The fourth-generation farmer Mick Robertson has not seen dairy cows at Ravenscroft, the family farm in Tanjil South, eastern Victoria, since 1974. “Not since I was a kid,” he says, although there is still an old dairy on the property. “It had machines that have long been superseded,” he says.
Originally 600 acres (243 hectares), the now-subdivided farm is now owned by his mother, Gwen, 98, with sections tended by Robertson and his sister Marg, and some leased to a neighbouring cousin who grazes beef. With six siblings, the family has the benefit of off-farm incomes and prospects for succession. “I’m hoping one of my nephews or my niece will buy the farm,” Robertson says. Now retired from his teaching career, Robertson is all-in on shepherding the multigenerational transition from working dairy farm to a combination of forestry, tourism, cut flower crops and rewilding some areas.
