New underling started today. He's pretty bloody good, too. Just ask him, he'll tell you. I give him to christmas. Apparently there might be another one on the way.
The underling is a nice bloke, usually. He could be the poster-boy for the Rural-hick Association (tall, skinny, redhead with no lower jaw), but he's a nice bloke. When he's here.
Trouble is, he's a bit keen on having a cold drink on a hot day. About six weeks ago he went to a funeral. He didn't come back for a week. Last Friday the local publican, who is a saint*, lent the underling a digital camera so that he could go to Collarenebri to take some photos of a bus he (the publican) was interested in buying.
The underling has not been sighted since, although there are umconfirmed reports of him wandering about Narrabri. No phone calls, nothing. While I am in favour of employing people with problems, this has gone on far enough. I am currently working about 90 to 110 hours a week to try and do his job as well as mine. Cut him loose, I say. Anybody want a job (casual - until about March?)
*The Publican is Net-Savvy and may well stumble across this page one day. I figure Brownie points are there for the taking.
Being the title of a song (which may or may not have been a cover) by a band called Western Flyer, which featured Matt Taylor from Chain, the first half-decent blues band Australia produced.
Anyhoo, I do remember when I was young, it was about two Fridays ago and JAFAasked me a few questions to do with a photo I posted. Well, I'm over my shits, so I'll answer them now. Those of you who want some light entertainment can wander off elsewhere.
JAFA, the field (cotton is grown in fields, not paddocks, don't know why. Could be the American influence from the early days of the industries resurgence in the sixties.) is about 110ha, the run length being 750 metres and the fall from head-ditch to tail-drain is roughly 1-in-3000, which isn't as steep as I'm used to, but it seems to work well. This field has a fair sized sand-hole in the centre of it, so that area has been used to satisfy the legislative requirement of having a non-transgenic trap crop of 6% of the total area planted. In English that means we put some Pigeon Pea there.
As this is the first crop put into this field, preparation time is a fairly nebulous number, separating what constitutes preparing for a crop from developing a field is a bit tricky, so I'll make it up and pretend there was a crop in there last year.
Preparation begins directly after picking; the picked -plants are mulched, the 'stumps' are root-cut and the stubble is incorporated into the soil. The hills are busted up to reduce compaction and then pulled back into sets of eight. Usually, a pass is made with a rolling cultivator to bust up the clods and make for a finer tilth. On one of those passes with the tractor, the field is fertilised, either with gas or (preferably, in my opinion) a solid fertiliser. Usually at least one pass with the spray-boom in that time, also.
At a guess, I'd say that it would take about 120 hours of tractor work, not counting maintenance and repair to the irrigation system, throwing syphons, etc.
I'm pretty much out of stuff to say that will fit in a short post, so I'll give you a quote and you can guess who wrote it:
"To the claims of conformity no man may yield and yet remain free at all."
Very large gift* to the person who identifies the author and the work it was taken from. I haven't read it in about twenty years, so it may be slightly inaccurate, but it's close enough.
*Note: Gift does not actually exist.
Which is also the title of a really crappy British fillum.
So, all this week I've been doing fifteen hour days on the cultivator in order to get it all done before irrigation, which is due to commence tomorrow, although as I type, it is pissing down rain so maybe the irrigation will be put back a day or so. This is a shorter, less cumbersome sentence. We finished the cultivation on Friday afternoon, with a new personal record of 440ha in seven days. To celebrate, we went to the pub (What did you expect, an audience with the Pope?). This time of year a few of the seasonal workers are starting to move into the area. In larger centres, a lot of these are locals who divide their year up into cotton chipping, module building, stick-picking etc., etc. Here, the majority of them appear to be uni students, backpackers and kids travelling around. I'm surprised more people don't do it, really. It's a cheap way to travel and you get to meet a lot of interesting people.
Saturday morning I was a bit average when the stockman and I went to the Ridge to do a bit of shopping. We did a few touro things as the stockman had never had much of a look around the Ridge, Art Galleries and the like. I also rescued a little puppy that fell off a woman's lap as she was riding her motor-scooter. Actually, he looked pretty funny skidding along on his nose with his arse in the air. No harm done, though. We did some shopping and decided to come home via the tourist route. We headed towards Collarenebri, then north for a while to a property that the stockman had done about 1,000 acres of selective clearing on with a blade plough. Removing all of the Sandalwood, Dogwood, Cypress and the smaller Wilga, Coolibah and Belah had increased the carrying capacity of the paddock by about 1,000%, with 750 cattle grazing on it for about six months, with the silk sorghum still three feet high in places and the buffel just starting to take off. While we were there, we were having a look at the bloke's sheep and noticed that he had a lot of lambs and ewes that were in a bad way. Some of them were wormy, but more of them were blown. None of the crookies had a chance of survival. We didn't take any guns with us, so it took an extra half-hour to get off the property as we stopped each time we saw really crook sheep and knocked the lamb's head on a rock or cut the ewe's throat.
I don't know if we were still on country owned by the same bloke or not, but about five kays down the road we went through a mob of ewes and lambs. The ewes were all fat and lively and the lambs were all frisky and recently marked and mulesed (they were still scabbed over). Have I told you that PETA are fuckwits?
Meanwhile, it was about five o'clock by this time, so we decided to go the back way to Dirran and have a feed at the pub before heading home. Rain had made the black-soil road a bit of a challenge and it took us about an hour and a half to go the sixty kays into Dirran.
Food, more beer, then home by eleven. A very pleasant day. I only regret that I forgot to take my camera so you urban-dwellers could see the cruelty that PETA would like little baa-lambs to suffer.
It has come to my attention that some persons are still having trouble telling the difference between the magnificent Redneck and the tawdry Bogan. I don't know, you people aren't trying are you?
How can I explain it? Let's try similes, shall we? In much the same way that all taxi-cabs are motor-cars, but not all motor-cars are taxi-cabs so it is with Bogans and Rednecks; all Bogans are Rednecks, but not all Rednecks are Bogans. In much the same way that ecological and climactic conditions can trigger biological changes that turn grasshoppers into locusts, so it is with rednecks and Bogans.
Scientists have yet to isolate the exact moment of change, but it has been observed that you will rarely find statistically significant numbers of bogans in an area of 10,000 square kilometres that does not have an overall population of 10,000 persons. Conversely, Rednecks are almost non-existent in an area with a population of more than 20 per sq.km. These numbers can fluctuate, of course; population transigence, latitude and distance from the coastal fringe all have an effect.
Some early signs that Rednecks are becoming Boganized include a desire to sell the ute, a switch from rum to bourbon as the tipple of choice, a reduction in the amount of country music used to accompany mating rituals and a change from blaming the government (for everything except the weather, and even then...,) to relying on the government as a source of nourishment; which is taken in the form of Winnie blues and bourbon, tapering off to Drum and goon just before the next handout.
One way of separating the dreaded Bogan from the wholesome Redneck is to take a family group of them out into a paddock and let them roam wild for a time. Listen to their primitive attempts at communication. Your Bogan group will say things like "Ooh, look Nev, aren't them trees noice."
"Yeah Charlene, they're really..., Indiana...!, Indiana! Get out 'o that mud, you little shit! Your not bringin' that back in the Commodore!"
"Maddyssyn, go get us me smokes, love, better get another UDL out of the esky for Daddy, too Darl."
Whereas the Rednecks will be making noises like "Eh, Kev, have a look at the way little Brucie's hanging out of that tree. He'll break his arm again in a minute."
"Yeah that last time was funny wasn't it Narelle. I reckon little Suzie'll break his fall this time, but. Have a look at this dirt would ya? I reckon you could have a wank onto the ground here and grow babies."
Another way to separate the tribes is to hold a working bee at the local school. The Bogan women will hassle their mates to attend for weeks. Without success. Whereas the entire male Redneck population will turn up, including those without kids. All will be grumbling. 75% of the female population, including unjoined heifers, will attend, with nourishment.
Any further questions, do not hesitate to ask. I exist to shed light on a dark field of research.
I am fiercely patriotic. I am proud of this country and all that it represents. The achievements of its citizens; from the stump-jump plough and the rotary clothes-hoist to the aeronautical black-box flight recorder all make my chest swell. Sure, I don't always agree with our leaders, but I firmly believe that all of them act with the best of intentions.
There is a sore point, however. Can we do something about our national anthem? It is the most suckful, trite, corny and uninspiring piece of shit ever inflicted on an unsuspecting public under the guise of music in the history of pieces of shit.
Every morning as I start work 2 WEB (AKA Radio B&S) plays a version of Advance Australia Fair sung by the kids at Lightning Ridge Primary School and it hurts. It isn't the kids' fault, either, although I'm not a fan of 'cute' kids. Pavarotti couldn't make that piece of crap sound good. To have to listen to it at 5a.m. is too much.
I don't sleep well. Never have. I consider it to be a good night's sleep when I get four consecutive hours in. Because of this, when I go to bed, I leave the telly on one of the music stations or the 'cable' radio stations, so that I have something to listen to when I wake up. Last night, I left the telly on ABC to listen to Rage.
It would seem that last night was the official Night Of The Bogan; f'rinstrance, right now Cold Chisel is playing. Some other 'highlights' include Suzi Quatro, Motley Crue, Poison, Ozzie Osbourne, Alice Cooper and the gods of Boganology - The Radiators.
Of course, they also played my first crush - The Runaways, with Cherie Curie strutting around in her lingerie, made me feel young again.
Fresh out of ideas this morning. I was going to do a Remembrance Day post yesterday, but got caught up in a few things. Oh well...
Have a look at a few mutants. That ought to keep the plebs happy.
Oops, you weren't meant to see that last bit.
It's not often that I support lawsuits, but I hope this one succeeds. I doubt it, though.
In the Herald-Sun today...
Sheep farmers fight back against PETA 10nov04
AUSTRALIAN woolgrowers have filed a lawsuit against People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals to stop them boycotting Australian wool.Australian Wool
Innovation yesterday filed two claims in the Federal Court to stop PETA from
pressuring clothing retailers.
AWI claims PETA has breached the Trade Practices Act and is seeking a court order to make PETA publish corrective advertising.
US retail giant Abercrombie and Fitch last month banned Australian merino wool after PETA threatened a campaign against it and called on Australia to stop live sheep exports and the practice of mulesing.
AWI chairman Ian McLachlan said it was time to set the record straight. "They are damaging the industry," he said. The matter will be heard next month.
The trouble with this lawsuit is, apart from the fact that it is proceeding in Australia and the real damage is being done in the U.S., merely by prosecuting these sanctimonious, ignorant fuckwits, you are furthering their cause, at least in their eyes. Give these morons a chance to martyr themselves and they'll leap at it. Anything to increase their hold on 'the high moral ground'. I hope they all get flyblown.
Which is the title of my Dad's favourite movie, it being about speedway and all. The fact that it was filmed at the first club he rode for in England (Yarmouth) probably helps, as does the fact that most of the riders in the action shots were his mates. Don't know if it has a storyline, neither does Dad.
All of which has nothing to do with the subject of this post. Actually, this post doesn't actually have a subject, so I guess it can't have nothing to do with it. Or something.
Anyway, while there's still a chance of brownie points being on offer from Adrian and I've still got my photographer mojo working, here are some Coolibah trees, complete with billabong, sort of. In the interest of diversity, here is a Caterpillar D6 that has done more hours than I have.
Further to yesterday's post, here are a few of the cows we bought. This is what they will look like in a few months.
Actually, they probably won't, they look younger than is usual for the feedlot. Normally they're backgrounded for a while before they're put onto feed, as well.
When you trundle around the suburbs, particularly the inner suburbs, a common sight are old men creeping along in Zimmer frames or on those little electric tricycle doohickemmies. Most of them look fairly content with life and are at ease with the fact that they are slowly crumbling to pieces. On the rare occasions that somebody who is not - a) a family member fulfilling their filial duties, or b) a counter jumper serving them in a store - actually stops to speak to them, they will talk for hours as they are all starved for meaningful human contact.
In the bush, it is different. To the best of my knowledge, there are only three blokes seventy or older who live within thirty k's of me. One of them is my boss's Dad, who has about eight or nine grandchildren and is supposedly retired. Which means that these days he only works forty or fifty hours a week and gets more done in that time than most thirty year olds are capable of. He is an old grazier - sheep, mostly, changing the emphasis to cattle in the last twenty years or so. He never stops asking me questions about cotton - "Why do you do this?", "Why is it better that way?" etc., etc. He has no experience farming whatsoever, doesn't want to go farming, but loves to know how things work. Sharp as a tack, hard as nails and always good-humoured, he is a good man to have around.
There is another old fella I see in the pub most weeks who is in his late seventies. He is the head stockman on a large property nearby. He still spends a full day in the saddle, breaking his own horses, of course. I've never seen him without a smile on his face, old bugger still charms the laydeez, too. In fact, he's one of the most charismatic men I've ever met.
The third bloke is an old aboriginal stockman who has the largest hands I've ever seen. In his eighties, he retired last year and moved into town. Every now and then, he wanders over to the pub and takes up a spot and has a couple of quiet beers. I've never seen him initiate a conversation, but he is happy to talk to anybody who wants to talk to him - which is most of us. He has some fascinating stories to tell and if I were as dedicated as Adrian, I would take a few notes and write some of them here. He also has a very good-looking grand-daughter who stayed with him for a while to help him settle in. She's gone now. Pity.
None of these fellers has ever had a bad word to say about anybody, except camp-drafters, who are almost universally disliked. All these blokes are still active and involved in the community, the community, in turn are involved with these blokes, recognising that they and others like them, pioneered this district. None of these blokes are lonely, in fact none of them are ever alone unless they want to be.
So, my message to old buggers is - get out and do something, sitting around feeling sorry for yourself becomes a self-fulfilling philosophy.
For JAFA, who is nagging me to show more pictures, here is a photo of a tractor (another one) that I drove 350k's up and down the Castlereagh Highway yesterday, dropping a stick rake off. Note the front right tyre. We had to stop six times in the last 90k's to punp it up again.
And for a bit of local flavour, here is a photo of a cattle truck about to cross the levee bank outside the workshop today. We bought 250-odd cows from the property next door and this bloke got them here in two trips. When they leave here in about twelve months' time it would take him three trips and we'd have some left over.
These days it seems you can make a living doing pretty much anything, dog psychiatrist, colour therapist, feng shui consultant etc. I'm thinking of getting some cards printed...
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I thought that I would show you a couple of photos of stuff. To start with, here are someviewsfrom my window today. And a look at a tractor. Exciting, huh?
And this one is for F.X. , who wants people to post photos of their cats on Fridays. I don't know why.
You know what's really nice? Apart from little puppies and old married couples who still hold hands?
Laying in bed listening to the sound of rain on a tin roof. It's been raining here since about 1 a.m. and doesn't look like stopping just yet. The mutants will love it!
Did you know that Sir Walter Scott called his famous novel of chivalry "Ivanhoe" because he didn't want to give the story away in the title?
It has come to my attention that some of you suburban chardonnay slurpers have been using the terms 'bogan' and 'redneck' as if they were interchangeable. THEY AREN'T. Bogans and rednecks are different, although at times similar, creatures. To say they are synonymous is an insult to rednecks and a gratuitous (and false) piece of flattery to bogans.
Look at it another way. You wouldn't like it if I called your Chardonnay... ummm... unwooded chardonnay, would you? It's just not right, is it?
Unless it is.
Unwooded, I mean.
Then it would be right.
But, anyway, bogans (ptooey) and rednecks are not the same thing.
When you think 'bogan', what do you think? In true John Laws style, I'll save you the bother and tell you what you think... you think full mullet, acid-wash jeans and a red 1981 VH Commodore with one blue mudguard and a 'No Fear' sticker on the rear window. Whereas your redneck has a 1984 WB ute with a 253 V8 (which he says is a 308), Moleys and a no. 3 or 4.
I think where a lot of the confusion comes in is the fact that the bogan (urbanus yobbioso) has overrun the habitat of the redneck (ruralis renegadus) in a lot of the more closely settled areas. In fact, the Eastern coastal strip from Geelong in the south as far as Yeppoon in the North has been completely infested by Bogans for nearly twenty years now. Even further north, there are rapidly growing enclaves of the insidious bogan in Townsville and Cairns, fouling the otherweuise pristine grazeland of the majestic redneck. Even worse than that, little effort is required to track down the prolific, but stupid, investor (comus innus, spinnerari)
Once the investor gets a foothold, bogans will proliferate.otherwisegraze-landlittleeffort
I looked back over that last bit about several times and I'm fucked if I knbow what it means. Beer wins again.
George W. Bush.
In a close one that will be dragged through the courts.
Does it make any difference?
Not really, the major parties in most countries these days are interchangeable, more interested in getting into power than with what they're going to do with the power when they get it. Witness Latham's "admitting" his Tasmanian Forestry policy was a mistake because it cost Labor seats. I thought that the idea was to develop the correct policies according to your parties philosophy, then sell those policies; not to develop policies on the basis of popularity and voter attraction.
Following on from my earlier post about motorcycle accidents and in response to Stilt's comment on said post (go check out his new site by the way, only two posts old. In years to come you'll be able to say "I was there before he sold out") I thought I'd offer up one more accident.
This one didn't happen to me, but to a person who may or may not be related to me. Many years ago the said person was going out with a girl who lived in the Snowy Mountains. It was winter and the only transport this person had was a Honda CB175 motorbike. Like most people who may be related to me, this bloke would follow his dick off a cliff so the little Honda toiled manfully into the mountains and back on quite a few occasions. On one particularly cold night Our Hero decided that it was just too cold to make it all the way back home so he decided to stop at a mates' house for a rest.
Pulling up in the driveway, Our Hero went to put his feet down... and couldn't. It was so cold that the water splashing up from the road had frozen over, sticking his feet to the pegs. Ker plunk. Luckily, he fell towards the house and was able to rouse the unsuspecting mate from his slumbers by head-butting the wall with his helmet.
Although it was a nut-numbingly cold night, the engine was still hot and burned the shit out of his leg before managed to wriggle free of the beast.
As the regular reader may have noticed, I've changed the sub-title of this page and updated my profile information. You might say that I've come out. I'm getting really tired of being abused by people because I am a "redneck." By redneck, most of the abusers mean 'somebody who disagrees with me'. You see, these people think that if you have differing opinions from their own on subjects like, ohhh, 'reconciliation', tertiary entry requirements, animal rights, gay rights (I'm referring here to the Anglican Church in particular) or government funding of various areas then you are by definition a redneck. Apparently, it is not possible to arrive at a dissenting opinion in any other way.
Well fuck'em. If not being brainwashed by trendy suburban 'intellectuals' makes me a redneck, then fair enough, I'm a redneck. And fucking proud of it. In much the same way that Gays and Lesbians call themselves fags and dykes, not to take the sting out of the words, but to highlight the differences that supposedly contain the sting, then a redneck shall I be.
