Editor's Cut, with editor Tuppy McIntosh
WHEN I first arrived back in Western Queensland after 10 years away, I felt that something had shifted, that there was some fundamental change.
But I couldn’t isolate what it was.
Over the last six months I’ve found many things, good and bad, have remained the same: the easy larrikinism still warms my heart and the easy judgements still squeezes it.
The coffee had changed but the beer hadn’t.
Then a couple of weeks ago I sat in on some presentations made to Desert Channels Queensland at their bi-monthly board meeting.
I met a few DCQers (including chairman Peter Douglas, who upon discovering my occupation, rolled his eyes and said ‘Jeeezus’, which is still making me laugh) and sat down to tuck into nibbles and listen to the presentations.
One of the talks was from PhD student Jenny Moffat, who had spent five months in the Central West and in the Gulf, researching graziers perceptions of ‘sustainable development’.
I thought it sounded a bit dry and jargon-oriented, and felt a tad sorry for the 57 graziers who had offered to take part.
But the most remarkable ideas unfolded during Jenny’s presentation, and at the end of her seminar I had begun to understand just how much things had changed out West.
Her research was motivated by the idea that as graziers control most of the land mass in Queensland, they were really the ones on the frontline of land management and conservation.
Jenny deduced that graziers’ ideas of sustainable management were most meaningful in real terms.
But battling declining terms of trade, climatic extremes, constraints of distance and the growing pressure for proper environmental care, the idea of being a ‘grazier’ means something vastly different to what it did a generation ago.
Graziers are now akin to enterprise managers, given the complexities of single-handedly running multi-streamed businesses in a competitive marketplace, with continual need for self-education and officework.
In the Gulf, some talked of the seeming ineffectualness of attending committees; in the Central West some spoke of the economic rationalising that pushed landholders into overgrazing.
Yet as Jenny revealed the results of her study, it became obvious she had come across a commonality between graziers that wasn’t anticipated.
Standing before the group with hands on her hips, Jenny asked point blank why people stayed out here on the land.
Things were incredibly tough - what motivates anyone to stick it out?
It was then that people began to talk about their spiritual connection to their land.
Someone responded to Jenny’s question with, ‘Because my soul is connected to this land.’ I was suprised to hear it spoken - although not surprised about the idea - and I assumed the respondent would be alone in their comments.
Not so. One after the other, almost everyone at the meeting had something to say.
People cope with the drought, the hardships, the battle, because theirs is a place where they feel connected.
These people can’t walk off the land like many before them have been forced to.
But they can walk out to meet the horizon at the end of a bugger of a day and feel, somehow, that it is worth it.
“The people I met defied the stereotypes that urban Australians give to those in rural areas,” Jenny said afterwards.
“These people are passionate.”
It wasn’t the idea of spirituality that so stunned me.
It was that people seem to now respect these ideas enough to be able to share them openly with each other in such a way.
This is not the stuff of tight-lipped cockies squinting off into the middle distance for five minutes while searching for an answer to ‘How’re ya goin?’
The acknowledgement of a shared connection to place - and that powerful choice to stay - might help overcome barriers and difficulties other than those encountered due to geography that come about in the politics of daily life. Who knows?
Give it another 10 years and I’ll get back to you.
But I couldn’t isolate what it was.
Over the last six months I’ve found many things, good and bad, have remained the same: the easy larrikinism still warms my heart and the easy judgements still squeezes it.
The coffee had changed but the beer hadn’t.
Then a couple of weeks ago I sat in on some presentations made to Desert Channels Queensland at their bi-monthly board meeting.
I met a few DCQers (including chairman Peter Douglas, who upon discovering my occupation, rolled his eyes and said ‘Jeeezus’, which is still making me laugh) and sat down to tuck into nibbles and listen to the presentations.
One of the talks was from PhD student Jenny Moffat, who had spent five months in the Central West and in the Gulf, researching graziers perceptions of ‘sustainable development’.
I thought it sounded a bit dry and jargon-oriented, and felt a tad sorry for the 57 graziers who had offered to take part.
But the most remarkable ideas unfolded during Jenny’s presentation, and at the end of her seminar I had begun to understand just how much things had changed out West.
Her research was motivated by the idea that as graziers control most of the land mass in Queensland, they were really the ones on the frontline of land management and conservation.
Jenny deduced that graziers’ ideas of sustainable management were most meaningful in real terms.
But battling declining terms of trade, climatic extremes, constraints of distance and the growing pressure for proper environmental care, the idea of being a ‘grazier’ means something vastly different to what it did a generation ago.
Graziers are now akin to enterprise managers, given the complexities of single-handedly running multi-streamed businesses in a competitive marketplace, with continual need for self-education and officework.
In the Gulf, some talked of the seeming ineffectualness of attending committees; in the Central West some spoke of the economic rationalising that pushed landholders into overgrazing.
Yet as Jenny revealed the results of her study, it became obvious she had come across a commonality between graziers that wasn’t anticipated.
Standing before the group with hands on her hips, Jenny asked point blank why people stayed out here on the land.
Things were incredibly tough - what motivates anyone to stick it out?
It was then that people began to talk about their spiritual connection to their land.
Someone responded to Jenny’s question with, ‘Because my soul is connected to this land.’ I was suprised to hear it spoken - although not surprised about the idea - and I assumed the respondent would be alone in their comments.
Not so. One after the other, almost everyone at the meeting had something to say.
People cope with the drought, the hardships, the battle, because theirs is a place where they feel connected.
These people can’t walk off the land like many before them have been forced to.
But they can walk out to meet the horizon at the end of a bugger of a day and feel, somehow, that it is worth it.
“The people I met defied the stereotypes that urban Australians give to those in rural areas,” Jenny said afterwards.
“These people are passionate.”
It wasn’t the idea of spirituality that so stunned me.
It was that people seem to now respect these ideas enough to be able to share them openly with each other in such a way.
This is not the stuff of tight-lipped cockies squinting off into the middle distance for five minutes while searching for an answer to ‘How’re ya goin?’
The acknowledgement of a shared connection to place - and that powerful choice to stay - might help overcome barriers and difficulties other than those encountered due to geography that come about in the politics of daily life. Who knows?
Give it another 10 years and I’ll get back to you.
posted by dr mcgillicudy's cudsong at 10:06 AM
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