HOW WE SEE IT! A challenging country

With Bryan Littlely and Shaun Hollis

Last updated:
Cartoon by SHAUN HOLLIS

“I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains

Of ragged mountain ranges

Of droughts and flooding rains”

I do love this country…. Although I am not so pleased by the drought gripping my slice of it, and am both mesmerized and horrified by the inland sea in Queensland where more than 140,000 farmed animals have been killed in the floods.

The most widely known verse of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem My Country is no doubt being spoken across our wide brown land - at least in city and suburban environments as a romantic analysis of dual disasters which stand to cripple our country.

Mackellar found a way in her poem to beautify what the average person today, be they rugged farmer or suited businessman, finds unfathomable.

Watching a lifetime of work, even generations of effort, wiped out overnight in the case of the Outback Queensland floods, or slowly shrivelling up and dying in the case of South Australia, is far from impressive, but the poet makes the dire palatable.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

We know the rains will come down south some time… and the flooding waters will flow away, the Outback bursting to life in its wake. Just how well placed our country, the livestock industry at least, is to regroup and rebuild is the question.

Maybe the US tariffs have come at the right time… as we are going to need all the head of beef we can muster to restock and rebuild herds across the nation.

In farming it is true that one farmer’s loss is another farmer’s gain… where one property battles there is another able to prosper to either grow or to profit with good stock and produce sales.

Douglas Shire has taken a hit on the agricultural front with the sugar industry collapse, and while the transition, which seems to have so far taken a natural path towards cattle, still in its infancy, the dire situation across an area larger than Victoria in the centre of our state does present opportunities for those already moved over to beef cattle and those looking to.

Cattle will become a hot commodity once again and Far North Queensland looks set to be a strong supplier to the rest of the state. How does that look for Douglas? I hope a promising transition and one done at a greater pace than has been so far seen.

 

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