Aussie cockies keep us supplied with fabulous produce

Our land of extremes

As Dorothea Mackellar expressed so well in her poem "My Country",
Australia historically is a land of extremes, as the farmers well know;
devastatingly depressing, as they struggle with stress and anxiety,
loss of hope and collectively the loss of millions of dollars in income.

My Country 

by Dorothea Mackellar (1885 - 1968)

The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes.

Of ordered woods and gardens

Is running in your veins,

Strong love of grey-blue distance

Brown streams and soft dim skies

I know but cannot share it,

My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror -

The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest

All tragic to the moon,

The sapphire-misted mountains,

The hot gold hush of noon.

Green tangle of the brushes,

Where lithe lianas coil,

And orchids deck the tree-tops

And ferns the warm dark soil.

Mackellar was an Australian poet and fiction writer.  My Country, was written at age 19 in 1904, while homesick in England. 

From - The Australian Jan 11   2011 - Floods in Queensland.

Mental health organisation, Lifeline, is preparing for a surge in rural depression as, after years of drought, farmers watch their bumper harvests being washed away by floods.'

New standards are obviously needed to prevent urban development in flood prone areas. The environmental and social consequences are often overridden with the primary interest being the economic value of the land. Farmers today understand their forefathers didn't farm appropriately for Australian conditions but today's farmer has a different appreciation.

Hopefully, the following years with full dams and replenished underground water storage, will be more positive for the Aussie cockies who keep us supplied with fabulous produce and by the way, they are not subsidised. Flood can follow drought but even if there is little rain in the period to follow, good harvest will normally occur due to the underground storage and moist soils.

"We need the Rains"

Clara waxes lyrical - "We need the Rains"

 360 degrees horizon 

Following a visit to catch up with G's family in Dooen - Wimmera - Victoria
Dooen Pub is alive and well today and still fulfills a vital purpose as a meeting place for farmers, residents and travellers to tell their tales, share time with others to renew their faith that the arid earth will be quenched in time. Clara

Wheat silos near Dooen


 

Dooen Hotel opened in 1876
 (Photographed 2004)

 

 



"We need the Rains"
Clara -  Easter 2001  - for G

Dooen Pub

What'chya been doin' all this time

Since they built you in 1876?

On a vast dry plain beside this endless road
Only silos to interrupt the wide horizon.
"We need the rains," you must have said,
and still do now.


You've quenched the thirsts, heard the tales
Of those brave folk who toiled and sweated
Endured the drought yet kept their faith 
That the parched earth would yield its golden bounty.
"We need the rains," they must have said,
and still do now.


Horse and cart; semi-trailers, cars 
Bring a thirsty crowd to drink, to tell their tales 
Share time with others to renew their faith
That this arid earth will be quenched in time
"We need the rains," they must have said,
and still do now.