The Newholme Field Laboratory is a 2000 ha field station operated by the University of New England (UNE) about 10 km north of the UNE campus.  The property contains a mixture of cleared grazing country and forest at lower elevations (~1000 m asl), and forested slope rising though several distinct forest types to the summit of Mount Duval at 1400 m asl. The property is drained by three major drainages, Duval Creek, Sandy Creek and Dumaresq Creek. Included within the greater Newholme Field Laboratory is the Duval Nature Reserve, managed principally for its high conservation value, and the Dumaresq Dam lease, managed largely for recreation. ‘Newholme’ has been used as a teaching and research field station since the mid-1970s, corresponding with the introduction of the Bachelor of Natural Resources (B.Nat.Res) degree at UNE.  The field station has been instrumental to practical teaching into the B.Nat.Res. and other related degrees, ever since.

Newholme is unique among UNE’s rural property estate in having large tracts of natural forest cover (with several forest types) giving it an overall high conservation value. Part of what makes Newholme so valuable to research is the partitioning of the property into grazed and ungrazed components, in both woodland and pasture. Approximately one third is forested; a third is woodland, and the remainder native pasture. One-quarter of the property is ungrazed, and samples of the forest and woodland types and riparian zones have been de-stocked (since 1982) to provide contrasting land management treatments. About 5% of the property has been more intensively developed with sown pastures and fodder crops. Most of the property is managed in an agriculturally un-manipulated manner other than grazing, to maintain research and teaching options (e.g. imposition of particular land and water treatments) as well as land and water uses representative of the surrounding region. Embedded in the property is Mt Duval Nature Reserve, supporting old-growth native forest and surrounded by Newholme’s main conservation zone, the 300 ha Mountain Paddock.