NAPCo selling Roxborough Downs

April 4th, 2009

Roxborough Downs, located SW of Mt Isa (on the road from Boulia to Alice Springs), is to be sold to fund expansion of NAPCo’s Wainui Feedlot, located west of Toowoomba on Queensland’s Darling Downs. The agent is Dick Allpass of Elders.

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Farmers are uneducated peasants who destroy the landscape and cause global warming

April 3rd, 2009

In today’s Sydney Morning Herald newspaper Paul Myers, freelance journalist and former Rural Press General Manager, former editor of The Bulletin and R.M. William’s Outback Magazine, has written an excellent piece on the woeful state of the general public’s image of Australian farmers and graziers. Paul rightly points out that the world only grows enough […]

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National Vegetarian Week & How does being vegetarian save the planet?

April 1st, 2009

An article by Natascha Mirosch in the Brisbane Courier Mail on ‘National Vegetarian Week’, is filled with subjective steering such as: ‘most Australians… still have a heavy, meat-based diet’. Heavy? Does she mean like a lead weight? And another beauty: ‘while vegetarians such as…found their way to a meatless diet purely because of a distaste […]

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‘Australia’ movie available on DVD in Australia now

March 26th, 2009

The DVD of Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Australia’ movie was available for sale on Thursday 26 March, in ‘Sanity’ music shops, 1 week earlier than had been publicised.

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Marie Mahood

March 23rd, 2009

Well known rural resident and author Marie Mahood died earlier this month and her funeral was held in Mackay on 18 March. Marie wrote a number of books, the best known of which is probably ‘Icing on the Damper’. She and her husband Joe battled away on ‘Mongrel Downs’ station in the Northern Territory’s Tanami, […]

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Macquarie’s Paraway Pastoral Company

March 23rd, 2009

Paraway Pastoral Company is the trading name for the Macquarie Pastoral Fund. Set up in 2007, seven properties were apparently purchased in the Riverina district of NSW, including well known Merino sheep studs Pooginook and Stud Park North (near Jerilderie), Steam Plains (between Conargo & Carrathool), mixed sheep & cropping property The Bulls Run (west […]

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Australian cattle station sales

March 21st, 2009

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a comprehensive and interesting overview of cattle station corporate ownership changes over the last 6-12 months, with comments on expected changes. Written by Paul Myers, the unusually good quality article well illustrates the fact that he’s been writing about Australian agriculture for several decades (as distinct from the usual […]

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Uranium mining – radioactive waste or cakes of export uranium could be in your backyard soon

March 19th, 2009

Imagine if the cargo dumped into the sea off South East Queensland recently was cakes of uranium being exported, instead of 32 containers of ammonium nitrate. Imagine if the recent truck crash between Cloncurry and Mt Isa had also been carrying uranium (it spilled ammonium nitrate), or one of the trains that has crashed in […]

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‘Go Green, Go Veg, Save the Planet’ advertising on SBS television

March 16th, 2009

At the end of a long day I’m sitting peacefully watching government-funded SBS telly at peak hour (around 7.30pm) and up pops this ad showing a pie chart, with the top third taken up by cows. We are exhorted to ‘go green, go veg, save the planet’, because methane produced by livestock is causing global […]

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‘Australia’ film released on DVD and Blue Ray in the U.S. & Australia, March 2009

March 5th, 2009

On March 3rd ‘Australia’ the movie was released on DVD and Blue Ray in the U.S. Disappointingly, apparently the DVD only includes 2 scenes that were not included in the completed film, although more extras are included on Blue Ray. This sounds like a massive missed opportunity – I know a truckload of top quality […]

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