[ABC Rural News 11 Nov 2011] -- Imagine a paddock filled with impenetrable weeds, towering so high that they can hide a tractor. Now imagine that those weeds are armed with spikes and the only animals that can make their home in them are rabbits and foxes. Gorse (Ulex europaeus L.) is a weed from Europe that has been identified as weed of national significance due to its invasive impact and potential for spread. It was introduced to Australia back in the 1800s when it was planted for hedges and as an ornamental plant. It flowers all year round with pretty yellow pea shaped blooms, and this flowering and the subsequent seeds enables the plant to rapidly spread. For farmers in the Allendale East area of South Australia the only benefit to the gorse was that it sometimes provided shelter for their livestock on the regular windy days. Occasionally landholders tried to control it by spraying it, but the weed always came back and the efforts were soon halted. It's also highly flammable but the heat of the fire breaks the dormancy of the seeds in the soil resulting in a thick crop of seedlings: this is one tough plant! Anton Kurray is the operations coordinator with the south-east NRM board of South Australia, and he realised the only way to get rid of the weed was to get physical.
"We mulched it first and then tried spraying it, which was fairly successful, it got it down over the whole paddock," he said. "But there were still issues with the roots and stalks, we couldn't get vehicles over it, so we then ended up ripping this paddock and then rolling it and putting it down to pasture."
The resulting paddock is now green with grass, and is full of calves growing quickly under the warm sun. Despite all the work, the gorse is still trying to come back, which means regular spot spraying is required in the paddocks. "The seed is viable for up to eighty years, and if you let it go for two to three years you'll be back where you started," warns Anton Kurray
