An injured hawk rests on Remus Coman's arm. He found it in a ditch on his cattle grazing farm.
"He's like a king, look at him!" he says proudly. It's taken two weeks for the bird to recover.
Under the hawk's claws, an inked wolf forms part of a tattoo that tells stories from his youth in Transylvania.
He points to a ferocious looking carnivore needled into his skin.
"That is a very traditional Romanian wolf in a forest where it loves to be."
Remus was tracked by wolves while hiking in the snow, and then when riding a bike near his hometown of Sibiu.
"We heard something behind and we look and there was a pack of wolves, six or seven, running on our bike tracks, chasing us!"
The wolf on Remus's forearm looms above him as a child, climbing an endless staircase Photo: Supplied
Farming for Remus is more than just feeding other people's dairy cows.
It's being aware of everything in and on the land.
He's hoping the young male hawk will go back to doing what it does best.
"It's very good to have hawks on the farm as they eat all the dead animals," he says.
It's not the first bird he has cared for in the farm shed.
Last year three baby owls fell out of their nest when a gum fell over in the wind.
The mother was nowhere to be found so he took them under his wing.
"I brought them here and fed them until they were big enough to fly away, and they still sleep somewhere in this shed."
Remus and Joy Tipakorn Prajit check on some calves near the woolshed Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
The old woolshed Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
Remus and his ex-wife Magda bought the 196-hectare coastal property ten years ago.
It was previously owned by fourth generation farmers John and Lorraine Williams.
For decades it was a sheep and cropping farm and now the old woolshed, built in the 1860s, lies dormant.
The land around it is home to a few heifers and their calves.
On the rest of the farm Remus winters about 1600 cows and grazes half that in the summer.
His long term environmental goal is to stop using synthetic fertiliser and other chemicals on the land.
"I think the soil can look after itself if you give it what it needs.
"But it takes maybe ten years to recover, regenerate and find its own biology to grow."
The last of the winter grazing dairy cows Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
A newborn calf has lost its mum Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
