🐄 Clankers are milking cows now
From Toongabbie to Tinamba, farmers are changing the game.
Jacob Wallace
September 12, 2025
⏱️ This edition of our newsletter is a six-minute read.
👋 Hello Gippslanders, it’s Jacob here.
🚌 I’m currently writing this newsletter from a bus touring Gippsland farms. This week I was a guest of the organisers at Gippsland’s New Energy Conference, which was a gathering for regional leaders to discuss the shift to renewable energy.
As part of the conference I was invited on a regional bus tour of Gippsland farms that showcase innovative agriculture solutions which make the most of renewable energy and automation.
🧑🌾 Mark Coleman from Wellington Shire is leading the tour. In the morning we visited Chris Freney’s broiler farm in Toongabbie. He spoke about his closed-loop farming model, where the goal is to reduce emissions and electricity costs by generating energy on his farm.
The dam at Chris Freney’s farm which operates by solar powered pumps.
🚜 The tour also included Brendan Hooper’s 1 MW solar powered 3,000-cow farm in Winnindoo. We stopped at Tinamba Hotel for a lunch put on by owner Simon Johnson, who joined us for the tour.
🐄 Then it was onto Tinamba West, where Allister Clyne’s Hillside Dairies farm is one of Australia’s largest robotic milking facilities. Clyne has 16 robotic milking stations that operate 24-hours a day. He says this has dramatically improved his farm’s efficiency.
Solar panels that power Allister Clyne’s Hillside Dairies.
☀️ We then visited ElecSome’s pilot solar panel recycling centre in Kilmany to see how the company is making the most out of retired panels.
🎤 The tour was an addition to Gippsland’s New Energy Conference, which was running the last couple of days in at Gippsland Performing Arts Centre in Traralgon. During the conference I spoke to Farmers for Climate Action member Ben Gebert - check out my interview with him below.
🎊 WHAT’S ON in GIPPSLAND THIS WEEK 🎟️
SATURDAY, 13/09/25 | Coal Creek Farmers Market
SATURDAY, 13/09/25 | Metung Market
SATURDAY, 13/09/25 | Joe Camilleri and the Black Sorrows
SATURDAY, 13/09/25 | Dave Thornton
SATURDAY, 13/09/25 | The Laing Brothers
SUNDAY, 14/09/25 | Loch Hall Indoor Winter Market
SUNDAY, 14/09/25 | Longford Community Market
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🚀 Alright, let’s jump into the Monitor’s latest stories, informative interviews and fun videos!
✍️ HEARD THIS WEEK👂
⚡️ Is Gippsland at the centre of an energy revolution?
I spoke to a stack of local councillors and business owners about the economic changes that Gippsland will experience through the shift to renewable energy. You can take a look at the video below.
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🎥 WATCH: How good is Korumburra Middle Hotel’s chicken parm?
As I travel across the region interviewing Gippslanders, I’ve also been hunting for the best chicken parm in the region. The Korumburra Middle Hotel won AHA’s Parma of the Year award last year so I decided to check it out.
Take a look at my video review below.
Thanks for catching up with us this week at the Gippsland Monitor. I hope you enjoyed the bus instalment of the newsy. I’ll be back in your inbox next week, so stay tuned.
If you have any stories you’d like to share with us feel free to send an email to [email protected] and it might end up in this newsletter.
Cheers,
Jacob and the Gippsland Monitor team
