View Full Version : What a day
Well Boys and Girls,
The season is over.
After a dry year, we have had two days over 30 degrees with hot north winds. The crops that should be thigh high only made it to our ankles and now are all but dead and a lot of people won't even be harvesting this year. How do they recover from losing a quarter of a million dollars worth of seed and fertiliser in one season?
If i'm not here in a year, it will be because there is no-one and no money left to pay my salary. I hope they hang on. Not for my sake, but because i don't want to bury them. Today was described by one man as a "real suicide day".
I know it is hard all over the country. It sucks to see it.
sorry for the depressing rant. I just needed it off my chest.
What a day! :cry: :cry:
Puk
That sure does suck mate...I certainly don't envy you that part of your job and admire you for sticking with it.
Luke
You'll be right Puk...By the time they get all there government hand outs they will be making more than a lot of us..
:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
ricochet
19-09-06, 05:29 PM
You'll be right Puk...By the time they get all there government hand outs they will be making more than a lot of us..
Cannot believe you have said this sparra, :shock: , they will get no crops but have spent 1/4 million dollars on seed and fuel etc, and no return,.I am dumbfounded :shock:
Rick
Gday Puk, I suppose this is the time when the locals depend on you most.
Looking for direction and hope, a friend that will hear their problems and concerns.
Don't apologise for telling it as it is mate. A lot of us don't ever hear or want to hear the problems of their neighbours. its sad.
Keep up the good work.
Paul
Mate,
they do it tough out here, and this is better country than some, so i don't know how those others make it.
The farmers out here have multiple vehicles, and expensive machinery, but most of them don't own most of it, and if they have a few bad years it is all gone, back to the banks.
The pressure not to lose the farm that their great-grandparents owned is huge, along with the feeling of "what is wrong with me, they survived, why can't i?"
the prices of diesel and fertiliser have gone through the roof, the only price that is dropping is the price they get for their grain. Many feel lonely, and feel like the people in the city don't care. They don't, but they would if they had to live this way for a while. I just don't think city people understand.
I tell the guys out here that i could never be a farmer.I just don't think i would ever sleep at night. I reckon it is easier to be a minister. I don't have enough faith to be a farmer.
I don't hold your comment aginst you. You are entitled to your opinion, and from a city point of view it does seem as though we are bailing them out pretty often. But when you realise how deep so many are in debt, it is staggering. But excuse me if i don't repeat that view around here. I would be found hanging from a flagpole somewhere. :lol:
If it was all that easy there wouldn't be the amount of fatal car accidents in droughts where farmers with good driving records are pulled out from under the front of b-doubles, and the police find no skid-marks from the car tyres.
If the farmers go under, everyone else does too. Butchers, bakers, ministers, newsagents. The whole town can die.
Everyone is on edge out here right now. Just spare a thought or a prayer for us now and then.
Puk
XTfreak
19-09-06, 05:47 PM
Just spare a thought or a prayer for us now and then.
No problem, I can do that.
Keep up the good work
I second that.
Bill
Sorry fella's..That didn't come out right..When there is a drought everyone suffers..I am self employed as farmers are,I don't outlay anywhere near as much money as they do to make my living but I am still affected by drought.when people don't spend money my lively hood and my standard of living goes out the window.I have a wife and 2 kids but where do I get help????Can't get the dole,can't get any assistance from centrelink because I am self employed and have made a few dollars in previous years.Now for the next 12 months any savings are used to live on and pay mortgages,bills etc.When they are gone it's time to start selling things,when they run out the house is sold up and we have to rent which is the same as the house repayments which we couldn't afford in the first place so we end up on the street.
This example is hyperthetical and I am lucky to have a wife that plans for these times but there are Australians from all over going through this
senario every day and who helps them??...Just a bit of a double standard
on the governments behalf I think...
Sparra...
I understand Sparra.
These aren't the easiest times our country has ever seen: for anyone. But they aren't the hardest, either. I suppose we just all have to find a way to live through it. A quote i once heard (from M.A.S.H., as Hefty will tell you (he has memorised almost every episode)) is "sure you have the most to lose, but that's only because you have the most". We feel sorry for ourselves at times, but there are those who will never make a payment on a house, or even own their own car. (let alone a header or a tractor)
When you think about it, even our sport isn't cheap, and in a way just being in the position we are to buy the hunting gear we have is an unimaginable luxury to many.
I think that you have helped me to put things into perspective a fair bit, Sparra, and i thank you for that. I had my whinge. Time to get up and keep going.
Puk
G/day Puk,
I have several friends on properties through out Victoria and as I live in the outer hub of Melb I have often thought of how quickly I would swap my life style for theirs,UNTIL the lack of rain long hours and the heartbreak made me realise while so many of the farmers that carry this country on there back give it away.Dry year after dry year or flood after flood life for them is not easy.How many here complain of not being able to buy Australian made products.I know I do but with water shortages,to much water and/or the big offshore companies buying us out give credit where credit is due to the farmer battling it out not just against the weather .I will support the battler all the way,I run my own company how many others do and have a bad year then the next picks up,farmerss dont have that luxury they are at the hands of the elements one year turns into two ,two to three and when they do have a good year we all say look how good the farmers got it /Put youself in there shoes.Hang in there fellas and girls you are the back bone of this country.IMHO
Andrew
XTfreak
19-09-06, 06:21 PM
(he has memorised almost every episode))
There is absolutley nothing wrong with that. :D
Bill
Mick Smith
19-09-06, 06:42 PM
The poor farmers are doing it hard everywhere at the moment. Even down my way in Southern Victoria, it's nice and green at the moment, but I've never seen anything like it before in my 50+ years in the district. The ground is as dry as old chips, there's very little water in any of the dams and the creek that runs by my place has only actually run once since last season and that was for just one day. It normally floods at least once a year and runs strongly for 9 months of the year. :shock:
I fear it's going to be a very long, hot and dry summer coming up. Water storages are very low and there's no sign of rain to even fill them slightly. I heard on the news that "El Nino" is back with a vengence, just one year after the last one.
It seems to me that we could be heading into a whole new weather pattern in this country, a pattern of increasingly long periods of drought and high temperatures. I hope this isn't the case, but it seems more and more possible, what with increased green house gases and global warming. People from Europe have only occupied Australia for a mere 240 years, there's a chance that long dry spells are a regular ocurrence in this country on a cycle of a couple of hundred of years. We just don't know for certain.
I remember watching a doco about the Vikings and their settlement of Greenland. Apparently they had a thriving settlement going for about two hundred years, but it turned out that they had just happened to pick a period of very mild weather that lasted for two hundred years. The return of extremely cold conditions completely wiped out their coloney. They simply couldn't survive there. I sincerely hope we don't have a similar situation currently happening right here, right now. Maybe I'm just a negative person, but it worries me, none the less.
Suicide is very common in farming communities. Just a couple of weeks ago, one of my long time mates committed suicide. He was a farmer doing it hard. He also owned the property where I used to go deer hunting a lot. His family has been almost totally destroyed, their life is in tatters. It's just too sad for words.
Geeze what a downer of a post. I feel like deleting it. :(
Mick
it is a shocking year in SA, worst on record and it is not like this is a rainforest state either.
With all this going on you can imagine what the attitude is to the NSW gov in particular over Murray river usage :roll:
I just hope they can stick it out.
NormGunston
19-09-06, 07:40 PM
After meeting some of the Pinnaroo farmers and experiencing the essence of the Aussie Spirit in their characters, despite what they were facing, I was truly humbled. Puk, put in a word for us on Sunday, will ya?
Puk,
New to this forum stuff. In Fact don't even know if this will post. Just thought I had to say this. I feel for you. A country lad myself now living in town because of my home town where I grew up having no water and no jobs. Anyway what I wanted to say was the cruel situation you guys face can often cause you to loose all you have - but in all the farmers and country folk i have ever met i have never seen one loose that aussie character and courage they are born with.
REAL PEOPLE - ALL OF U.
A TOAST TO ALL BUSHIES DOIN IT TOUGH
NUTS
Thanks guys.
I reckon they earn every line and wrinkle on their faces in the bush, staring at the sky wondering when it will rain. I used to hate rain as a kid. Funny, isn't it? :roll:
I feel a bit better now anyway. It almost makes me feel guilty for going away on 2 weeks of conference and then 2 weeks holidays. I feel like i should be around here right now. But they survived here before i got here, and will survive after i'm gone. I think i will enjoy my holiday. Especially if i or one of the other blokes manages to nail a good billy or even a fallow. That will cheer me up no end. :D :D
Puk
it is a shocking year in SA, worst on record and it is not like this is a rainforest state either.
With all this going on you can imagine what the attitude is to the NSW gov in particular over Murray river usage :roll:
I just hope they can stick it out.
Well we do live in the driest state on the driest continent in the world. :(
I have often thought how hard it must be for the farmers out bush (be it out north south east or west) each faces a dif problem be it drought or flood and even disease.
One minute its drought and then just when they think the saving rains have come they get to much rain and it trashs their crops.
Every year seems to be getting drier and drier.
Alot of farmers here in SA are now leasing out their crops for adjistment (SP). As they are not going to be able to harvest them.
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