From Chief Financial Officer of one the world’s largest companies to beef cattle producer and sustainable farming devotee, there are few people better equipped than founder of Bellbird Farm Services Dick Barnes to bring a new style of contract farm management to the south-east corner of Queensland.
Trading Sydney Harbour views for Noosa’s world-renowned biosphere in 2006, Dick and his wife Kim swapped the coast for the country the following year when they purchased three adjacent farming properties at a combined eight hundred -plus acres near Cooroy in the Noosa Hinterland.
With a massive job ahead of them to integrate the farms, and openly new to the rigours of farming life, the couple employed a farm manager to help them operate the day to day running of a working property.
“Over the years we called the property home we not only built our home, Bellbird Homestead, but we renovated 20 dams, planted 20,000 new trees, increased our carrying capacity to 250 breeding cows, established 47 paddocks, put in five kilometres of piping to support 40 trough and eight water tanks, plus twenty kilometres of fencing” Dick said.
“Our key focus from the very beginning of our farming journey was to carry more high-quality cattle than traditional farming would allow over the long term, and support our conservation objectives also,” he said.
“Successfully combining sustainable farming and conservation wasn’t a one-man show of course. We relied on the expertise of plenty of other people and held our farm manager in the highest regard.”
Dick’s expertise and his own learnings were also heavily drawn on by the Noosa Hinterland community.
The founding president of the Noosa Community Biosphere Association and Country Noosa, he served as the Chair of the Noosa Biosphere Reserve Foundation and is currently the Treasurer of both Noosa and District Landcare Group and Country Noosa.
After 10 years building the massive expanse of land into a sustainable, thriving cattle operation, the Barnes family sold the properties and their manager moved on too.
But in 2019 farming fate delivered Dick Barnes a new opportunity.
“The farms I had sold and another I was involved with all sold again within days of each other, and through the auspices of real estate agent Murray Brown, previously of HinterNoosa, the owners all contacted me and asked me to help run the farms for them,” Dick said.
“It was an opportunity that was incredibly enticing and within a few short weeks Bellbird Farm Services was born, supported by my network of experienced farmers who work for us part time alongside their own operations,” he said.
“Over time the offering has developed from the core services of farm management and supporting those who choose to purchase acreage with livestock, to helping prospective lifestyle farmers make the right purchase decision for their future, to assisting at the opposite end and supporting sellers to get their farm ready for market.
“We’re also able to offer some really good advice to people looking to live and invest in the Noosa Hinterland, specifically those like my wife and I many years ago – looking for a productive lifestyle that could marry location with opportunity.”
Through the Barnes’ family good standing in the community, Bellbird Farm Services is also strongly supported by local farmers and rural enterprises.
“We are very much a part of helping restore the Hinterland to its former glory, both environmentally and economically – it’s an exciting time to be farming in this region and I look forward to working with all sectors of this very special supply chain, whether you’re a new farmer, retiring farmer or looking to work in agriculture in south east Queensland.”
