Buffalo are usually at home roaming the steamy tropics of remote northern Australia but nearly 3,000 kilometres away, there's a herd dotting the green hills of northern Tasmania.
It is not widely known that the rolling hills in Tasmania's north-west are home to a herd of buffalo.The demand for buffalo milk products is growingPhillip Oates started the state's only commercial herd in 1997 with just two cows and a bull he brought over from Victoria.
"We used to run fallow deer, basically they went from being worth something to worthless within three years," he said.More than 20 years later and the farm at Preston is going strong, with the help of Phillip's partner Sheridan Lee."Why buffalo? Well they were already attached to Phil when I met him so I didn't really have much of a choice," she said.
The pair have expanded their business into dairy products, creating their own on-farm cheese processing factory from items that are re-used and recycled."It was from a cool room from an abattoir which we've obviously re-purposed and made a little bit bigger," Ms Lee said. "The benches are from a cafe, the vats are actually from hops, when they used to make beer, so from an old brewery."
In the factory they produce buffalo yogurt, bottled milk, mozzarella and ricotta, with plans to one day make their own halloumi.
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