courtesy Owen Wilson
I am up around Armidale in the North of the state, yakking to a few contacts, a few people I have worked with over the years, and some potential clients.
Nice area, good, although demanding agricultural land, long history of agricultural productivity and initiative, great potential as a tourist destination with the variety of environments, products and enterprises, and with the advantage of the university, which always adds diversity and intellectual depth to the life of a town.
Problem is, the place seems to be dying.
Perhaps it is just the superficial view of an occasional visitor, informed only by his eyes, and the anecdotes and woes of the small group of people he interacts with, but nevertheless, a compelling picture.
The summer has been unusually hot, records have been set and broken, there was little winter rain last year, a short dump in early spring that moved things along, but nothing since. Stock is now being moved out or dumped onto the market because there is no feed on the ground, harvests have been marginal, and the farmers are not looking forward to the next conversation with their banks.
Meanwhile, the public sector fiddling goes on, clogging the arteries of enterprise in the pursuit of saving us from ourselves. One semi retired farmer up here wanted to put a BnB and farm stay facilities on his property, a lovely spot 30k’s out of town. It took 6 months to get a DA from the council, which was meanwhile commissioning reports on what was needed to develop tourism.
Duh!
This is just a microcosm of what is happening all around us.
Unless we start actually doing something about the causes of the problems facing us, instead of always focussing on mitigating and treating the symptoms, we will be truly stuffed, perhaps not in my lifetime, but certainly in that of my children.
We need to stop talking, blaming ,deferring and avoiding, and start doing useful, productive stuff.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks