Thirty years ago, when prickly acacia plants began creeping down the watercourses on Nuken, north west of Winton, Christine Batt declared war.
"I started off with a stupid little garden pack, walking down a gully, spraying plants with water and diesel - it was the only tool we had," she said.
In the years since, prickly acacia was declared a weed of national significance and around 20,000ha of David and Christine Batt's property was overrun as the initial few plants doubled and then doubled again, on the back of a few good seasons.
"We chained it at one stage, and put in camels but we didn't use enough, so we started with Desert Channels Queensland, and it's worked well," Mr Batt said.
So well has the control program using tebuthiuron pellets worked that around 315,000 immature trees in a 200ha control zone are dead skeletons and grass seeding trials are paying dividends.
According to DCQ senior project officer Natalie Pearce, the soil underneath the dead bushes was bare earth before they seeded a mix of curly Mitchell, hoop Mitchell and a blue grass.
"We've had really good results - there's a reasonable amount of grass that's come up and seeded," she said.
"We haven't seen much of the blue grass but the Mitchell grass has come up quite well, and it has set seed and replenished the seed supply in this area.
"For future seasons we're quite optimistic that it will continue to recover really well."
They collaborated with DAF in Longreach to do pot trials before seeding, to determine that there was no perennial grass seed left in the soil.
DCQ trials elsewhere have shown that without intervention, it can take up to six years for native grass species to recolonise naturally in areas that had been densely infected with prickly acacia, and part of the seeding aim was to fast track the recovery of these areas.
"This was the very first trial we've done on the seeding so there is a lot of work still to do to refine methods of that, but the results that we've got so far show that it would certainly be worthwhile to continue," Ms Pearce said.
While the past two wet seasons haven't been outstanding, there's been enough rain to allow the grass to come up.
Stock was also excluded from the area.
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The next issue DCQ is working on is finding ways to replace the shade lost over thousands of hectares of dead prickly acacia.
"The loss of that much shade will have significant impacts on animal welfare," DCQ operations manager Simon Wiggins explained. "We're keen to talk to people about their ideas."
He said they were looking at both structural and vegetative possibilities, and combinations of both.
They are keen to accelerate trials, given the amount of prickle bush being successfully eradicated across the landscape.
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