Another classic quote regarding representation of rural Australia in urban media:<\/p>\n
‘But this being Queensland, the owner, a stubborn 80-year-old grazier who’d live on the block all his life, refused to sell to the government at any price.’<\/p>\n
The article concerns the preservation of the red-finned blue-eye fish whose natural territory is confined to a tiny number of natural springs on Edgbaston station, north of Aramac (CW Qld).<\/p>\n
Those who immediately understand what is wrong with the above quote will recognise the attitude behind the comment.\u00a0 And it is probably beyond the comprehension of those who prefer to view rural Australians, in particular rural Queenslanders,\u00a0as an uneducated pack of\u00a0 stubborn hicks\u00a0who are totally uninterested in conservation and devoid of laudable sentiment when it comes to land they’ve lived on all their lives (if they’re white, that is).<\/p>\n
It is surprising\u00a0there is absolutely no mention in the article of the positive fact that these fish had<\/em> survived in the midst of a pastoral business.\u00a0 Whereas if they had been in an urban or semi-urban area, there is no doubt they would not have survived.\u00a0 But\u00a0it apparently would not suit the writer, nor, evidently, the scientist, to find anything\u00a0good to say about the owner of a ‘marginal sheep and cattle farm’ , ‘rundown grazing property’ with just a ‘tumbledown homestead’.<\/p>\n The description of bogging up the roads in the last paragraphs is\u00a0ironic.\u00a0 Is the writer completely unaware\u00a0most soil erosion in rural areas is caused by\u00a0traffic on dirt roads, and\u00a0his trip has just contributed to\u00a0soil loss?<\/p>\n I used to enjoy reading Greg Bearup’s columns.\u00a0 What a pity he’s turned out to be just another promoter of negative rural stereotypes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another classic quote regarding representation of rural Australia in urban media: ‘But this being Queensland, the owner, a stubborn 80-year-old grazier who’d live on the block all his life, refused to sell to the government at any price.’ The article concerns the preservation of the red-finned blue-eye fish whose natural territory is confined to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,7,11],"tags":[176,179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441"}],"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=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1444,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}