One of the “Radical Green” demands to their political puppets is to have all stock grazing removed from public (yes PUBLIC “you and me”) lands, as they falsely claim this historically successful land management process is destroying the vegetation. A contrived science from their armada of academics and PhD’s being churned out from training within our institutions of controlled learning.
Broken Cart is the last Travelling Stock Route that has been used continuously and unbroken by the Webb family in the Northern quadrant of the Snowy Mountains. A route that is imperative for this family to get their stock from their property in Adelong to their summer property in Yaouk near Adaminaby. Not only is this stock route historically, culturally and essentially necessary, it is Australian’s past maintained in a manner that HAS to be preserved.
Our aim is to demand of the NPWS of NSW and the Department of Environment to enshrine this bi-annual cattle drive via the Broken Cart Travelling Stock Route as a heritage listed living event for all time. With your help this is not only possible, but for generations to come, an absolute requirement.
Join the supporters team in the Battle For Broken Cart" to save this hertitage from political demise - click here
Please take a look and listen to this video clip of our "Battle For Broken Cart" produced DVD with original music from Frank Gallen & Mal E Bull plus Ernie Constance along with
narration by Brumbyy (with2Y's) showing the present state of the National Parks and the fire trails, fuel loads, and what Hoppi Webb went through to move her stock
across the Snowy. Click on the ARROW above.
To obtain a copy of the DVD - just click here to send us an email to which we will send you details and prices.
The Battle for Broken Cart Part I
The Broken Cart Travelling Stock Route is a minor roadway track that has
been in use since Whiteman first entered the high country. This
track/ minor road now absorbed via devious means into the realm of the
NPWS, has been renamed the Broken cart fire trail.
Historically, this track came into existence when in the1800s; a high
country drover summering his cattle on the Snowy Plains became caught in
a sudden shift in the weather. The situation for both the cattle
and the drovers at that time was becoming perilous. To the Drover's
aid came the local Aboriginals and they led the drovers and their charges
to the low country via this route. Ever since, this route has been
used consistently, every single year, to this day.
In the days that grazing was the norm, this trail was not just a dirt
roadway of dubious quality as it is today, but rather an open forested,
native grass route though pristine sub-alpine terrain. A route that
was originally only known and maintained via natural and Aboriginal
management. From the Aboriginal local's management process, to the
high country settlers stewardship of the same terrain, it stayed almost
exactly as it had been for centuries.
Today, cattle have been excluded from the Snowy Mountains by the
ever-powerful green lobby sect, infiltrating, coercing politicians and
bureaucracies and lying to the public. This has resulted in the
absolute disregard of all that history can tell. The NPWS, quite
categorically state in their Kosciuszko Management Plan 2006, that
anecdotal information will be ignored and only scientific documentation
will rule. How easy it is for unfettered power to change history
and hence achieve absolute control of this nation's icon.
The KMP 2006 is a 400 plus page document that they are obliged to
release, but dearly wish no one to read. But read it we have, cover
to cover.
Broken Cart TSR was absorbed into the KNP under the control of the NPWS
and gazetted as such 5th June 1981, page
711. "All those pieces or parcels of land containing a total of
15, 764 hectares, being the reserves for travelling stock camping and
water supplies under Pasture Protection Board control lying within the
external boundaries of KNP…….. In other words, the very
body that was responsible to the rural folk, without so much as a by your
leave, set in place the destruction of not only the most poignant
reminder of cultural living history this Snowy Mountains can provide, but
set in place the form work for the discontinuance of a family business
practise that has been ongoing twice a year, every single year the Webb
family have been in the cattle industry.
This arrogant, scientifically flawed restriction to the Webb's historical
cattle drive, will not only see more heavy trucks travel the Alpine
highway at huge unnecessary cost, will not only deny our grasslands,
albeit, very short grazing, but steal from the entire Australian public
so inclined, the very opportunity to view with their own eyes the
magnificent spectacle of living mountain history. A history that
the KNP MP 2006 is supposed to preserve.
SOS-NEWS is committed to bring Australian people this story, for this is
an act of pure hypocrisy by the NPWS. They state quite clearly
within pages and pages of the KNP MP 2006 that they wish to document the
past historical issues and preserve and maintain all for the pleasures of
the people.
4X4 Damage to tracks
50 metres away the results of
300units of Cattle after 24hr spell.
They bend over backwards to allow the commercial use of the
Snowy Mountains for big interests and powers that cause damage beyond
control. Yet humans, visiting transient humans, are responsible for
more damage to the KNP than 300 units of cattle have done in a
century.
People, the Webb family have been given 2 years ( By Minister Bob Debus)
from the date of the KNP MP 2006 commencement, this being the
14th June 2006, and after this date (
14th June 2008) they will no longer be
issued with a license to drive their stock on a route that was
specifically made and maintained for that very purpose of travelling
stock. In the Webb's case, they have annually driven their stock
via this route from Adelong near Tumut to their high country property
near Adaminaby for summer pasture grazing and back before winter sets
in. They do not get this license free as they should do, but have
to pay the NPWS a handsome fee for a right that should never have been
stolen from them and indirectly us in the first place.
Join the Battle for Broken Cart by clicking here and coming aboard, for
the Webb's history is your history and keeping it alive will require your
help.
The Battle for Broken Cart
Part II
Having introduced you all to the battle ahead in part I, we
now wish to impart a little history about travelling stock routes and who
used them in the Snowy Mountains and exactly what was the purpose.
For the sake of this battle we will deal with the northern snowy
Mountain’s TSRs, but in fact travelling stock routes were and still are a
necessary fact for the movement of stock through public areas.
Stock routes are exactly that, a thoroughfare for the movement of walking
domestic stock. Sheep, Cattle, goats and the like, basically any
stock that is farmed and needs moving from one point to another, for
various reasons. Travelling Stock Routes and Reserves are actually
one and the same, with the reserve being a paddock sized area set aside
at strategic distances to allow overnight watering and camping of
stock.
As this battle revolves around the Snowy Mountains and in particular, the
northern end of the modern Snowy Mountain’s Kosciuszko National Park, we
will deal from that perspective, but essentially the concept, albeit with
local idiosyncrasies, remains the same nationally.
The first travelling stock routes were Aboriginal thoroughfares used for
eons. One of and if not the first stock route, was brought into
being by the drought of 1828, when stockmen were in dire straits with
their stock on the lower plains that are now known as Lake George, near
Canberra. This drought was of such severity, that the stock faced
perishing from the lack of water and feed. Interestingly, in those
days green house gases and human attributed global warming was neither
known, nor could it be blamed for such climatic consequences. The
local Aboriginals, realising the plight of their white brothers and their
stock, did as any compassionate human would do and led them all via their
historical thoroughfare into the country now known as Berridale.
From that day forward, with much thanks to the Aborigine’s understanding
of humanitarian necessities, that route became the first fledgling Snowy
TSR. It has to be said at this point, even though it is a
digression from the story, that although the history re-writers wish to
portray white colonisation as nothing but murderous, exploiting, invaders
of a foreign land and its indigenous people. In generality, nothing could
be father from the truth. The rapport between Aborigines and our
early settlers in many and most cases, was not only congenial, but in
reality was a harmonious melding of different cultures. It was, and
still is a fact that only when the greedy, powerful, or self-righteous
enter upon the scene, that chaos reigns and history gets
re-written. Today such personage rises from both sides of the fence
as a minority, [still with the same driving forces] but with serious
consequences for all.
Gradually over those early years these Aboriginal thoroughfares were
shared with their white brothers and numerous stock routes came to be in
existence. The stockmen and women used these routes to move their
stock to summer grazing in the highlands and back months later to winter
below the snow line. Essentially, stock routes were the first
Australian highways. In fact, the lineage of modern highways is
this. Aboriginal thoroughfares turned into stock routes, stock
routes turned into tracks, tracks turned into dirt roads, dirt roads
spawned townships which in turn attracted rail heads and eventually, we
have the motorways of today following almost the same Aboriginal
paths/stock routes of yesterday.
This is an important point to remember, for then and more so today, for
every thing the city dweller wants or needs, he takes almost every part
of it at the expense of the rural folk and communities that rely and
relied on such stolen goods and assets for their own well being.
From stock routes to motorways, rivers to reticulated water supplies,
grazing lands to city playgrounds such as ski fields and national parks,
last but no where least, efficient sustainable farming practises to cash
flush city folk seeking investment dividends from coal, water, pines,
electricity and most insidious of all, Carbon Credits trading. All
of this stemmed from the Aboriginal showing the way as an act of good
will to a man they trusted, the high country settlers.
As the years marched on and the communities grew, people started to
complain. Concern grew that diseased stock were travelling on these
routes and from this grew an organisation that is known today as the RLPB
(the Rural Lands Protection Board). An authority that was given the
job of controlling an administering such routes and the stock that used
them. It grew to such an extent from its humble beginnings of just
over one hundred years ago, into an organisation that makes and enforces
rules and determines and collects taxes for rural areas of NSW
Another double dipping, tax collecting, controlling body, directly
answerable to the Minister.
An authority that appears to be wrought with political faction fighting
and in many ways has lost its focus and intention. Power breeds
contempt. It is this very organisation that in 1981 sold out its
soul by relinquishing all stock routes and reserves in the Snowy
Mountains, [Not their land, but rather, CROWN LAND. Yours and mine]
that were contained within the external boundaries of the Kosciuszko
National Park, to come under the control of the National Parks and
Wildlife Service. The NSW NPWS being a city centric organisation
that really came into prominence by denouncing the sound stewardship of
the high country folk as environmental vandals. They achieved this
by using simple reports, ignoring rabbit plagues, disregarding
uncontrollable wildfire, disregarding 150 years of hands on knowledge,
intentionally ignoring the immense value of the symbiotic relationship of
domestic mega fauna with mountain environments, but most damaging of all
was the unconscionable poisoning of simple city folks mind against the
country steward’s efforts with outright lies, deceit and false science,
or worse, no science at all.
This has reached the absolute pinnacle
of success for these minority city miscreants, as NSW Labor Minister for
the environment (huh) Bob Debus, bowing to political expediency, has
advised the last living heritage cattle family the Webbs, they must leave
the Snowy Mountains by the
14th
June 2008. A family that has never
ceased to use the stock route from Tumut to Adaminaby twice a year, every
year since they have been in the business. A family that has a
newly wed young generation willing, able and as capable as their parents
and forefathers, to continue this heritage right to use the Broken Cart
stock route and this nation’s citizens as one voice, must demand of our
politicians that this remain so.
Battle for Broken Cart Part III
Having given some basic Travelling Stock Route (TSR) history in part 11,
we should now have a reasonable understanding of just how important such
thoroughfares were and still are. In such protracted drought times,
as our rural communities are experiencing right now, these routes have
been a saviour to many a stockman.
Unless we have actually lived an experience of moving stock about in such
a manner, no one, and we repeat no one, can fully understand just what
the privations endured by such icons of Australia were and are.
These true blue Aussies rear their stock so that all of us can have the
beef and mutton supplies that we all take for granted from our
supermarket shelves. An Australian product that is perhaps the
cleanest and healthiest food product in the world. They care deeply
for their stock and go to great lengths to see that their husbandry
methods not only deliver to us these fine products, but that their stock
are cared for in the best manner that is available to them. When
drought comes and the land has reached its feed delivery ability, today
like yesteryear there are two choices left. Sell, or take to the
TSRs.
In the old days when the snowy high country was effectively an open
series of grazing leases, that is where they headed for their summer
grazing. This not only rested lower pastures, but provided the high
country with gentle grazing, and seed stock moving, along with nutrient
delivery, but also managed the fire risk by keeping the high country
vibrant and open. Just as it was found in 1828.
In the 1950’s Rules point staging area for the summer grazing saw 250,000
sheep and 50,000 head of cattle go through it annually. This
staging area was a 92 acre holding area. There are some very
interesting facts about this holding area, but we will visit that in
another part.
To move cattle about on a TSR was an art. It did not just take a
dandy from the city that could sit astride a horse, it took understanding
of both stock and environment. The saying was and still is, “There
are Drovers & Drivers.” Drovers managed their stock and the
environment in a symbiotic relationship that delivered good quality
results for both. Drivers caused stress and damage to their charges
and by pushing their stock hard, failed to capitalise on the environment
they travelled through. Drivers never lasted long and soon only
really became a memory of what not to do.
88 year old Snowy Stockman Les French has been a drover from
Queensland to Victoria over the high country. He says proudly he took
through the first big mob without loss in about 1946 he was about 28
years old by then and working for Arthur Cochran. 401 head of
cattle down over Jacobs Ladder into and along the Snowy River, into the
Pinch River and up the 9-mile ridge. We’d have a 2 mile string on
them, have to hold up the lead on half way flat waiting for the tail of
the mob to catch up. They lost a packhorse over the edge as he
reached out for a tussock of grass. The horse rolled down into the
creek but the pack protected him from getting hurt. Just a bit
dizzy. It took us a while to get him out. It’s pretty steep
country, all packhorse in those days.
They were all fit cattle and broken in and we were drovers, not
drivers. You’d get these other blokes that’d crack whips and hool
dogs all day coming unstuck with fat unfit cattle that’d fight you and
get foot sore and knocked up pretty quickly. Cattle set their own
pace and you’d then become a drover just keeping an eye on things. More
or less just riding along to open the gates. The drivers didn’t do
well down the 9 mile ridge. Cattle would be pushing each other over
the edge and knocking up.
Les has worked the Kosciuszko stock routes, Talbingo route to Rules
Point, the Broken Cart track, down the hill to Corryong and the Jacobs
Ladder end through to Victoria and the Bairnsdale sale. There
were no roads in those days down the Snowy River. They’d started
the road either end then, but there was no middle.
I worked a lot on my
own, just horses, dogs and the mob, sheep or cattle. You just
worked with the animals and the country.
Hoppi and Warren Webb are about the only ones left about here that know
how to drove stock properly. Everyone just walks along
without a fuss making good time without knocking up. Cows train
their calves and they remember where to go. Your animals know more about
it and you have to read them and the country. Yes reading the country, the climate, the animals, birds is a
gift. Les French was brought up at Gundagai where there is a rich
Aboriginal population. A lot of good people. No one
noticed skin colour in those days we’d all go to school, ride horses,
poddy calves, go bush.
When SOS news asked Les if there was much Aboriginal and European
blending of knowledge on how to manage the land, Les said, “Yes, we’d
never be caught out in the bush without matches. You’d have to
stuff some gum leaves in the matchbox if you went brumby running, that
was their only disadvantage. Yeah! We’d all get on well,
helped each other. Shared tucker, huts & horses. There
wasn’t much difference in how we thought about things. We’d be all
good observers. Looking and thinking all the time about things
around us. We’d be forever flicking a match and cleaning up the
bush to grow wildflowers, wildlife. The stock did a great job too,
just walking through, mulching up the bark leaves and twigs preparing it
for a little pokey fire. Between the pokey burns and the stock
grazing the vegetation, there would be nice and green open bush, not much
scrub as we found it and kept it.
Big healthy trees hundreds of years old. We’d burn all
summer a bit here a bit there, going out itself in the last little burn
or a green gully. The lizards would just hide behind a rock or down
a burrow in an old log or wriggle off out of the way. We’d didn’t
have enough junk piled up for a big hot fire. You’d come back a
week or two later and it would be all green and the wallaby, roos and
birds would be mustered onto it. Same after a little fire, or a mob
of stock going through. The wildlife and wildflowers loved it
both.
Don’t get me onto that 2003 Bushfire, that was the result of criminal
neglect!
The Webb family have neither asked to graze the high country at
this time, nor do anything that they have not done for generations.
They ask not for a new route to be opened, nor move stock that is no more
foreign to the high country than humans. They hold an understanding
of the very environment they traverse far in excess of the tax paid
frauds that lie to bring about draconian legislative control so as to
serve their corporate masters.
We at SOS-NEWS have seen the lies and deceit for ourselves, we understand
the battle and without any prodding or incitement from the Webbs, have
take up this battle, not so much on the Webb families behalf, but to
retain the very last living cultural and historical activity that this
nation was built upon.
This is not about tourism, electricity and this certainly is not about
fraudulent carbon credit trading, but our politicians and Gang-Green sect
are doing all in their power to destroy the Webb’s sovereign right to use
the TSR whilst feathering their corporate masters investment
portfolios. As of the 14th June
2008, Minister for the Environment Bob Debus has notified the Webbs that
their right to move cattle via the Broken Cart Travelling Stock Route
will cease. Not only is this based on false science, but it is
vandalism of our very sacred living history.
We ask you this. Why is it a cattle drover’s herd of
hundreds was not able to be found without great difficulty by city
centric authorities looking for this herd in the mountains?
Answer: Cattle and lesser weight stock in fact leave almost no
residual marks at all to the inexperienced eye. Yet still they are
demonised. WHY??
Battle for Broken Cart Part IV
So what makes a Snowy Mountain TSR so important? As we have said in
previous parts, a travelling stock route was the known accessible track
to the high country summer grazing of our great mountain regions.
Today a visitor to the high country open plains that the Broken cart
trail leads us to, called the Snowy Plains, sees the last remaining open
country on the northern end of the KNP, snow grasses and native
pastures.
These pastures, which are now slowly being taken over by woody scrub to
the point that soon there will be no open plains here at
all,
were once a
thriving wide open expanse of lush native grasses that fed hundreds of
thousands of head of stock during the summer along with an equivalent
number of native fauna. The stock-routes themselves were a known
track through sub-alpine timbered terrain that held lush and nutritious
grassy vegetation from start to end, with the odd exclusion of a rocky
ridge line trail.
The stock weren’t forced to march along a dirt road that had vegetation
up to the road edges that was impenetrable as it is today.
To the contrary, the
stock fed as they meandered to their summer grazing, making there own
time. As the herds fanned out, but headed on, they grazed the
growth and mulched the floral detritus. This constant summer
grazing acted like your city hydrocarbon spewing lawn mowers, with the
end result being a grassy under carpet amongst a cool, fresh, open
eucalypt forest that allowed rain water to run off and keep our streams
and rivers clean and flowing, while constantly reducing the intense fire
hazard.
The Drovers would intermittently and randomly set fires in a mosaic burn
pattern as they passed, in the areas that required burning off. The
saying being, “If the understory reaches to the stirrups, it’s time to
burn.” These fires would trickle along until they came to a
damp creek bed, gulley floor, or to the edge of a previous burn and just
peter out. Rarely, if ever, did these fires reach the canopy of the
trees and if it did, it was a momentary burst then it would drop to the
forest floor again to continue trickling along.
The moment a shower passed over this cool burnt terrain, the green shoots
would spring forth in new lush growth and the native fauna would be found
spread all over, feeding to their hearts content.
The Stock Routes went from being one in 1828 to numerous up into the
mountains. Once the Drovers realised that the entire area was in
reality open and clear under the forest canopy, the entire sub-alpine and
alpine areas were realised for grazing. This summer grazing
facilitated by the ingress/egress via the stock routes became the norm
for over 140 years. An environmental management process that
maintained the high country in the same condition that it was originally
discovered.
The lock up started after so called experts (one day city centric
trippers) found the wherewithal to venture from the suburban enclaves out
in to the wilderness as they so academically called it. They were
astounded at the beauty and pristineness of what they saw and couldn’t
believe the myriad of fauna that abounded, the clean creeks rivers that
flowed.
Suddenly it was on, the desire to claim that which had not been earned,
from the people that had nurtured, cared for and treated just as lovingly
as if was their own front lawn and in so doing were able to make a sound
living. In other words the city had come to the mountains and the
trouble started. So called scientists took short jaunts into the
mountains and returned not only experts on the Snowy, but villifiers of
the very people that had protected the mountains and built our
history.
Then, power was in the city as it is today and it wasn’t long before the
ground swell of a gangrenous movement started up against the high country
mountain folk and all they stood for. The beauty and splendour of
all that was and is the Snowy Mountains, was now under attack from the
fifth column ( the army from
within). The tool they had was ignorance at the city dweller level
and the inability for the stock people to either know they were being
screwed over, nor have the ability to respond. Child’s play for the
agenda driven curs.
If you think I digress on this issue, I do not. Without the
stock-routes and the maintenance of the forest across the entire
mountains through grazing and cool burn fire, these scientists would have
seen the Aussie bush as it stands today. A broken, weed infested,
stagnant creeked, feral animal ravaged
jungle of silent impenetrable scrub. They would
have just turned back to the pub and the good life in the city and
claimed that the mountains and sub- alpine forests were of no value.
The written history now being taught tells of the eminent day trekkers
such as Miles Dumphy and Castan and many other earlier. but it is these
latter judases of the high country that have really sold the lies and
deceit. A deceit that has vilified our stock folk of old and
destroyed our historical and heritagae families by using false and agenda
driven science.
Today the science they used 50 years ago and more is easily refuted and
hence they have moved to climate change as the big motivator for lock
up. We need to understand the style of science of yesteryear to
understand just how wrong they were then to understand just how wrong
they are today.
Below is an excerpt from a book by Mr Max Leitch called “A RECIPE FOR
DISASTER.”
To my knowledge, at least 43 experiments were carried out by the CSIRO
man attached to the SMHEA (Snowy Mountains Hydro Electrical
Authority)when construction of the Snowy scheme was taking
place. In the writer’s opinion, all these experiments had a very
definite bias against stock grazing on the Kosciusko Park, or to attempt
to prove some of the fantastic theories he had dreamed up. In
conversations with the gentleman, I’m afraid I formed the opinion he was
not quite sane.
In the presense of Sir William Hudson (chairman of the SMHEA) I asked the
CSIRO representative why one paddock only had scattered snow grass
tussocks on it, while the one next to it had a thick sward (grass
covering) His reply was, the one with scattered tussocks on it had
been over-grazed, while the one with a good sward had not been
stocked.
In fact the small paddock with the scattered tussocks had not been grazed
for years. The one with the nice thick green sward on it was the
Rules Point TSR (travelling stock reserve) which was used as a holding
paddock until the mobs of sheep and cattle were drafted and counted
before being placed on their respective leases and again when the stock
moved out. The reserve in question carried the heaviest stocking on
the Park and had the best sward in the Park. If one listened to the
conservation experts, it should not have had a blade of grass on
it.
The CSIRO representative said he would have to scientifically
measure the grass coverage before he could give an opinion, after being
told he had made a mistake. He disputed that one was better covered
than the other. Sir William asked how the measuring was done and it
was explained a square yard measure frame would be thrown out and the
plants inside the square yard would be counted.
I asked him how a large tussock would be counted. His reply as “as
one plant.” I then pointed out that 9 such tussocks would fill the
square yard and the count would be nine, but if the square yard was
thrown in another direction it would cover a number of single stalk
plants, so the count would be high and the ground coverage poor. He
then said he would walk around the paddock and take a fair average.
Sir William said, in that case, how about telling us which paddock has
the better grass cover. His reply was, “You fellows are hard to
please, we do things properly.” We didn’t get an answer, but the
difference between the two paddocks was so marked a blind man could have
walked over it and told us which paddock had the best sward.
Rules Point is essentially the end of the Broken Cart Stock
Route. The reserve, only 92 acres, had some 250,000 head of sheep
and 50,000 head of cattle corralled in it whilst being counted and this
was annually. The results of this test alone should have been
enough to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to any honest scientist, that
grazing was not only not detrimental to the flora and soils of the Parks,
but was unequivocally quintessential to the Park’s well being.
The Webb Families not only need to be able to continue to use
the route to their high country grazing property in Yaouk via either
Rules Point, or across the top of the Tangtangarra dam as condition they
only too well understand, but historically, culturally and
environmentally this sovereign right to do so must be paramount in the
legislative process to see it is enshrined for-ever.
Like the CIRSO day tripping scientist and his insane experiments, the
present day insane agenda driven Politicians, Bureaucrats, Water magnates
and the radical Gang-Green will perpetuate the lies and deceit in any
guise they can. That is unless we the people across this Nation say
enough is enough and stand united, loud and clear, and demand that the
last vestiges of our historical and cultural history still alive, is
allowed to remain using the routes to the Yaouk,s summer grazing high
country.
The Webbs are more than a family of unbelievable high country cattle
folk, they and what they represent are yours, mine and the children’s to
follow, heritage.
Battle for Broken Cart Part V
The Continuing severity of the drought now affecting most of eastern
Australia has epitomised the very essence of the battle for broken cart. TSR's
-Travelling Stock routes & Reserves - were and still are a significant means
of not just moving cattle from a - b, but also was and should still be, one of
the only expeditious means of getting cattle emergency fed when droughts denude
the grasses of the country.
Interestingly the Webb family along with others, have been on the road for
weeks now with their stock using the central western NSW TSR's. The situation
now so bad that even though the cattle are on the move daily, there has become a
need for them to truck water to their stock every day in the thousands of
litres.
How many of us in the metropolitan precincts of this nation understand just
what it is to have to work 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, suffering a hardship that
most don't endure whilst on camping holidays. Well this is the reality of those
many graziers/drovers now on the road live with and to top it all off, they are
obliged to suffer the impatient, indignant anger of motorists desperate to get
through the herds so they can get to where there impatience is taking them 5
minutes faster than the herds allow. Nary a thought, nor understanding, of just
what they are seeing before them.
With this drought now just devastating to these Grazier/Drovers, the TSR's
through our high country, closed but beckoning, have become ever so more
important. It was never the intention when this series for the Battle for Broken
Cart was started to enter into the fray for return of high country grazing, but
the writer just can't see how any sane, honest, laterally thinking Australian
-farmer or not- can not for the short term entwine the two issues.
Whilst John Howard and his team are using the media to show case their
drought relief funds as the panacea, massive amounts of feed that historically
were the very saviour of starving stock for 200 years, is wilting in the sun. No
matter what the radical, misinformed Greens believe, to exacerbate the drought's
effects upon the stock folk by inaction on this immediate possibility, is
criminal to say the least.
All through the Kosciusko National Parks Management Plan 2006 is the clear
indication that neither the scientists, nor the NPWS have any real understanding
of either the causes of some of the Parks problems, nor the effects their
ridiculous responses to the problems will have. They have just decided to lock
up millions of hectares of "OUR" lands from the very people that kept the Parks
in order for 200 years and incited the city centric radicals to steal that which
they neither contributed to, nor understood. The Management plan clearly
identifies the criteria they call the science we are supposed to believe and
they use to lock-out the historic managers. [ There is currently no way of
knowing whether the condition of most of the diverse range of values attributed
to the park is being maintained, enhanced or degraded by existing management
practices. For the majority of values, management is based upon anecdotal rather
than objective evidence.] The question here is. Whose anecdotal evidence?
Remember the CSIRO's mad hatter measuring sward last issue
The greens and environmentalists love to espouse the "Precautionary
Principle," [ acceptance that where there a proposal is likely to result in
serious or irreversible environmental damage, the risk should be avoided or
reduced. The lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason
for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation] when they have
no idea other than a desire about a dream in their own minds. Well, it this very
principle that must be applied to the return of the old ways, for without, stock
of all types will lie in the dust dehydrating, suffering, having their eyes and
tongues eaten whilst still alive and eventually die a terrible death. Those
stock that the farmer can get to the markets will not bring enough of a return
to warrant existence. Sheep will just not be worth the time to load them in a
truck, let alone transport them to the sale yards. The writer 30 years ago had
the grizzly task of killing 180 head of sheep that just weren't worth
anything
but were still alive enough to suffer
the pre death indignities as mentioned above if they weren't dispatched. It
wasn't pretty then and it is neither pretty' or necessary in many cases to day.
This opening the gates to millions of hectares of Government controlled
Australian lands as drought relief would assuredly alleviate the dreadful rural
suicide rate of 4 per week. This result alone is enough to demand such actions
be immediately legislated for and instigated.
The Political procrastination over the indisputable need to unlock all
National Parks and State & Crown Lands to stock farmers for instant
emergency drought relief is not negotiable, in fact, to ignore the possible
relief such actions of leadership would provide, is enough to make the caring
sick and make grown graziers/drovers cry in desperation.
The Broken Cart stock-route is one of many that is available on the snowy
mountains ready and available to provide ingress to such relief. Why it isn't
already being used to drive stock to emergency feed is nothing short of
astounding. Why the drovers and stock farmers are not demanding such relief, is
also astounding. To hell with the Geeenie vote, to hell with the Debus and
Thwaites Ministerial legislative controls over such terrain, this is a matter of
life and death for animals and humans alike and is a matter of the most serious
nature for the Prime Minister to address and he is already late in doing so.
We at SOS-NEWS along with many who write into us, are almost 100% in
agreement that to allow such an emergency act would almost undoubtedly show that
all the anti-use garbage that the Gang Greens, NPWS along with their
counterparts in Victoria that has been used to vilify and denigrate the high
country folk for decades is in fact lies, deceit and deception to achieve an
agenda that is not in the best interests of anyone other than their own self
appointed importance. No wonder Debus is retiring. Certainly not the National
parks themselves and certainly not the thousands that are having, if not already
had, their lives and communities destroyed.
These Gang Green and Bureaucratic cretins continually use false science to
support their theories and yet here is the perfect opportunity to put real
honest science to work and in so doing, provide instant, plentiful and FREE
drought relief to many. Combine this relief along with the funds now promised
from Howard & Co and the future may just be that much brighter for many.
The living history of the Broken Cart and the Webb Family is now becoming a
way of life for many others during this drought. It is time to apply the
Precautionary Principle to work for the well being of this Nation's Farmers
instead of false hoods and allow those that wish to avail themselves of this
option the right and proper opportunity to do so.
Battle for Broken Cart Part VI
For those of you that follow this battle you may think that I have lost my
way and got right off the track, but the drought has reached such State of
Emergency proportions, that there is a need to take it to a level that was never
intended at the outset. It was supposed to be a battle to gain heritage listing
for the Broken Cart Stock Route in a manner that was not only living history,
but allowed a certain amount of scientific research to be conducted by doing so.
The state of emergency this south-eastern Australian area is now suffering
renders this ideology way short of the mark. The Snowy Mountain high country
feed lots were, and are, a buffer to our dramatic, cyclical weather patterns. If
this is not soon accepted and understood by the misguided NPWS and their radical
agenda driven supporters, the Mountains will suffer in a manner they have never
suffered in 50,000 years.
Today, 100 dollars will buy you ten bales of mediocre hay that will sustain
approximately 80 cattle for a days feeding, that is if you can find it to buy.
The high country as drought relief accessed by Broken Cart TSR and all the
others TSR’s, will sustain close to 100,000 head of cattle for some 2-3 months
with careful grazing and not cost the tax payer one dollar. To not move this
battle to the obvious for this emergency would be just errant neglect of all
that we know and are able to achieve if we pull together.
The extremes of weather in this nation have taught all that have come before
and been involved in the land use as a primary production business, that
effective resource utilisation is an accepted science that although enhanced
from academic research, the hands on experience over a life time is a superior
science in almost every way to just academia hypotheses.
Today in modern times the pendulum has swung almost 180 degrees in the other
direction and we now have the mythological science pouring from both tertiary
establishments and universities along with the city centric radical green
agenda, vilifying 200 years of experience for the sake of greed and power of
that which they do not understand.
The politicians, whose main aim is to remain in power, or at least in office
long enough to collect a handsome life long pension from the public purse - the
pollies own private slush fund - clearly are afraid to legislate for proper
sound management processes in the face of withering coercion from the minority
radical ratbags.
This nation is experiencing an extreme drought and although the South
Australian Premier is going over the top to satisfy his state’s green ratbags by
claiming that it is one in a 1000 year drought, the government has failed to
commit anything other than dollars to the continuing rural disaster. It is here
that TSRs (travelling stock routes) and reserves, come into play. For us it is
about The Broken Cart Stock Route, but all such thoroughfares across the nation
and over public lands are embroiled.
Broken Cart TSR is the route to the northern Snowy Plains high country and
having travelled over its entire length once again a week ago, this track in
places is not even able to be called a "fire trail", a name that the NSW NPWS
like to call it. The northern end is only trafficable in dry weather and then
only with some very careful 4X4 skills. Big Dubbo hill is impassible to heavy
vehicles such as fire tankers. INSERT HOPPY21The bushfire fuel loads are not
only incredibly thick – 50 tonne to the hectare, plus - but are right up to the
track edge in 90% of the entire trail ( some 20 klm), this alone is the most
dangerous of situations should our yellow angels be obliged to be on this trail
at the wrong time in a racing inferno.
One other herd has been allowed to traverse this Broken Cart TSR this year,
but not before the Drover was made to agree to some incredibly draconian rules.
These draconian rules imposed while this drover and his family are desperately
trying to keep their herd alive and keep their head above water financially.
More on this one later, as their saga will blow you all away.
The feed I saw on this investigative trip to the high country via Broken Cart
TSR was, as I have been writing about since this drought reached emergency
status. The feed is just wilting in the sun and if it hadn’t been for the
brumbies we saw, the open snowy plains would be just as despoiled as our bush
has become under national park sanctioning. There is still plenty to eat up
there, but very little for the kilometres of the TSR route itself, due to
mismanagement.What feed there is on the reserve sections of the
route is being grazed by the fauna, for there is nothing to eat out in the bush
and it wouldn’t matter whether it was a drought , or not, for the bush is just
scrub laden fire hazard.
It is here where the constant use of the TSR by domestic mega fauna play
their most important part. Tramping down the scrubby fuel loads, breaking up
small logs and horizontal timbers, grazing the native grasses so they grow fresh
and nutritiously, fertilising as they excrete the waste by product of what they
eat. All this done gently, but steadily, just as our native mega fauna did in
pre and poste Aboriginal days and just as the early colonial settlers did with
domestic mega fauna on white man’s entrance to the mountains.
It is interesting to note that none of the so called experts that have their
names engraved in green historical records as the saviour of the snowy mountains
from the high country folk, have ever actually had any real interaction with
those earning their living from the area of saviour. They were all what we call
to day, weekend green warriors spending a few days to a couple of weeks on high
and then quickly returning to their hot baths and social clubs to rewrite the
history of the demise of the Snowys. That is is occurring more so today, that is
unless we intervene. They disregarded the rabbits - that are growing in ever
increasing numbers – and the erosion they caused and still cause. We saw last
week in our short stay a couple of hundred and many warrens both large and
small. They disregarded experience that was conveyed to them from
all that they come across, even though they deceitfully listened with apparent
attentiveness, yet in reality were just gathering the historical evidence, so as
to be able to compile a defence to that which they knew they would have to
defend against. They disregarded the two major wars that often left large lease
holdings unattended for a few years while the men went away to have the heads
blown off so the city experts could shaft them at home.
Minister Debus has flagged his intention to run for a federal seat at the
next election. It is obvious with his allegiance to Bob Carr’s desire to screw
every rural property possible with his legislative power, in anyway he could,
feels his work is done and hence has no qualms about saying no to grazing for
emergency purposes within OUR parks as he has just done. To move to the federal
sector would almost assuredly - god forbid - see him installed as the federal
labor minister for the environment and then those that he hasn’t destroyed by
his pandering to his masters, would see the wrath of this scion of radical
environmentalism, breath fire on all that oppose his agenda.
The battle for Broken Cart is the flagship of the defence against this soul
destroying movement of rural destruction that has started at the top and has
enveloped our rural communities like a force-field slowly descending like a fog
and inundating everything with unaccountable draconian legislative power until
all has been absorbed into major corporate hands. The term is a democratic
market driven economy. The reality is that the greedy and the powerful have
usurped this nations rule, regulations, politicians and governments, but most of
all they turned our democracy upon us as a weapon and our politicians, greens,
nationals, liberal and labor, are all bloody well complicit.
Starting with the battle for Broken Cart, we as a nation of free, sovereign
citizens have to stand as they did at eureka and reclaim commonsense and
Australian sovereignty against global governance of us all with our own
politicians and governments being the policemen for these worldly powers. We
need to individually demand that Broken Cart stays a TSR, that the Webb family
remain the living history that they are, that the Broken Cart at the very least
be recognised as a heritage listed travelling stock route with real live
Australian drovers using this route, forever.
One child dies sadly on a pedestrian crossing in the city by an inattentive
driver and we spend millions on media, parliamentary time and legislative
processes to see it doesn’t happen again, but when 4 Farmers commit suicide a
week our elected representatives turn their back and say, "Let them eat
Cake."
With your help, We’ll see about that!! Get vocal, get militant, get pissed,
but most of all GET HEARD!
One of the “Radical Green” demands to their political puppets is to have all stock grazing removed from public (yes PUBLIC “you and me”) lands, as they falsely claim this historically successful land management process is destroying the vegetation. A contrived science from their armada of academics and PhD’s being churned out from training within our institutions of controlled learning.
Read The Story in episodes -
but were still alive enough to suffer
the pre death indignities as mentioned above if they weren't dispatched. It
wasn't pretty then and it is neither pretty' or necessary in many cases to day.
This opening the gates to millions of hectares of Government controlled
Australian lands as drought relief would assuredly alleviate the dreadful rural
suicide rate of 4 per week. This result alone is enough to demand such actions
be immediately legislated for and instigated.
What feed there is on the reserve sections of the
route is being grazed by the fauna, for there is nothing to eat out in the bush
and it wouldn’t matter whether it was a drought , or not, for the bush is just
scrub laden fire hazard.
They disregarded experience that was conveyed to them from
all that they come across, even though they deceitfully listened with apparent
attentiveness, yet in reality were just gathering the historical evidence, so as
to be able to compile a defence to that which they knew they would have to
defend against. They disregarded the two major wars that often left large lease
holdings unattended for a few years while the men went away to have the heads
blown off so the city experts could shaft them at home.