained a dairy, with cows still milked dawn and dusk – that’s 50 000 plus milkings and more than 100,000,000 litres of fresh milk delivered to the nation.
In 1990, the brothers were sold the farm when their father’s health deteriorated.
The Blanch brothers, second eldest and second youngest in the family, said the milking herd has varied greatly during their time, once with them milking up to 280 cows but currently sitting at 140 milkers.
Deregulation of the industry in 2001 hit the brothers hard as Queensland dairy farm numbers halved from 1,600 to 800.
But they said nothing came as close to the disaster of the $1 a litre milk when 630 Queensland milk suppliers in 2010 became just 30 in 2020.
Steve and Sue’s three boys, who used to work on the farm for pocket money, now run successful electrical, mechanical and building businesses of their own.