Oh Boy, time has really flown & I've just realised that my blog has gone unwritten since june 2009....where on earth has all that time gone?

The realisation has come about after I had a look at our website last night following several email enquiries (and phone calls) because "Bokhara Hutz" had a segment on the TV show 'What's up Downunder' which is hosted by Frankie J Holden & his lovely wife Michelle Pettigrove. They visited here about a month ago and were a lot of fun, and it was great to see just how much work goes into producing a TV show. Mind you, those guys hosting television travel shows have got to rank right up there with having one of the best jobs in the world!

Our tourism enterprise "Bokhara Hutz" has had to take somewhat of a break (and has given Cathy a break!) since Xmas as our road has been out of action from wet weather more than it's been dry. Still have water running across it at one gully now, although it is dropping quickly and we are ready for action, rested up & raring to go for any prospective visitors wishing to see the outback at its very best.....

So what has happened at "Bokhara Plains" since my last post in blogland...

• We had just had good rain at the start of June 2009, pushing our rolling rainfall to 450mm, and I was excited about cracking the 1,000 cattle mark...
• We ended up with just over 1,200 for five months, and it did not rain much more till the end of the year!
• PARRAMATTA made the rugby league grand final in an exhillarating run to the finals, only to fall at the last hurdle to the salary cap cheating Melbourne Storm.. My brothers and I went to the major final at ANZ stadium when they beat the Bulldogs which was fantastic!
• Our rolling rainfall was looking like dropping to 340mm by the end of December and plans were in place for a destock in the first week of Feburary if the total dry continued. Our "benchmark dse/Hectare/100mm" had risen to 120 from a long term average of 56 and although pushing high numbers of agistment cattle for too long, the country was in good shape and we were prepared to back right off if necessary.
• The we decided to go for a holiday at Xmas to our friends Rob & Kelly down in Geelong, Victoria. As we drove out our dusty driveway the day before Xmas eve I was contemplating the completely dry river system and the very real possibility of being destocked within six weeks. I commented that the forcast for rain was very good, and I hoped that if big rain didn't eventuate than I hoped we at least got enough to "settle the dust".
• Well the dust did get settled....
• Watching the test cricket at the MCG is a classic Australian event, and although not exactly rivetting to watch in its excitement level, it started to get a little more exciting for me with regular text messages coming through from home.
• Brian, Teresa (and gracie) Johnson were at Bokhara Plains looking after the place for us...and by boxing day night had measured nearly eleven inches of rain...and still raining.
• So yes......the dust was being well & truly settled!
• Needless to say we cut our holiday short and headed for home the next day. By the time we drove the 1,500 klms back up to Brewarrina there were a couple of choppers getting around and I managed to get a lift out to home and have a look at the cattle, then Brian, Teresa and Gracie caught the same chopper back to town.
• The next day I drove the tractor out through the water to pick up Cathy, Harriet and all of our gear...plus some supplies.
• Within a few days our river system had gone from being bone dry to us having flood water as far as the eye could see. That Dorethea McKellar poem about a land of droughts and flooding rains was coming to mind...
• And then all of that weather had dried up in time for us to recieve our second flood this year, this time courtesy of big rain up north of us in Queensland which took several weeks to actually get here.
• Harriet is in Year 10 in Toowoomba and will be turning 16 this year & is transforming into a beutiful young lady. I feel too young to be having a grown up daughter....what's going on....
• Cathy is up there with her today, as Harriet is marching with the Navy Cadets for ANZAC day in Toowoomba.
• I've stayed home to sort out cattle as our long term clients are on the way out & we are trucking in cattle at the same time from another client. We have 1,000 heifers coming in to be back grounded & actually have grass for twice that many, so life is good!
• Of course there has been plenty of other stuff happen here as well as in markets & politics.
• We still have a labour government that seems hell bent on sending the country broke, and a liberal party that has had plenty of leardership issues & not much policy difference to the others.....some things don't change too much.
• Sheep market is on fire, which won't necessarily make me a millionaire anytime soon as we only have about 25 sheep. Most of which are Harriets pets and unsaleable, and the rest are "killers" with a date with destiny & our dinner plates!

I didn't realise that this blog would continue to recieve quite a few "hits" so I'll have to make a commitment to post more regularly.

I look forward to meeting those of you planning on a visit to see the outback in its 'dinner suit',& wish everyone all the best.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

Vincent Van Gogh

June 2^nd

Hi All,

Once again here I am stuck in the house catching up on some paperwork due to more rain tumbling down in northwest NSW. I don’t know if this weather is driven by climate change or the stock exchange….but I sure am liking it a lot!

We are up to about 40mm or 160’ in this event, following almost two inches last week and 260’ or 68mm on Easter Monday so the situation is looking extremely positive for the winter and right through till Xmas even. Our rolling 12 month rainfall has jumped up to 450mm for the end of May, and our cattle numbers should be up close to the 1,000 figure by the end of June which is also a personal goal that I’ll be satisfied to break through. Getting the long term carrying capacity up to that level will be the ultimate test of that figure though.

Talking about running more animals in this environment tends to be frowned upon by governments and the scientific community, much to my consternation. When the landscape we manage has improved to the extent that we are capable of having more animals on the same land base, therefore lowering our overheads and increasing profitability then the benefits will also flow through to all of the communities in rural areas. And God knows we need that right now.

I guess it’s the idea that we can in fact greatly improve these landscapes by using domesticated livestock (as a tool) that is the major stumbling block. Interestingly, we are part of a pilot project called “Enterprise Based Conservation� that sees us rewarded for maintaining certain ground cover levels, regardless of season, due to the environmental benefits that are achieved. And yet the same government sees fit to “lock up country� and pay people to completely de-stock in the mistaken belief that doing that gives an automatic “conservation benefit�. We have one such project just started next door to us and although I am totally opposed to the concept, I look forward to measuring the environmental & economic difference between that policy and what we are doing on Bokhara Plains.

Their concept takes away the opportunity of a young family taking up the block, takes money away from the local economy & will have an eventual ecologically detrimental effect anyway. So I wonder…who makes these decisions & what drives their thinking?

After Easter, and the “Bre Rodeo� that was a great success without being washed out this year, we ploughed our way out along a very wet road to head up to Toowoomba on our way to Cairns for my Nuffield report presentation. (By the way…that gravel we had put down is still there waiting for a grader to level it out!) I think we have had just over 6 inches or rain since the gravel was put beside our road so it will be great to finally have it where it can actually do some good for us.

Harriet went with us to Cairns & we had a great few days up in the tropics, and it was also great to catch up with all of my travelling Nuffielder mates. We also went to Tully where the average rainfall is around 4 metres and their record is 8 metres in a year. They have a gumboot there that is eight metres high to represent the height of that amount of rain, & coming from out here it is quite hard to fathom, no pun intended, that amount of precipitation….even if we are having an extraordinarily wet year at home.

The Brewarrina horse races were on last weekend after being postponed from the wet weekend before, and were lucky to get through by one day again this weekend. And it was good to see such a terrific crowd turn out for the action and to have such beautiful weather in between all the rain events lately. April / May can be a great time of year out here in the west of NSW and helps make up for the slightly less wonderful 40 to 45 degree summers that we can rely on getting most years.

A little more rain forecast tomorrow I see….no excuses for not being on top of the bookwork these days!

"When we can
no longer change the situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Victor Frankl

End of March already….where’s it gone??

“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't�.

Henry Ward Beecher

Last I wrote Harriet was just off to boarding school for the year, back at the end of January, and now she is due home next Thursday night for the Easter break. Hard to believe the pace this year’s going at times, although when you sit back and think about it, it has tended to have been quite full and busy as per usual.

We pulled up with the fencing….not because Harriet went back to school either!! After getting half the place done we decided to take stock & hold off spending any more money as this economic climate has me worried, and I’m not sharing our prime ministers philosophy of thinking we can spend our way out of a problem that was caused by over spending in the first place.

Those who have followed my blog from the beginning may remember my comments regarding a visit to some politicians in the States last year (before the world economic meltdown) & how I questioned their handling of a burgeoning debt issue which was then around US$10 Trillion. Seems like a while ago now & borrowing off our children and devaluing currencies seem to have become almost fashionable around the world since then, & I worry that the craziness has actually become addictive.

At least we have been spending (without Ruddy) on infrastructure such as fencing, water & the accommodation enterprise which add to our asset value & improve our ability to generate cashflow, rather than Gerry Harvey’s plasma TV’s, I-pod’s and other crap that Ruddy was pleading for recipients of his ‘generosity’ to splurge on ‘to help the economy’, and loses value 5 minutes after the purchase.

Pity our short sighted politicians, ably aided & abetted of course by voters wanting something for nothing, could not think of a few infrastructure projects to spend ‘our’ Billions on that would drive real productivity for generations rather than waste it absolute rubbish.

Remember… “A government that is big enough to give you all you want, is big enough to take all you have�

You can take money of those that are productive & give it to those that are not for only so long before you run out of money, as those that earn lose incentive to work & those that take continue to want more.

After that good Feb rain we did take more cattle on, and there is now just under 700 in the mob & I’m really pleased with the effect on the landscape as well as the amount of grazing ‘days’ we are now generating out of the paddocks. Cows are going really well & with the grass drying off they are even improving and are completely at ease in the system and the ‘one hot wire’ scenario is proving to be very effective. The increased herd impact being achieved by the smaller paddocks & bigger mob has been phenomenal, and I’m excited by the prospect of what is going to happen after the next rain event. We have another eleven paddocks to go before we move back into the country we have not done the extra fencing in yet, but I’m still hoping we will get a chance to do some of it by about June / July. With the possibility of getting some decent April / May rain I’d be very inclined to lift our numbers again and have my eye on one day breaking that 1,000 head barrier. An improvement in the pasture capacity will be needed yet and also a lift in the flow rate of water to the troughs, which I think is still less than ideal, but I don’t believe we will be too far away over the next twelve months.

Given adequate rain of course…

Though our ability to utilise what we get is far more important I believe. At the end of March (assuming no rain in the next few days) our twelve month “rolling rainfall� total will be 325mm or 13 inches. That is over 20% less than our long term average yearly total, so although we have had some good rain since Xmas, it was on the back of another quite long dry spell. But our carrying capacity is sitting at about 50% above the long term average over the same period of time & we can also see ahead possibly ten months in our current grazing plan. It’s great to be finally getting some measurable improvements in the lands capacity to go with the visual evidence that has been my focus for a while now.

We had a terrific group of lads staying here for a few weeks working for Telstra, & after being caught out with rain & boggy roads they managed to get the company to purchase some gravel for our road which the local council here at Brewarrina has matched. Not enough to do all the way in of course (we have 4.5klms of dirt access road), but enough to fix up quite a lot of the worst areas & we are extremely grateful for the generosity. Had about 500 cubic metres dropped here during last week & now we are just waiting on the grader etc to level it all out for us……then some big rain to test it out!!

Cathy has quite a lot of advance bookings for groups over the next few months which we don’t normally have with the Bokhara Hutz, including a coach load coming from the Central West CMA this Friday that are checking out what we are up to on Bokhara Plains. We went down to Menindee in the south west of NSW last week for an Outback Beds ( www.outbackbeds.com.au ) annual get together & its always inspiring to see what our fellow tourism operators are up to and pick up a few more tips. We also caught the opening of a NSW Tourism initiative for western NSW called the “Darling River Run� which is promoting tourism from the top of the system in Walget right down the river to its junction with the Murray.

And of course….Brewarrina just happens to be the best water hole along the entire length of the iconic waterway.

I’ll try to keep on top of this ‘blogging’ set up for the remaining couple of months, if not longer now that I’ve got on top of some other pressing issues. One of which has been my report for the Nuffield association following my study trip last year, as a requirement is to have it completed and also a presentation to the ‘Autumn Tour� in Cairns next month. Was difficult to get into it, and then even more difficult in deciding what I should leave out & I think I blew the 10,000 word limit by about three thousand. Still have a little editing to do there & some photo’s etc to slice into it, and hope to resend it this weekend.

Enough for now on this update….cheers till next time!

“The difference between

genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.�