Greenies, not cow farts, are killing our country BART IRWIN
HAVING recently travelled the length of the Stuart Highway north to south and then east along the Sturt Highway from South Australia to Deniliquin in the Riverina it is no shock to understand why meat prices are so eye-wateringly high.
I am retracing journeys I first undertook in 1978 and again in 1984.
Back then these outback arteries were largely unfenced roads and the carnage of stock killed by trucks was plain to see and smell every 10 miles.
In 1984 I was driving a three-speed LandCruiser tray with 2 x 80 airconditioning and additional kick-open side vents.
As we spied another corpse beside or still on the tarmac, we would furiously kick shut the side vents and wind the windows up to avoid as much as possible the ingress of the putrid stench of rotting flesh.
On this journey, however, of now over 4000km I have only seen two dead beasts. More to the point I have only seen about 50 head of cattle, 100 sheep and surprisingly about 300 goats behind wire, the latter close to my recent destination at Kyalite.
Australia has been devastated by floods in outback Queensland a couple of years ago that killed a reported 500,000 cattle as a result of cyclonic rains followed by cold wind.
Other natural disasters, such as the bushfires, consecutive poor wet seasons across the Top End and then more flooding down south, have contributed to stock being killed, farms being destocked and now enduring a long restocking process.
Wherever I look there have been paddocks with good grass from the Top End to Glendambo but few stock.
I won’t doubt there would be hundreds of thousands out of eyesight, but have farmers been bullied by climate change claptrap that cow farts will kill the planet and dissuaded from growing animals to feed us?
Have politicians been put on the back foot every time they mention the word “dam” by rabid greenies?
We have the land to sustain large herds and if we could store the water for agriculture, industry and domestic use we could be the most prosperous country in the world.
If this is the case my protein-loving friends, I would suggest get a firearm licence, a shotgun, come to NT Field and Game and get proficient at shooting clay targets and push Member for Drysdale, Environment Minister Eva Lawler to give us a decent seven-goose limit before we are forced to eat mung beans or starve.
NT Field and Game has clay target practice at the range at the Mickett Creek Shooting Complex on Sunday from 9amnoon and Fridays from 4pm until into the darkness under lights.