Bill Davey (Sargood 1975-79) has built a successful business helping farmers earn income off barren red soil in Western Australia.
His Perth company, Plantation and Landcare Services, employs 14 people and is the biggest revegetation contractor in Western Australia.
Davey, 53, originally from Tauranga, has lived in Australia for 29 years. After school he studied forestry through a traineeship at the New Zealand Forest Service in Rotorua.
Years of experience has given him specialist knowledge about how to manage Western Australia’s unforgiving soil, by planting salt-resistant plants.
He describes salt as “a white cancer slowly eating away at production and good soil types” in vast areas of flat land.
The Western Australian landscape is a “totally different ballgame” to New Zealand, he says. “Because it is so flat we don’t have good drainage like at home. We have these huge areas of non-productive bare soil types that we try to make productive.”
“In Western Australia the country is very flat and we have a lot of salt that comes up through the soil profile because of poor drainage. So we are trying to stop the spread of salt by vegetating.”
Farmland has been degrading due to rising water tables since deforestation during the Second World War more than 60 years ago. “As soon as the salty water reaches the surface, the fresh water just evaporates and leaves the salt which just kills everything.”
The company deals with big areas of flat land. “We are talking farms of 30,000 acres, so they are massive.”
Plantation and Landcare Services uses contractors and machinery to plant belts and blocks of trees. “We also plant a fodder crop for the sheep to eat. It is called Saltbush so we are turning something that is non-productive into a very productive soil type.”
“Saltbush is a fantastic supplement feed for stock through the summer months.”
The company plants more than 500,000 Saltbush plants per year. Specialist machinery is used to plant 10,000 trees per day and the machine creates a profile enabling what little rain there is to be caught in the trench. His clients include state and federal departments as well as national civil contractors and farmers.
Last year Davey completed the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and a leg in a round-the-world yacht race. He lives in Perth with his wife Deryn and they have two children Cameron (23) and Sara (21).
He visits New Zealand about every five years and would love to attend a school reunion “to catch up with some of my vintage.” Davey says he would be happy to talk to St Paul’s old boys seeking work in Western Australia.
