Feb2011 MT MEE NEWS
By Ian Wells
Many will have noticed that there has been incessant rain since our last Grapevine edition – as indeed there has been ever since the corresponding edition in 2009. Your writer had to travel into mid NSW in December to see that strangest of sights – a blue sky!
Many will have noticed that there has been incessant rain since our last Grapevine edition – as indeed there has been ever since the corresponding edition in 2009. Your writer had to travel into mid NSW in December to see that strangest of sights – a blue sky!
Our very own Kalahari Downs recorded an impressive 2296mm for the year of 2010 – a little different to the 710mm of 2002 and 793mm of 2006.
And to mid January as I write, 2011 has already yielded nealy 300mm! This has proven to be even more destructive than drought, with slips in almost every Mountain paddock, gullies eroded, rocks piled up against broken fences and dams filled with silt. And while there is grass everywhere, restocker cattle are too dear to offer any margin at all.
Most will know that Anne and Andrew Jeays, two real stalwarts of our community, have decided to move back to footpath country. Andrew as I write has the tragic job of digging out treasured effects from many secret storage places, sorting them into piles for the last rites and then taking them to the tip. Downsize moving is a tragic business – especially for secret men’s stuff.
The Jeays will be much missed – not just as committed leaders in Church and Hall affairs, not just as willing helpers with any community project that is going, not just as tribal elders with wisdom to offer on myriad subjects, but because they are such delightful people.
Of necessity, the Christmas/New Year period was a time for quiet reflection rather than activity – especially as the cricket was just too painful to watch on TV.
And I reflected on the positive things about life on the Mountain – especially on the way in which our Mountain people are willing to hop in and help when asked to do so for the common good. We have seen this of late with things like the Cemetery beautification project, various major Public Hall events and the Look-Out Memorial project. The Wild Dog Fund received enough subscriptions from residents during 2010 to keep our shooter team interested, and they notched up an amazing 108 successes for the year – dogs which by definition had been too cunning to take baits.
But generosity with time and money is a long-standing Mountain tradition – as the history of our little church building reminds us.
I reflected on our good fortune in not being dependent on cropping for our livings. Cattle may be difficult, but the tragedy befalling those Queenslanders growing grain or dryland cotton is almost too cruel to contemplate. After years of crop failures in recurrent drought – and of unrepayable borrowings for the next doomed planting, at last they had a truly amazing winter crop Queensland wide. Financial recovery was in sight at last – the crop was a beauty!
But sadly, most growers couldn’t get it off – and lost all of it. Some because the ground was too wet, some simply because the harvesters were bogged elsewhere, and some because everything disappeared under water.
So it is hardly surprising that one hears credible reports of suicides – they are not reported as such in the papers but, as Bob Katter reminds us, they are real enough.
But I also reflected on our extraordinary good fortune in not sitting on coal deposits or coal seam gas reserves. Those who lose their places to coal mines at least get compensation – usually generous. They can move somewhere else, and can often lease back part of their old holding into the bargain. But not so those unfortunates sitting over gas. Their land becomes criss-crossed with tracks and punctured with drill holes, their stock stray through open gates or are run-over by trucks and their subterranean water reserves are depleted. The aquifers of good and bad water are often intermixed. Where this will eventually leave our precious artesian basin is anybody’s guess. We must think laterally!
Now Google tells me that the average person breaks wind twelve times daily! This is almost incredible, but I must believe in the science. In fact my experiences as a youthful churchgoer do tend to reinforce this – who can forget sitting with watering eyes as those recurrent waves of dreadful miasma floated through the congregation every minute or two!
On further reflection, I remembered from school chemistry lessons that coal seam gas is methane and that these noxious gaseous effluvia are methane also – as many childhood experiments with matches have born exciting witness.
So why on earth can’t Santos et al harness this source and leave the poor farmers alone – and make church services less testing at the same time?
Certainly, some of us are pneumatically challenged as judged by the Google statistic. I can personally just manage the first eight bars or so of Purcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary” first thing in the morning – (not a bad effort really, it has taken years of practice), but that is usually “it” for the day. Like many others, I would be an unreliable energy source.
But perhaps there is hope! In this day and age there is counselling for everything!
And again, groups of hard working ladies – (like our own Anglican Ladies Guild), could be retained all over Queensland to put on special fundraising lunches – of macaroni cheese and baked beans for instance, for the benefit of we poorer performers.
And to mid January as I write, 2011 has already yielded nealy 300mm! This has proven to be even more destructive than drought, with slips in almost every Mountain paddock, gullies eroded, rocks piled up against broken fences and dams filled with silt. And while there is grass everywhere, restocker cattle are too dear to offer any margin at all.
Most will know that Anne and Andrew Jeays, two real stalwarts of our community, have decided to move back to footpath country. Andrew as I write has the tragic job of digging out treasured effects from many secret storage places, sorting them into piles for the last rites and then taking them to the tip. Downsize moving is a tragic business – especially for secret men’s stuff.
The Jeays will be much missed – not just as committed leaders in Church and Hall affairs, not just as willing helpers with any community project that is going, not just as tribal elders with wisdom to offer on myriad subjects, but because they are such delightful people.
Of necessity, the Christmas/New Year period was a time for quiet reflection rather than activity – especially as the cricket was just too painful to watch on TV.
And I reflected on the positive things about life on the Mountain – especially on the way in which our Mountain people are willing to hop in and help when asked to do so for the common good. We have seen this of late with things like the Cemetery beautification project, various major Public Hall events and the Look-Out Memorial project. The Wild Dog Fund received enough subscriptions from residents during 2010 to keep our shooter team interested, and they notched up an amazing 108 successes for the year – dogs which by definition had been too cunning to take baits.
But generosity with time and money is a long-standing Mountain tradition – as the history of our little church building reminds us.
I reflected on our good fortune in not being dependent on cropping for our livings. Cattle may be difficult, but the tragedy befalling those Queenslanders growing grain or dryland cotton is almost too cruel to contemplate. After years of crop failures in recurrent drought – and of unrepayable borrowings for the next doomed planting, at last they had a truly amazing winter crop Queensland wide. Financial recovery was in sight at last – the crop was a beauty!
But sadly, most growers couldn’t get it off – and lost all of it. Some because the ground was too wet, some simply because the harvesters were bogged elsewhere, and some because everything disappeared under water.
So it is hardly surprising that one hears credible reports of suicides – they are not reported as such in the papers but, as Bob Katter reminds us, they are real enough.
But I also reflected on our extraordinary good fortune in not sitting on coal deposits or coal seam gas reserves. Those who lose their places to coal mines at least get compensation – usually generous. They can move somewhere else, and can often lease back part of their old holding into the bargain. But not so those unfortunates sitting over gas. Their land becomes criss-crossed with tracks and punctured with drill holes, their stock stray through open gates or are run-over by trucks and their subterranean water reserves are depleted. The aquifers of good and bad water are often intermixed. Where this will eventually leave our precious artesian basin is anybody’s guess. We must think laterally!
Now Google tells me that the average person breaks wind twelve times daily! This is almost incredible, but I must believe in the science. In fact my experiences as a youthful churchgoer do tend to reinforce this – who can forget sitting with watering eyes as those recurrent waves of dreadful miasma floated through the congregation every minute or two!
On further reflection, I remembered from school chemistry lessons that coal seam gas is methane and that these noxious gaseous effluvia are methane also – as many childhood experiments with matches have born exciting witness.
So why on earth can’t Santos et al harness this source and leave the poor farmers alone – and make church services less testing at the same time?
Certainly, some of us are pneumatically challenged as judged by the Google statistic. I can personally just manage the first eight bars or so of Purcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary” first thing in the morning – (not a bad effort really, it has taken years of practice), but that is usually “it” for the day. Like many others, I would be an unreliable energy source.
But perhaps there is hope! In this day and age there is counselling for everything!
And again, groups of hard working ladies – (like our own Anglican Ladies Guild), could be retained all over Queensland to put on special fundraising lunches – of macaroni cheese and baked beans for instance, for the benefit of we poorer performers.
What a good idea! I think that I’ll take it up with our Councillor Adrian.
