Regional education: 20-year ECU agreement cements Boyup Brook’s Rylington Park at centre of farming research

A partnership has been struck between a South West shire council and the university with the largest footprint in regional WA to turn a state-of-the-art agricultural research centre into a booming education hub. The agreement will provide a vital tertiary pathway for South West high school graduates hoping to stay within the region but complete a higher education degree within the agricultural sciences. Last week Edith Cowan University and the Shire of Boyup Brook officially launched a memorandum of understanding that will cement the Rylington Park Institute for Agricultural Training and Research as the eminent on-farm research lab in WA. Through the 20-year agreement students, academics and leading agricultural scientists will be able to conduct long-term experiments within the context of a working farm, contributing to higher education qualifications while helping solve real-world problems facing the agricultural industry. ECU vice-president Cobie Rudd said the partnership would help build local capacity and expand the tertiary options for South West residents. “We know that country Australians are less than half as likely to obtain a university degree by the age of 35 compared to their city counterparts,” Ms Rudd said. “Only 19 per cent of the South West population has a higher degree.” Ms Rudd said the partnership would build on ECU’s 30 years of providing higher-education in the South West, and aligned with the university’s Regional Futures strategy to improve education outcomes for regional communities. “Our priorities are to build capacity that supports improved outcomes for regional communities with a focus on research and education, with a specific focus on the South West,” she said. The selection of Rylington Park holds particular significance within the sector going back more than four decades. The farm was the birthplace of the groundbreaking research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s into the Rylington merino, a line of sheep bred to be genetically resistant to gastro-intestinal parasites, now recognised globally as one of the most worm-resistant sheep. Boyup Brook chief executive Dale Putland said the agreement marked the “latest chapter” in the farm’s long-running research legacy, paying tribute to the late Eric Farleigh, who donated the Rylington Park farm to the Boyup Brook Shire in 1985. “Part of his legacy when he gifted the farm was his records were kept on the farm,” Mr Putland said. “One of the first things we did with ECU was to collect those documents and digitise them so we could go back over them, and we can look at what Eric Farleigh did those many years ago and what he learned so it’s not lost. “We have a history of research that goes back decades for Rylington Park. “ECU is the latest chapter, but its not the first chapter, and we hope it won’t be the last.”