Farmers Speaking Out

LAST week Anto White from Belltrees spoke with Alan Jones to describe the drought in the Upper Hunter: Listen to the Interview and today SKY News visited the area to speak to more local farmers including Paul Metcalf, Richard Bell and James Archibald. (The story is due to air tomorrow morning in the 7am bulletin – but this may be subject to change).

Mr White said he is frustrated that local farmers in the middle of one of the worst droughts in memory are being forgotten and was moved to speak out.

“I just rang Alan Jones and I said ‘look I’m just sick of all this same sex marriage, dual citizenship and Barnaby Joyce, there are people doing it tough it’s just not the farmers, it’s the truck driver, everyone, people in Sydney and there are people not addressing the issues’ and it had a big affect SKY News heard the interview as well as Brian from Aussie Farmers and they got in touch with me,” said Mr White.

James Archibald and Richard Bell speaking with Caroline Marcus from Sky News in Gundy.

“I don’t know where the politicians are, unfortunately the farmers they forget about us, there are apparently bigger issues, but we are the nuts and bolts,” he said.

“When this place was humming and the cattle were good you’d see fertiliser going in, ‘you’d see new cattle yards go in, you’d see poly pipe, you’d see tanks, fencing material, today you see coming in b-doubles of hay and going out b-double loads of cattle and it’s sad,” he said.

“People across the ridge there have no water and no feed, Rouchel is desperate,” he said.

“Low interest subsidy, I mean the farmer today doesn’t want more debt, he doesn’t want to go into debt anymore than he has,” he said.

“We used to have a freight subsidy you could send your cattle away and hopefully bring them back, but it is so expensive today (without the freight subsidy) you can’t bring them back.

“They don’t want to know about us and it is sad.

“I couldn’t believe Michael Johnsen took politicians to Stroud, Stroud where it is green compared to here, why didn’t they come here to see how bad it is?” he said.

“But here we are in Gundy and there is no water for this little town, there are pumps in a hole up there that is just putrid, Glenbawn Dam is three kilometres and it’s at 80 percent and we on the Hunter River get told we have to stop irrigating now, it’s ridiculous, through the driest drought around and the dam is still maintained but we have to stop irrigating.

“The government has told us to drought proof your property and guys have done everything, but there is no water,” he said.

“Where are the dams? We’ve got all these brooks, Stuarts Brook, Omadale Brook, Moonan Brook there should be dams so that when they get heavy rain up in that high country they catch it and when there is no rain in the Hunter, let it go and then all these alluvial flats here you could grow as much hay and fodder as you like; we don’t have to be getting hay from Victoria,” he said.

“People need to get out here and see what it’s like, they are breeding thousands, upon thousands of kangaroos,” Anto White said.