Quiet has become the key word at Murchison House Station, a sprawling property 570 kilometers north of Perth, Western Australia. Where the mustering of thousands of feral goats once involved the roar of helicopters and motorbikes, the pests can now be herded at a walking pace thanks to a groundbreaking new system. A 9-kilometer fence, woven through the station’s rugged terrain, is quietly reducing livestock stress and slashing operating costs.
“Effectively what we have built is a total grazing-management trapyard,” Murchison House owner Calum Carruth said. This innovative approach, which merges new technology with traditional pastoral practices, allows the Carruths to manage the feral goat population more efficiently and humanely.
Revolutionizing Goat Mustering
While using yards to trap animals is nothing new for pastoralists, the Carruths’ system can be operated remotely. Its 10 entry gates can be closed via smartphones from 20 kilometers away, and seven water tanks equipped with sensors provide clues when large numbers of animals are drinking. “When the gates are closed and the goats are trapped, they are herded to a holding yard at one end, loaded onto a truck, and taken to market,” Mr. Carruth explained. “Not only is it more cost-efficient, it’s safer for staff and friendlier on the animals. It’s low-stress stock handling.”
A Valuable Pest and a Unique Landscape
Calum and Belinda Carruth have owned Murchison House for over 30 years, balancing a tourism business with the sale of goats and cattle. The station’s unique boundaries—flanked by the Murchison River, the Kalbarri National Park, and the Indian Ocean—make it a prime location for goat trapping. The trapyard is strategically positioned to capture goats as they migrate from the coastal fringes and national park in search of water during the hot summer months.
Feral goats are a declared pest in Western Australia, causing significant environmental damage. However, they are also valuable livestock, with goat meat in high demand across Asia, the Middle East, and increasingly in the United States. “We have got the goat numbers down to something we think is sustainable, environmentally, ecologically, and hopefully economically,” Mr. Carruth said.
Protecting the Pillawarra
The inspiration for the trap system began with the need to protect the fragile Pillawarra land system, a unique area of the station containing prehistoric marine sediments. “It’s a giant limestone escarpment that runs up the backbone of Murchison House station for about 70 kilometers,” Mr. Carruth explained. “The Pillawarra has long sections of freshwater soaks and springs in the bottom of it, and very good grazing. The goats would come for the water and wouldn’t leave.”
When the Carruths purchased the station, they initiated a destocking program to protect the land. “There were about 5,000 head of sheep, 2,000 head of cattle, and maybe 20,000 goats,” he recalled. They began building a 2,500-hectare exclusion paddock to safeguard the Pillawarra and successfully secured $150,000 in government funding to help construct the trapyard.
Integrating Technology with Tradition
The trapyard’s operation is underpinned by an extensive telemetry network. Tiny solar-powered antennas receive signals from a meshing network, triggering actions such as closing the gates. The Carruths collaborated with Annie Brox and her team from Origo.ag to design and build the system. “At the homestead, there is an internet connection, so signals go from this private meshing network to a gateway between the private network and the internet,” Mr. Carruth explained.
The Carruths believe their trapyard concept could be adapted to manage other feral populations in remote areas of Australia, such as wild pigs or camels. “The fences obviously would need to be much more robust and therefore more expensive, but electric fences will hold a lot of those animals pretty well,” Mr. Carruth noted.
Looking ahead, the Carruths plan to extend the trapyard, with the long-term goal of replacing most traditional motor-based mustering on the station. “Since Belinda and I have been here, all we’ve ever wanted to do is leave it better than we’ve found it,” Mr. Carruth said, reflecting on their decades-long stewardship of Murchison House.
