“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