Keeping up with the Joneses of Coolibah Station

December 3rd, 2011

Recent episodes of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ have touched on a number of issues associated with remote area living.  These lifestyle/business management differences range from unique education arrangements (eg remote area students are enrolled in school of the air/distance education and meet their ‘classmates’ only rarely), medical issues (eg. the need to travel long distances […]

Read the rest of this entry »

MLA Social Media Conversations Workshops – Charters Towers, Katherine & Katanning

November 23rd, 2011

Just back from attending the Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) inaugural ‘social media conversations’ workshop in Charters Towers.  A very useful and enjoyable two days – with enough new information to make the head spin (next step is to put the new stuff into practice), great company and interesting discussion.  In fact, I’d love to […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping up with the Joneses of Coolibah Station, on NZ TV, and rural television

November 19th, 2011

“Keeping up with the Joneses’ of Coolibah Station (NT) is now screening on television in other countries. ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ debuted on TV One in New Zealand today, in prime time – 7pm on a Saturday night (filling the gap made by Country Calendars break for the summer).  And if website traffic is […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Humans obtain more energy from cooked meat

November 10th, 2011

Harvard University researchers have released the results of a very thorough study which measured the availability of energy from eating meat or sweet potato that is still raw or has been cooked. The observations are fascinating – in summary – more net energy is obtained from eating cooked meat than raw.  No wonder my hairdresser is as thin as a stick, […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Foreign ownership of rural land is restricted or even prohibited, in many other countries

November 9th, 2011

Xavier Duff has included some interesting facts in a  Weekly Times article on foreign investment.  He mentions that foreign ownership of rural land is regulated in many other countries.  Other countries, presumably most of them, require that all rural land owned by foreigners is registered with the federal government (eg USA).  Some countries restrict the amount of land that can […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Lyn White, Animals Australia campaigner, Australian of the Year finalist

November 9th, 2011

The Weekly Times are running a poll on whether Lyn White should be Australian of the Year.  Lyn White is the Communications Director for the animal rights extremist organisation, Animals Australia, and Lyn was instrumental in providing footage to the 4-Corners programme that resulted in the live export ban.  Doubts have since been cast about the reliability […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Cargill

November 8th, 2011

David Whitford (with Doris Burke) has written a comprehensive article on a famously private company, Cargill, titled  ‘Cargill:  Inside the quiet giant that rules the food business’.  The article was written for Fortune and appears on the CNN Money website, and is well worth a read by anyone interested in food security, quality and affordability […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Vestey cattle properties resumed by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez

November 3rd, 2011

The British company ‘Vestey Group’  was founded in 1897 by brothers William and Edmund Vestey.  Around the early 1900’s the Vestey family company had begun purchasing agricultural land in South American countries and Australia, and over the decades the company developed vertical integration – cattle stations, meatworks (eg at Wyndham [WA], Bullocky Point in Darwin [NT] and Lakes Creek […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Our quarantine breach punishments are a sad joke

November 1st, 2011

A Peruvian bloke found guilty of smuggling an Andean saddle-backed tamarin monkey and a yellow-footed tortoise into Australia in July last year, just received a $6,000 fine.  It’s also mentioned that he aspires to be a doctor and is in his second year of a medical degree.   Well he can’t be blind and deaf and has a reasonable education, so […]

Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping up with the Joneses, Episode 9 on Channel Ten

October 31st, 2011

Keeping up with the Joneses, Episode 9 – back to work at last.  We discover that the chopper crash which we’ve seen glimpses of since the first series screened last year, was in fact not an NAH chopper.  Milton described it as a ‘neighbours’ chopper.  VH-HYE was manufactured in 1990 and had been registered to Venlock Pty […]

Read the rest of this entry »