May 21, 2025 • 7 mins
Our Australian correspondent talks about a six month cattle drive to educate city-dwellers about food security, the social license around Roundup use, and why the Lucky Country is a land of droughts and flooding rains.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's our Australian correspondent, a great mate of mine of
long standing, we go back thirty years, Chris Russell. It's
a sad day for me today because I've lost my
mate of sixty years, Rowan, horror, and I was just
thinking about Rowan this morning and a wonderful trip Bledislow
Cup trip we took with another old mate of mine
who's sadly gone, Tony Laker from Laker House of Travel.
(00:21):
We bought a whole lot of Southland farmers over to
Sydney for a Bledisload Cup game two thousand and two.
I think it was when Matt Burke kicked the winning penalty.
And then on the Sunday we went out to Paramatta
to watch your side, the Eels, play a league match
and you took us quite literally on a cross country cruise.
It was the days before Google and you nearly drowned
(00:43):
us in a creek.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, well, I remember that all well. And I'm so
sorry to hear about Rowan Finley party. It doesn't sound
like the last still time was much fun at all.
I remember that to.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Us so well.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
It was a great group and you know, sort of
a group of farmers really wanted to come to Australia
and give us a hard time as they always do,
but have a wonderful time. And I remember very well
and he was on that tour. It was a great
year that year actually, in one of the years when
we can sort of say, well we really had competitive size.
(01:15):
In fact, we took the Bledisload Cup off you that year,
I think, And yes, as he mentioned Maddie Burke, you
know he kicked that winning penalty after the full time
siren to retain the Bladdersloe Cup for a record fourth year.
And in fact he finished that season as Australia's top
point scorer as I remember, so you know, it was
a great year. And then we went on to watch
(01:37):
the years, of course, which also were a great side
in those days. And these days they seem to have
diminished back into a bit of a backwater, especially now
they've lost some of their key players. But great times,
and I'm sure there'll be more great times in the future.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But varallet rowan horror.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I hope that his family will sit back in the
knowledge that he had our wonderful life. We'll live Jomie.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, and I'm glad we have got Google Maps these days.
You endangered our lives on that trip, Chris, I'm just joking.
That was certainly a fun time. Had boil look seventeen
hundred head cattle drive in western Queensland to educate cities
about food security. This is going to take something like
six months. What an epic journey.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Well, it is an epic journey, and there are and
the leaders that are even say the kids are taking
time off school, they're doing homeschooling as they travel. They'll
take up to six months, probably three months as a minimum,
traveling about seven hundred and seventy kilometers along the most
historic of Queensland stock route running from long Reach in
far western Queensland and of course the original home of quantas,
(02:46):
all the way down those backstock route roads, the Long
Paddic as they call it, into the big markets which
are at Roma where they can sell off maybe six
seven thousand head of cattle in a single day. There.
People can join this cruise, of course, or they call
it a cruise, but it's really just hard work. But
they can join this by booking in to do various
(03:08):
parts of this and the whole point of this is
to try and improve the awareness of gold Coast, in
the Gold Coast and in Brisbane about you know food
Security Food Bank, which is one of our big sort
of supply orgnations of food that had eleven percent increase
in community groups seeking food assistance in Australia. And you know,
(03:30):
I often see people at big schools where I'm doing talks.
The parents all want their kids to study law and
medicine or wonderful professions. But of course you've got to
remember you might lead a lawyer three times in your life,
you might need a doctor three times in a year,
but you need a bloody farmer three times every day.
And I just don't think enough people don't take that
(03:51):
for grated.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Jamie, talk to me about roundup life to site, because
I know you have strong opinions on this.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeh. So I was very intrigued to see an article
which was sent over to be by your producer about
New Zealand liberalizing if you like the use of roundup
in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Now.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
While on the surface, of course, scientifically this is well
founded and round up has been a savior chemical in
my view. I remember the days when I was at school.
All the ground used to get eroded by people are
plowing for weed control, and we had a department of
saw conservation who ran around filling all these gullies in
putting in contour banks. Now with direct drilling using round
(04:33):
up as the method of weed control, those days are finished.
It's been the most valuable chemical we've ever had in agriculture. However,
and this is not going to sound like Chris Russell speaking,
but I am so conscious of the fact that in
agriculture we must have a social license, and our social
license says that yes, we'll tolerate roundup because we realize
(04:54):
how good it is, but don't ask us to be
enthusiastic about it, and don't ask us to accept us
being flooded in it. And people still perceive this idea
that it has got that element of doubt as far
as causing cancer attached to it. And to push this further,
and I think it's already used to a level which
is going to be is providing good value. And of
(05:17):
course I see you're about to legalize the use of
round up ready crops, which we've had here now for
some time. But if you start pushing that envelope too far,
you start making the limits of minimum residues and so
on too high. People are going to say, no, we've
got a step too far here. The social license has
been used up and we could end up getting more
(05:37):
restricted rather than more open in our availability of roundup.
So I would urge caution there. I think let's just
use the science by all means, but let's also be
aware the perception is stronger than fact in the cities.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Jomie, Yeah, I can hardly believe it's Chris Russell saying
that you are the lucky country, but you're also a
land of climatic extremes this year for instance, strouts flood.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, they say we're a lucky country, but you've got
all the dramas that we've got at the moment you
have to wonder. I mean, we've currently got one in
five hundred year floods on the New South Wales central case.
So I saw in the paper this morning cows have
been seen reporting on the beach, right walking on the
beach at Old Bar. Now that's two hundred kilometers from
(06:26):
the nearest farm because it's a coastal tourist resort, and
all these cows have been washed down the Manning River
out in the sea and then come back in and
ended up on the beach and they're wandering around. I mean,
these floods are massive, half of me the higher peaks
than have ever been seen before in towns like Tai
which the last trout last flood they had, which was
anything like as big as this was nineteen twenty nine.
(06:49):
So you know that's on one hand, and yet you
look down in the South and I was listening to
commentary on the Sunday Farming Show last Sunday from farmers
who are all dry sowing their crops because they can't
afford to wait for rain before they saw the crops
in the hope that they'll get enough rain in the
next month to actually get some seedlings up out of
the ground, because they're just not getting anything like the
(07:10):
amount of rain they would expect in that sort of
country where they would always have had an autumn break.
South Australia much the same. This is country which is
absolutely dry as a chip, and country which has not
seen this sort of dry weather for a long time.
So Dorothy and Maquila was right when she said, I
love a sunburned country, a drill land of droughts and
(07:32):
flooding rains. We don't have any averages here, Jamie. It's
all either a drought or a surplus.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Chris Russell, thanks as always for your time. Thank you
for the kind words about Rowan horror my old mate.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, no worries, we'll be thinking of him today, Jamie,
Here's our Australian correspondent, a great mate of mine of
long standing, we go back thirty years, Chris Russell. It's
a sad day for me today because I've lost my
mate of sixty years, Rowan, horror, and I was just
thinking about Rowan this morning and a wonderful trip Bledislow
Cup trip we took with another old mate of mine
who's sadly gone, Tony Laker from Laker House of Travel.
(00:21):
We bought a whole lot of Southland farmers over to
Sydney for a Bledisload Cup game two thousand and two.
I think it was when Matt Burke kicked the winning penalty.
And then on the Sunday we went out to Paramatta
to watch your side, the Eels, play a league match
and you took us quite literally on a cross country cruise.
It was the days before Google and you nearly drowned
(00:43):
us in a creek.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, well, I remember that all well. And I'm so
sorry to hear about Rowan Finley party. It doesn't sound
like the last still time was much fun at all.
I remember that to.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Us so well.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
It was a great group and you know, sort of
a group of farmers really wanted to come to Australia
and give us a hard time as they always do,
but have a wonderful time. And I remember very well
and he was on that tour. It was a great
year that year actually, in one of the years when
we can sort of say, well we really had competitive size.
(01:15):
In fact, we took the Bledisload Cup off you that year,
I think, And yes, as he mentioned Maddie Burke, you
know he kicked that winning penalty after the full time
siren to retain the Bladdersloe Cup for a record fourth year.
And in fact he finished that season as Australia's top
point scorer as I remember, so you know, it was
a great year. And then we went on to watch
(01:37):
the years, of course, which also were a great side
in those days. And these days they seem to have
diminished back into a bit of a backwater, especially now
they've lost some of their key players. But great times,
and I'm sure there'll be more great times in the future.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But varallet rowan horror.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I hope that his family will sit back in the
knowledge that he had our wonderful life. We'll live Jomie.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, and I'm glad we have got Google Maps these days.
You endangered our lives on that trip, Chris, I'm just joking.
That was certainly a fun time. Had boil look seventeen
hundred head cattle drive in western Queensland to educate cities
about food security. This is going to take something like
six months. What an epic journey.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Well, it is an epic journey, and there are and
the leaders that are even say the kids are taking
time off school, they're doing homeschooling as they travel. They'll
take up to six months, probably three months as a minimum,
traveling about seven hundred and seventy kilometers along the most
historic of Queensland stock route running from long Reach in
far western Queensland and of course the original home of quantas,
(02:46):
all the way down those backstock route roads, the Long
Paddic as they call it, into the big markets which
are at Roma where they can sell off maybe six
seven thousand head of cattle in a single day. There.
People can join this cruise, of course, or they call
it a cruise, but it's really just hard work. But
they can join this by booking in to do various
(03:08):
parts of this and the whole point of this is
to try and improve the awareness of gold Coast, in
the Gold Coast and in Brisbane about you know food
Security Food Bank, which is one of our big sort
of supply orgnations of food that had eleven percent increase
in community groups seeking food assistance in Australia. And you know,
(03:30):
I often see people at big schools where I'm doing talks.
The parents all want their kids to study law and
medicine or wonderful professions. But of course you've got to
remember you might lead a lawyer three times in your life,
you might need a doctor three times in a year,
but you need a bloody farmer three times every day.
And I just don't think enough people don't take that
(03:51):
for grated.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Jamie, talk to me about roundup life to site, because
I know you have strong opinions on this.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeh. So I was very intrigued to see an article
which was sent over to be by your producer about
New Zealand liberalizing if you like the use of roundup
in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Now.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
While on the surface, of course, scientifically this is well
founded and round up has been a savior chemical in
my view. I remember the days when I was at school.
All the ground used to get eroded by people are
plowing for weed control, and we had a department of
saw conservation who ran around filling all these gullies in
putting in contour banks. Now with direct drilling using round
(04:33):
up as the method of weed control, those days are finished.
It's been the most valuable chemical we've ever had in agriculture. However,
and this is not going to sound like Chris Russell speaking,
but I am so conscious of the fact that in
agriculture we must have a social license, and our social
license says that yes, we'll tolerate roundup because we realize
(04:54):
how good it is, but don't ask us to be
enthusiastic about it, and don't ask us to accept us
being flooded in it. And people still perceive this idea
that it has got that element of doubt as far
as causing cancer attached to it. And to push this further,
and I think it's already used to a level which
is going to be is providing good value. And of
(05:17):
course I see you're about to legalize the use of
round up ready crops, which we've had here now for
some time. But if you start pushing that envelope too far,
you start making the limits of minimum residues and so
on too high. People are going to say, no, we've
got a step too far here. The social license has
been used up and we could end up getting more
(05:37):
restricted rather than more open in our availability of roundup.
So I would urge caution there. I think let's just
use the science by all means, but let's also be
aware the perception is stronger than fact in the cities.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Jomie, Yeah, I can hardly believe it's Chris Russell saying
that you are the lucky country, but you're also a
land of climatic extremes this year for instance, strouts flood.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, they say we're a lucky country, but you've got
all the dramas that we've got at the moment you
have to wonder. I mean, we've currently got one in
five hundred year floods on the New South Wales central case.
So I saw in the paper this morning cows have
been seen reporting on the beach, right walking on the
beach at Old Bar. Now that's two hundred kilometers from
(06:26):
the nearest farm because it's a coastal tourist resort, and
all these cows have been washed down the Manning River
out in the sea and then come back in and
ended up on the beach and they're wandering around. I mean,
these floods are massive, half of me the higher peaks
than have ever been seen before in towns like Tai
which the last trout last flood they had, which was
anything like as big as this was nineteen twenty nine.
(06:49):
So you know that's on one hand, and yet you
look down in the South and I was listening to
commentary on the Sunday Farming Show last Sunday from farmers
who are all dry sowing their crops because they can't
afford to wait for rain before they saw the crops
in the hope that they'll get enough rain in the
next month to actually get some seedlings up out of
the ground, because they're just not getting anything like the
(07:10):
amount of rain they would expect in that sort of
country where they would always have had an autumn break.
South Australia much the same. This is country which is
absolutely dry as a chip, and country which has not
seen this sort of dry weather for a long time.
So Dorothy and Maquila was right when she said, I
love a sunburned country, a drill land of droughts and
(07:32):
flooding rains. We don't have any averages here, Jamie. It's
all either a drought or a surplus.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Chris Russell, thanks as always for your time. Thank you
for the kind words about Rowan horror my old mate.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, no worries, we'll be thinking of him today, Jamie,
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