The South West Loddon Pipeline has provided a secure, readily available water supply for John and Ann Leach who run 5000 sheep with their son John at Rheola, near Bridgewater in Central Victoria. It has given them given back precious time to focus their attention on other demands around their Merino Sheep farming enterprise.

Dry seasons over the years meant they were forced to run sheep in mobs of 1500; carting water to on-farm tanks from February until season break.

“We used to cart water to our tanks two days a week during mid-summer,” John said.

John has set the farm up to supply pipeline water around their paddocks, meaning they can now run smaller mobs of between 100 and 400 sheep.

“It’s a good clean water source that we also use for spraying and cleaning machinery. The security pipeline water brings is a great asset!” John said. “It was a lot of money to connect, but I’m so glad we connected.”

When the big fires came through, local farmers used to arduously cart water in their tankers from the Loddon River to keep water supply up to the fire-fighting helicopter.

“Now with the pipeline in place, GWMWater have fire-fighting tanks scattered around the region. It’s great security for fire-fighting”, John said.