Grafton, New South Wales

Grafton is the commercial hub of the Clarance River Valley, population around 20,000 and is 630 kilometres north of Sydney. Jacaranda trees are a native of the dry, high plains of Brazil and Argentina but are very popular in Australia and grow almost anywhere and can reach a height of over 20 metres.

In 1879, a Grafton seed merchant, Mr H.A Volkers was contracted to plant trees for the Grafton Council and was responsible for the supply and planting of hundreds of jacarandas seen on the streets today, making them well over a century old. Thank you Mr. Volkers.

Grafton's Jacaranda Festival in spring is a sight to behold. With all the trees in full bloom and a carpet of flowers on the ground everywhere you look, the town turns completely blue.

Grafton Bridge over the Clarence River

Alas, I am about 2 weeks too late to capture them at their most spectacular, the leaves have already started to sprout.

Iluka, New South Wale

The Clarence River Mouth

The townshipof Iluka on the

north side and Yamba on the south

Iluka is home to The Clarence River Fishermens Co-op. They had 70 active commercial fishermen in the year 2000, in February this year there were only 35. Reduced access to fishing grounds, rising operational costs and cheap imports are taking their toll. Commercial fishermen have had to face the cruel reality that the job they love and spent all your life doing, is no longer viable.







Chairman of the Clarence Co-operative explains why the men who want to leave the industry are ham-strung. "Because of the cost of just keeping the boats, it's really difficult to walk away and find other employment that will cover the cost of having the boat sitting there, so you've got to keep working them. They really deteriorate fast just sitting there, they rust up or rot. It costs at least $30,000 a year to maintain a boat and then there is work cover insurance, fuel and repair costs.



Skipper Gordon Farrell trained as a fitter and turner and would like to leave the industry and work around Australia. But that's impossible. His boat has been on the market for months, it was once valued at over $1 million. When he put it on the market, for just over $300,000, he had just one offer of $200,000 so he can't leave, he's got to keep working his boat.






Last year Andrew Hayward, after 13 years as skipper of the Rhondae II, realised he couldn't make a living from prawns anymore. His brother's boat El Sombrero used to sit next to his at the Yamba boat harbour but when he saw his brother's for sale sign, he decided to sell too. No price was set but the brothers hoped they could sell both boats at a reduced price. While waiting for a sale, to cut costs, they only worked one boat and stayed close to shore to save on fuel. One week they went away for 3 nights and returned home out of pocket by $130 each.


Clarence Nationals MP Steve Cansdell told parliament in September this year that a well-designed buy-back and a crack down on illegal professional fishing are needed to secure the future of the industry on the Clarence River. Quoting from a letter he received from a local fisherman he read "We have not had a solid income in months. How long before the government of the day starts to take notice or offers us some help. Do they intend to wait until fishermen start to take their own lives before they offer us any assistance? Steve, we are getting very close to that point".




The government has already spent millions on licence buy-backs in the last few years, namely Sydney Harbour, the south coast around Batemans Bay, Port Stephens and Byron Bay. For those who are left in the Clarence, they are waiting and praying that their time will come soon.


Steve Cansdell also said that one of the most insidious problems associated with the fishing industry is the sale of fish on the black market to shops, clubs and restaurants. The state's illicit seafood market is believed to be worth a fortune but the government refuses to reveal its true value, saying it would only lead to more people becoming involved.

Chinese restaurants can't get enough abalone and pay well for it. Abalone, rock lobsters, mud crabs, oysters, blue eyed cod, tuna, kingfish and snapper are the main targets on the black market in NSW. Sea horses are also being caught illegally and exported to Asia for traditional medicines.

But here's the bottom line - there are so few fisheries inspectors remaining today, there is little chance of ever catching the criminals. There are only three officers patrolling the Port Stephens region from Stockton to the Myall Lakes and two cover the Hunter region, including Lake Macquarie, Newcastle and the Hunter, Williams and Paterson rivers. A third inspector position in the hunter region has remained unfilled for three years.

Organised crime including Bikie gangs, Asian triads, and fishermen, both recreational and professional, are all said to be involved in the very lucrative black market seafood trade, not only in the state of NSW, but right across the country.

Casino, New South Wales

Beef Week Champion

Casino is beef country. It's among Australia's largest beef centres and their annual Beef Week Festival, held in May, is one of the leading events on the livestock calendar with exhibitors coming from all over eastern Australia.

The champion led steer of the 2009 Casino Beef Week was a Limousin exhibited by St Johns College Dubbo. Limousins are a breed of beef cattle originally bred in the Limousin and Marche regions of France. Cave drawings 20,000 years old in the Lascaux cave near Montignac have a striking resemblance to today's breed. The team from St Johns College Dubbo won with an 11 month old Kirk family bred Limousin. It was the second year in a row that the students have won the big prize and the fifth time in the nine years they have been coming to Casino to compete.

The Australia Beef Association suggested that Australian consumers were paying between 3 and 4 million dollars too much per year for beef and took a swipe at the two big players Woolworths and Coles. There were also innuendos about the sale of substituted old cow meat.

Woolworths strongly rejected these claims during the ACCC Grocery Price Enquiry Hearing held in April 2008 and made the following statement.

Woolworths only purchase beef from grain fed British bred steers to exacting quality specifications. We do not buy old cattle or cow meat.

There are many steps involved in putting beef on supermarket shelves and costs are incurred at every point in the process. On average, if the customer pay $10 for beef at the checkout, the supply chain costs are:

$4.80 cost of live animal from feedlot or farm

$0.10 transportation to abattoir

$0.90 animal is slaughtered and boned

$0.10 transportation to processing plant

$0.10 ageing, storage and pre-preparation of carcass

$0.10 transportation to stores

$1.40 in-store butchers prepare and pack cuts

$0.70 refrigeration and display

$8.20 costs incurred prior to sale

$1.70 gross margin to Woolworths before payment of store wages, rent, lighting, tax, advertising etc.



I don't have much respect of the ACCC, remember Grocery Watch? They spent $5,135,000 on consultancy fees and then scrapped it.

But the biggest threat to the beef industry has got to be climate change. When Agriculture Minister Tony Burke was presented with figures showing just how much it will cost beef farmers to comply to the ETS, he said they would adapt.

Professor Barry Brook, climate change adviser to the government says that livestock methane emissions are a greater threat to global warming than all the coal powered coal stations in Australia put together and believes Australia can phase out cattle production completely in just a few years. Is he insane? What will happen to our beef and dairy industries?

Al Gore suggests we should all eat less meat, that it's "the responsible thing to do" to fight climate change. That reminds me of the time he called on all Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption in their homes and his 20 room, 8 bathroom mansion in Nashville consumed more electricity in one month than the average American home used in one whole year. I suspect Al is still enjoying a nice juicy steak, if he's fair dinkum, he'll become a vegie.

No one knows what climate change and the Emissions Trading Scheme will mean to agriculture and our hard working farmers in the years ahead but hopefully commonsense will prevail.

Lismore, New South Wales

Winsome Hotel

Still in the heart of the Northern Rivers country, also known as the Rainbow Region, is the thriving town of Lismore, population 45,000. The surrounding countryside is just so beautiful I want to stay a while longer.

But all this beauty comes at a price. Lismore is surrounded by hills and mountains and when it rains hard, it roars down the hillsides and into the creeks and rivers and makes its way into the town, then it slows down and spreads out across the floodplain before moving out to sea. Lismore was declared a natural disaster in May this year and 500 residents were evacuated.

But the people of Lismore are upbeat about floods, they say they've lived with them for years and wouldn't dream of moving somewhere else.

May 2009

There is a great community spirit in Lismore. The Soup Kitchen is a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers and also provides accommodation assistance for needy people. They serve breakfast from Monday to Thursday at the United Church from 7am to 8.45 am each morning and hot lunches are available every day at the Soup Kitchen in Norco Lane, South Lismore from 9am to 1pm with sandwiches for people to take away.

The Wilsons River runs through the town

The Lismore Council has just given the Soup Kitchen $100,000 towards the purchase of the Winsome Hotel for crisis accommodation. Funding to buy the hotel is made up from the sale of the Soup Kitchen's existing homeless house in Lismore, $220,000 from the Federal Government, a private loan, a foundation grant, a financial institution and some vendor finance.

Tim Costello

The Soup Kichen's patron Tim Costello said it will give homess people an important sense of belonging. Tomothy Ewen Costello is a Baptist minister and current CEO of World Vision Australia. He is an 'Australian Living Treasure' and brother to former Federal Minister for Higgins, Peter Costello.

Nimbin, New South Wales

Tucked away in the hills 30 kms from Lismore is the tiny village of Nimbin, known as Australia's most famous hippie destination and alternative lifestyle capital. Although the cultivation, selling and possession of marjuana is illegal in Australia, in Nimbin cannabis has been part of everyday life for years.

People buy, sell and consume locally grown cannabis on the streets, in cafes and laneways. If you want to experience something different, come to Nimbin on the first weekend in May when they hold their MardiGrass Festival. From the organisers of the festival comes this proclomation:

Proclomation - all self recognised Knights Hemplar and Dharma Farmers are called on a Religious Crusade to Nimbin, home of the Church of the Holy Smoke, to all meet there on the first weekend in May in the year Seventeen of our MardiGrass to participate in all the Sacred Ceremonies of the Holy Smoke and Smoke the Pipes of Peace.

MardiGrass activities include the Nimbin Cannabis Cup, the Hemp Olympix, the bong Throw and Yell, Joint Rolling, and the Grower's Iron Person Cup where runners must first carry a 20 kilo sack of fertilizer, then a bucket of water and finally "the crop" as a tribute to the difficulties faced by marijuana growers in the hills.

But things are slowly changing. On the 1st April 2008 more than 50 officers from the Richmond, Coffs-Clarence and Tweed Byron commands as well as the dog squad and the riot and public order squad from Sydney, descended on Nimbin with search warrants. Eight people were arrested and police seized 4 kilos of cannabis and cannabis cookies. Lease-holders of the Nimbin Museum and the Hemp Bar were ordered to close. The Museum lease-holders just walked away and were quickly replaced with new ones and re-opened fairly quickly but the Hemp Bar remained closed for eight months and re-opened in January 2009.

This year's MardiGrass Festival attracted huge numbers of tourists and locals to this beautiful area. Sniffer dogs and 4 mounted police made their presence felt and there were 150 drug seizures. Although some visitors came to buy marijuana, the majority came to enjoy the art, music and the uniqueness of the colourful festival. People were handing out petitions calling for the drug laws to be changed and marijuana to be legalised.

The 'New Age' people say police are going over the top with their crusade to clean up the town and continue to harrass them for no reason.

The 'Old School' folk say that the police haven't gone nearly far enough.

The Melbourne Cup - 2009

Brad Rawiller wins the Caulfield cup on Viewed and looking for another win tomorrow

The Melbourne Cup is getting bigger every year. People who couldn't care less about horse racing for the rest of the year find themselves keen to put their names down in the $2, $5, $10 and $20 sweeps at work. And when the TV is wheeled in at race time the phones stop ringing and all work stops. The amazing thing is no one can pick the winner, the so-called experts are nearly always wrong so there's a good chance that the horse no one bothered to talk about could win, and often does. There is only one problem, it's very unfair that Melbourne get a public holiday for the race and Sydney does not.


I remember when that wonderful mare Makybe Diva won the cup three years in a row, a feat previously thought impossible. Owner, Tony Santic was born in Croatia and owns one of the largest tuna fishing operations in Australia and sends the finest quality tuna for sashimi to Japan . He went to the UK and bought Tugels, in foal to Desert King. He shipped the mare and foal home to Australia and had no idea just how famous she would become. The horse needed a name and five girls working in Tony's Tuna in Port Lincoln decided to use the first two letters of their Christian names. Maureen, Kylie, Belinda, Dianne and Vanessa - Makybe Diva.


Internationals Dermot Weld, the Irishman who bought us Vintage Crop and Media Puzzle is a genius and Luca Cumani and Irishman Aiden O'Brien are also brilliant trainers. One of the world's richest men Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, a Dubai Royal and the biggest owner of bloodstock in the world has vowed to take the Melbourne Cup home but so far has not been successful. His horse Crime Scene and Luca Cumani's Basalatico are not to be discounted.


Getting a horse from Europe to Flemington is an expensive business, it could cost as much as $120,000. To get some of their money back the Europeans need to finish in the top ten but all eyes are on first prize of $3.3 million.


But there is only one master trainer, 81 year old Bart Cummings who has won the cup 12 times. His horse Viewed won last year and is the favourite for this year's cup even though he's carrying big weight. Bart says Viewed can handle the extra 5kg and is on track to win again. Will he make it a baker's dozen tomorrow?

Murwillumbah Photo Gallery

Beautiful countryside

Behind that hill is Surfers Paradise

2000 year old Beech trees

Tweed River

Natural Bridge

Quiet country roads

Mount Warning

Rainforest walk