Sustainable farming practices inform every decision at lonesome duck, the Trembath family’s farm in the Northern Territory.
Growing up on a farm in Zimbabwe in southern Africa and moving to Katherine in the Northern Territory as a teenager, Jeremy Trembath says his parents, Peter and Shirley, gave him the greatest gift of all — an open mind.
“Dad did his veterinary training in Australia and then moved to Zimbabwe in the early 1980s,” Jeremy says. “He met and married Mum and they had a farm and later a game ranch in partnership with another couple. We may not have been rich, particularly after we came back to live in Australia in 2003 due t political upheaval in Zimbabwe, but we were always encouraged to be open to a wealth of new ideas and ways of doing things.”
The Trembaths resettled in Katherine, where Peter established a vet practice and they bought a 130 hectare block they named Lonesome Duck, five kilometres north of the mining, tourism and pastoral industry service town in the Territory’s Top End. In 2005, they bought more land to bring their farm to a total of 1000 hectares, a small holding in comparison to many of the vast cattle stations in the region, but one that Jeremy and his family hope will have a big impact on the land.
These days, Jeremy and his wife, Amy, who is also a vet, have taken over the running of Lonesome Duck and they have a herd of composite beef cattle, as well as a four hectare garden for vegetables grown according to organic principles. They’re raising their two-and-a-half-year-old son, Turin, on the farm and devoting their considerable energies to regenerating the land. Shirley and Peter also live on the farm and Peter is in the process of transitioning his practice to Rupert, Jeremy’s youngest brother, who lives with his wife, Sally, on a nearby property.
Jeremy completed a carpentry apprenticeship straight out of school and ran his own business for a decade, before deciding regenerative farming was his true passion. “We know that every farm in the world is in a degraded state,” he says. “Our vision is to meld local food production with regenerative practices to increase to improve the soil and pasture quality, water management as well as the health of everything we grow.”
These practices include resting their vegie garden for a year by growing a cover crop. “It began as a vegie patch for domestic use,” Jeremy explains. “It became so productive that we were giving away surplus and then decided to sell a bit at local markets and restaurants. But it was taking up the bulk of our time, so we’ve decided to step back from it a bit and concentrate on improving the land for our cattle.”
The herd, which they have grown from an initial six heifers when they to ok over in 2016 to the present 350 head is a mix of Bos Indicus and Taurus, including an infusion of African breeds, which the Trembaths believe may result in a higher insect and parasite-resistance threshold. “We’ve recently bought 35 Nguni [a southern African breed] cow and calf pairs and introduced a Nguni/Shorthorn cross bull,” Jeremy explains. “They came from a drought-stricken part of South Australia to two metre-high grass off the back of a good wet season here, so we’ll see how they go.”
Jeremy and Amy have adopted a range of regenerative farming practices, all aimed at making their land healthier and more productive. They’ve embraced the philosophies of a number of leading landcare activists, including Zimbabwean Allan Savory, the father of holistic grazing, plus invented a few adaptations of their own.
Rotational grazing is part of their standard practice and, having recently completed 18km of fencing, the farm is now divided into 38 paddocks. “The use of electric fences means we can create an almost infinite number of paddocks,” he adds. “We move our herd about 100 times in a year, and sometimes during the wet season, we move them up to four times in a day.” This is to both minimise damage and maximise the cattle’s beneficial impact on the land and the (mostly native) grasses it supports.
The Trembaths have also introduced self-herding, which reduces the impact of machinery used for mustering and trains the cattle to move from one paddock to the next, mainly by placing feed attractants such as molasses and salt and mineral supplement lick blocks in the paddock they want the cattle to move to.
Given that Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth, the Trembaths also do all that’s in their power to conserve water. “After the ocean, the soil is the biggest storehouse for water, so we do what we can to keep it in the ground,” Jeremy says. “We have bore water piped via solar pumps to troughs for the livestock, but it’s important to increase water retention to improve the soil biology.” To this end, as well as a couple of low-level dams, the Trembaths have introduced micro dams and “leaky weirs”, which involve using rocks, logs and other debris to slow the flow of water in waterways and erosion channels as a means of retaining water.
In recognition of this multi-faceted approach to land and livestock management, Jeremy is a 2025 National Landcare Award fi nalist for the Australian Government Sustainable Agriculture Award. The winner will be announced in September. Jeremy says he appreciates the fact that his parents have always supported him and Amy in their approach and encouraged them to trial new techniques.
“They’re open to innovation and never questioned me when, for instance, I said we weren’t going to spray weeds anymore,” Jeremy says. “As far as I know, farming is what I will do for the rest of my life and we’re passionate about doing it as well as possible. The challenge is to make it attractive enough for the next generation to continue our work, and at an accelerated rate.
