Attack of the degree wielding experts

Hotel Charleville.

Dodgy, don't stay there.

So, I've been out at sunny Charleville for work for a few days this week.

An interesting little place, I actually had quite a good time. We went out there to have a look at how a company which we manage a chunk of funding for was spending our dough. The dough is generally for landcare type projects - conservation with real results, I suppose.

We went to the RSL with a bloke who is a roo shooter.

Got into an interesting conversation about "degree wielding experts" that come out form the city, think they're the smartest person in the room, and don't talk to the locals.

Because they're scientists, and they're economists, and they've been to uni. Therefore they must know best.

Typical yokel comment right?

The bloke's a roo shooter, for god's sake.

Of course, just like the young gunslinger that rides into town and picks a fight with the old hand, it's not real bright to start throwing your weight around when you don't know what the other blokes holding.

A roo shooter that used to be a hippy surfer with a long series of letters after his name, if he was enough of a wanker to want to do that.

Anyway, it was an interesting conversation.

In the end, it just boiled down to one thing - there are NO correct answers.

We sit in the city and carry on about global warming, when the farmers can actually see it. And it seems we have the nerve to assume they are all rednecks that just want to rape the earth.

Of course, there are more than a few of them too, rednecks I mean. But they're not all morons.

An example - an idealistic public servant tells a local sheep farmer that he must start thinking about carbon offset trading. The world is in trouble and you can't just go around denuding the land with your cloven hoofed devil spawn. You need to do something proactive.

So, says the farmer, sort of like the deal I have with a large mining company where they pay me to plant trees and not exercise my clearing licenses? The one I went and negotiated five years ago?

Ummmm, yep, just like that.

I know I'm being a bit all over the place, and I'm well aware that these types of stories are really the minority.

Most farmers aren't doing the right thing, and most will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new world.

The danger is lumping people into one group and treating them like children, and alienating the people that are going to be able to help fix this problem the world has created.

These landholders control most of the country, and we certainly aren't going to fix things by driving less cars in the cities.

Anyway, here are some photos from the trip.

The Warrego River from out the back of the Waltzing Matilda Motel.
And again.


The Warrego River again, but at 6 in the morning.

A place called the trucking reserve. It's a couple of thousand acres where cattle used to be rested on long trips, and it's being regenerated.

Cheers.