The BBC is in the midst of screening a TV\u00a0series on the world’s grasslands, called ‘Grasslands – Roots of Power’.\u00a0 Included is\u00a0a clip featuring Australian chopper mustering, called ‘Australian Helicopter Cowboys’.\u00a0 It features Territorian Ben Tapp and another chopper pilot,\u00a0Rankin Garland,\u00a0mustering a couple of thousand head last year on the Tapp’s Maryfield station.\u00a0 Beautifully filmed over\u00a0ten days and edited for maximum dramatic effect, viewers would be left with the unfortunate view that cattle are galloped from one end of the paddock to the other – apparently 50km in this case.\u00a0\u00a0No cattleman canters the fat off cattle if they can possibly avoid it; there are times when cattle may be hurried up, for example when being yarded, but the rest of the time they are left to poke along quietly\u00a0at their own pace.\u00a0 Viewers would also be left with the view that helicopter mustering is more dangerous than it is, due to the voiceover statement ‘every year about 10 pilots crash and burn’, which may be taken literally.\u00a0 Few crashed mustering choppers catch on fire, and while there are a number of accidents each year (some fatal), pilots and passengers often escape with minor injuries or even completely unscathed.\u00a0 As the saying goes, ‘there are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no old, bold pilots’.\u00a0 The vast majority of chopper mustering accidents are due to pilot error.<\/p>\n
So it’s great dramatic viewing and no doubt is an interesting comparison to migrating African herds (as mentioned in the voiceover), but ‘Australian Helicopter Cowboys’ gives people with no first-hand knowledge quite the wrong impression of Australian cattle mustering.<\/p>\n
And I really wish visiting English film crews would use locally used terms.\u00a0 Instead, so often,\u00a0cattle stations are called \u00a0‘ranches’, swamps ‘billabongs’, ringers\/stockmen ‘cowboys’ \u00a0and mobs ‘herds’.<\/p>\n
The visit to Ben Tapp’s cattle station was organised by rancoutuer Phil O’Brien, author of\u00a0 the very witty book,\u00a0‘101 Adventures that got me absolutely nowhere’.<\/p>\n
Presumably it’s sheer co-incidence, but Ben Tapp’s Maryfield station was put on the market for sale late last year.<\/p>\n
A 4-part BBC programme screened in 2008\u00a0 and more recently on SBS television in Australia, is called ‘Tropic of Capricorn – Australia’.\u00a0 It\u00a0features a clip filmed on Peter and Donna Batt of Eldwick station, southwest of Stonehenge (Western Queensland).\u00a0 So named of course because it’s a naturally bare, stony region.\u00a0 \u00a0It is mentioned that the Batt’s have not had good rain for 7 years, however it is not mentioned in the clip that rainfall in this region has always been very variable.\u00a0 In fact it’s often said that in western Queensland,\u00a0in any ten year stretch, there will be 3 good years, 3 absolute horror years and 4 so-so years.\u00a0 Droughts and floods are not new inventions.\u00a0 And this is amply explained by the large size of properties and low stock carrying capacity \u00a0in the region.\u00a0 The closer the settlement (smaller properties and closer towns), the more historically reliable the rainfall has been\u00a0and the better the soil.\u00a0 And the converse is true – large properties running few stock mean the soil is not particularly fertile and\/or the rainfall has always been unreliable.\u00a0 \u00a0Presumably the long-term weather variability is mentioned\u00a0before or\u00a0after this\u00a0film clip, but maybe not, if the BBC is intent on promoting the\u00a0belief that Global Warming is responsible for the long dry\u00a0spell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Peter and Donna Batt are still on Eldwick and they’ve since had good rain.<\/p>\n
It must be said that the\u00a0presenter\u00a0of the ‘Tropic of Capricorn’ series Simon Reeve\u00a0does an excellent job,\u00a0with a sensitive and diplomatic interviewing manner.\u00a0\u00a0Africa, Madagascar\u00a0and South America are also visited in the series circumnavigating the Tropic of Capricorn, and it’s great viewing.<\/p>\n
Giving television viewers a misleading view of the Australian bush is so easily done – and the viewing public tend to believe that what is presented to them in a television documentary is the whole truth, and not slanted in a particular direction.\u00a0 It pays to remember that the full story and important\u00a0facts are almost always glossed over or omitted\u00a0in pursuit of maximising compelling viewing, and television production crews often arrive on site with plenty of pre-conceived opinions and plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The BBC is in the midst of screening a TV\u00a0series on the world’s grasslands, called ‘Grasslands – Roots of Power’.\u00a0 Included is\u00a0a clip featuring Australian chopper mustering, called ‘Australian Helicopter Cowboys’.\u00a0 It features Territorian Ben Tapp and another chopper pilot,\u00a0Rankin Garland,\u00a0mustering a couple of thousand head last year on the Tapp’s Maryfield station.\u00a0 Beautifully filmed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,8,10,11,217],"tags":[100,166,179,213,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1141"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}