A Far Northern grazing family now has another good reason to count down to the wet season – a large-scale rock chute that needs testing out.

The 50m chute, completed last week, has been built to stop erosion that saw gullies spread like fingers out across the land over more than 30 years, causing topsoil losses on valuable grazing land and sending sediment into the river system when it rained.

Woodleigh Cattle Station owners Pete and Kate Waddell have been working with natural resource management organisation Terrain NRM on improving the land through engineered rock chutes, repairs to old tin mining tailings dam complexes and changes to grazing practices.

The new rock chute comes two years after a 100m chute was constructed on a different part of the Tablelands property.

“This one is in a gully complex that’s about 150m long, a couple of hundred metres wide and up to five metres deep – in places it’s like a cave,’’ Terrain NRM’s Jen Mackenzie said. “It strengthens this section of gully so we can direct water away from the other sections above it via a bund wall that is 600m long and extends either side of the problem area.

“It’s like a funnel for water to flow through to the creek without causing major damage like it has been.”

The rock chute and bund wall structures are expected to stop more than 250 tonnes of sediment a year – or up to 10 large haul truckloads – from flowing into the Herbert River catchment and out to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

Ms Mackenzie said the Waddells, like many landholders in the upper Herbert catchment, were still dealing with the impacts of historical mining practices and legacy erosion issues.

The work is part of a larger Herbert Gully and Grazing Project, funded through the Australian Government’s Reef Trust IV program to target erosion hot spots, which prevents the loss of healthy top soil and productive land and reduces fine sediment loads flowing to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

It is underway on five properties in the Upper Herbert River catchment and ranges from engineered erosion solutions to grazing management changes.

A remote cattle property in Far North Queensland is doing its bit to help the Great Barrier Reef.

Glen Ruth Station’s Archer family will prevent several hundred tonnes of sediment – or up to 10 semi-trailer loads – from reaching the Reef each year through major earthworks to stop eroded gully systems in their tracks.

Grazier Curtis Archer said cyclones and floods had taken their toll on sections of his family’s 82,000-hectare Glen Ruth cattle station in the Mt Garnet region over the last 20 years, causing gullies to spread and deepen.

“One gully system was two metres deep in places and more than half a kilometre long,’’ he said.  “We’re getting big valleys where the grass doesn’t grow, coming off Cameron Creek which feeds into the Herbert River.”

The Archers have been working with Terrain NRM as part of a $3 million Herbert Gully and Grazing Project, funded through the Australian Government’s Reef Trust IV program to help landholders tackle erosion and fine-tune grazing management practices.

Terrain NRM’s Jen Mackenzie said roads built across the station in the 1960s for surveying a Herbert River Dam proposal were contributing to the erosion issues.

Erosion repair work at Glen Ruth has included a 100m bund wall, backfilling of road drains and the construction of a basin with gentle banks where native grasses will be planted. It also includes whoa boys, or dirt mounds built across roads, to direct wet season storm water away from the sites.

“The aim is to control the gully heads and redirect wet season water flow,’’ Ms Mackenzie said.  “This project also includes revegetation and changes to grazing management practices.”

The Archer family is trialling denser stocking rates in smaller paddocks for shorter periods in an area close to the homestead.

“We are doing this with 260 head of cattle in five 20ha paddocks,’’ Curtis said. “On this small scale, we’ve already seen improvements in our pastures. The grass roots grow deeper and the grass gets a lot stronger.”

The family has also fenced off a section of the Herbert River: “We did the exclusion fencing about 10 years ago. We’re always trying to improve our land and we’re more than happy when it also helps to protect the Reef.”