Twitter – how to avoid dodgy accounts

January 2nd, 2015

This is another post in my “Social media and Farmers” series. There’s two main types of dodgy accounts rural people are likely to encounter. One is the group that everyone on twitter has issues with – spammers (trying to sell you something iffy).  The second are animal rights extremists. Today someone queried an account they […]

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Terra Firma sale of Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC)

November 20th, 2014

It’s two and a half years since I wrote about Ken and Geoff Warriner leaving Consolidated Pastoral Company, saying: “…it will be interesting to see how long Terra Firma retains ownership of CPC.  With few exceptions, overseas investment companies seem to retain Australian cattle station investments for less than five years, so it will be […]

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Meat that isn’t real (artificial, fake, faux, mock, pretend)

October 10th, 2014

You know vegans who tell the rest of us not to eat meat, because methane from cows is causing polar icecaps to melt and bovines are water hogs as they’re drinking but not excreting? And how healthy, wholesome and nutritious a meat-free diet is? And how tasty a vegan or vegetarian diet is? Guess what […]

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Social media use in rural Australia

September 29th, 2014

This is how Australia’s bush grapevine now works. On Saturday I drove home from Longreach, taking photographs along the way. I just got a call from a bloke carting livestock, asking if I was in Charters Towers on Saturday. I’d tweeted a photograph of his roadtrain, refuelling at Charters Towers. It was seen by someone […]

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Realism preferable to perpetuating “superwoman” stereotypes

September 19th, 2014

Young women can be left with false expectations and many older women find it daunting, when faced with a bevy of seemingly ultra-capable superwomen, most of whom steer well clear of mentioning any kind of fallibility (mistakes, and what they aren’t good at). So Alexandra Gartmann’s talk at this week’s QRRRWN* Conference was a breath […]

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Many of our top 100 chief executives are from regional Australia

September 11th, 2014

21% of Australia’s top 100 chief executives were born in regional Australia, according to the “Pathways to CEO” research undertaken by the University of Sydney Business School. It is discussed in today’s Sydney Morning Herald and more on the research will appear in the Australian Financial Review’s “Boss” magazine. When overseas-born chief executives are removed […]

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A Place to Call Home

September 8th, 2014

Are television dramas set in rural Australia, good or bad for the image of the bush? I’ve just finished watching “A Place to Call Home” (recorded on digital TV). Quality in every respect. Excellent story and cinematography, interesting characters and top actors.  The icing on the cake? It’s 100% Australian. Set in the 1950s, it […]

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Why buy Australian grown food?

July 1st, 2014

Woolworths are selling pine nuts that can have a very unpleasant side effect. On Sunday I got a very bitter taste in my mouth when eating dinner. (Beef ribs, since you’re asking.)  Odd, I thought – the rest of those carrots tasted perfectly fine yesterday.  But then it happened again, all day yesterday.  And today.  […]

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The rise & rise of Australian food snobbery

February 7th, 2014

In relation to the SPC cannery, someone recently tweeted, in summary: Canned food is old-fashioned SPC needs to modernise (and produce more relevant products, which people will want to buy) The only people who buy tinned food are the ‘price sensitive’.  (The implication being, tinned food buyers are either peasants or bogans, or both.) Unsurprisingly, […]

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Objective journalism and the ABC

December 29th, 2013

You can give identical film footage, photographs or facts to two different film producers or print editors/journalists and end up with two entirely different stories.  Judicious editing, with specific sounds or music added, can produce polar opposite outcomes (both well away from the truth, if desired). Australian taxpayers fund the ABC so we have a […]

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