Hugh Ploughs On Through Setbacks

SCHOLAR ON TRACK TO GRADUATE DESPITE TARIFFS, DROUGHT AND PANDEMIC

After the worst drought in 100 years, Hugh Maxey was finally riding high.

Perched in the driver’s seat of a massive tractor, he was preparing the fields of his family property near Nevertire in central NSW following the first decent rains in three years.

The Bond University student had returned home in mid-March ahead of COVID-19 border closures and was enjoying his first extended stint back on the land since 2012. The conditions were ripe for a bumper barley crop.

“After finishing study for the semester I was helping with the family business, we finally had a chance to put a crop in,” Mr Maxey says.

“I remember being on the tractor for about the 60th or 70th hour that week and I heard on the radio about the 80 percent tariff put on Australian barley going into China. “It has been a great season and there are new markets, but not as lucrative as it was going into China. But you don’t often get a clean run in farming.”

Mr Maxey came to Bond in 2019 to study a Bachelor of Commerce and has excelled, securing a prestigious Federal Government New Colombo Plan Scholarship.

He was due to take up the international study component of the scholarship this semester but it has been delayed by COVID-19.

“When the borders open up again it will be back on,” Mr Maxey says. “l’ll spend at least six months in Japan doing language training and then I think I’d like to do microeconomic reform in developing countries in the Asia Pacific.”

There are generous people out there and that generosity is a superpower as far as I’m concerned.

Following the disappointment of the Chinese barley tariffs and the loss of his parttime job in the struggling tourism industry, Mr Maxey has been supported at Bond by the Student Hardship Fund to help cover daily expenses through these challenging times. He graduates at the end of this semester.

“Something that has really impressed me during coronavirus is people taking positives out of such a negative situation,” he says.

“There are generous people out there and that generosity is a superpower as far as I’m concerned.”

The Student Hardship Fund is open to students who need assistance to meet living and educational expenses associated with their studies.

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