Your say...

Barringo Reserve

I am in Barringo Reserve, and in the waning sunlight, there is no path to organise my footsteps or show me a clear, linear way of moving.

Instead, I am guided by the rise and fall of the land’s contours and the pull of the plants which catch my eye. In this way, I break past the wall of long-leaved box trees (Eucalyptus goniocalyx) and move from the grassy paddock into the reserve’s wooded interior.

From above, my course of movement would look erratic and inefficient. I zigzag between violet chocolate lilies (arthropodium strictum) and carnivorous sundews (drosera hookeri). My eyes struggle to comprehend the latter, as the sundews have the bronze of the evening light trapped brightly within each green stamen, making me suddenly bent down and eye level with a small solar system.

With a field of these tiny suns blazing all around me, I follow a spur to the back of the reserve. Here, in secrecy, lives a community of grass trees (xanthorrhoea australis). Most are adorned in a brown skirt of expired leaves while some wear a crooked black spire upon their head, a reminder of a season’s flowering.

The grass trees are here every day, slowly rising in the blindspot of our rushing lives and hurried tasks. I contemplate their spindly leaves stretching for sunlight every morning as I eat my breakfast and reaching for eternity in the evening as I brush my teeth. This thought walks with me as I continue through the reserve.

I find my foot midway down a depression in the soil. Water has pooled at the bottom making a dark puddle. Fallen gum leaves, in various states of decay, swim in circles and the tannins steep like eucalyptus tea. All around me as I walk, I can see life leaving the reserve. There is an abandonment in the browning kangaroo grasses (themeda triandra) at this time of year. A goodbye in every ribbon of peeling bark.

I sit with my back sloped against a horse jump, legs straight out in front of me. I tilt my head back and my gaze settles on the canopy of peppermint gums (eucalyptus dives). Their dark, defined leaves fracture the blue dome of sky like a mosaic.

At present I’m inseparable from the droning of flies, the warm and drowsy sun. I feel calm, and my body dissolves like a teaspoon of sugar on my tongue.

- Joanna Beard, Macedon Ranges

Abbatoir thoughts

A flyer in the letterbox entitled ‘Say No to an Abattoir in Eganstown!’ says "our health, environment and way of life are under threat!"

The exclamation marks show the unidentified complainant clearly alarmed.

However, the nine reasons put forward seem exaggerated and inflammatory and on examination specious, not very convincing.

The complainant claims drinking water will be contaminated. A bit insulting to municipalities doing a good job at keeping water pure and potable.

Effluent and waste is to be put on paddocks. Shock horror. Sounds like a treechanger who doesn't know that manure from ruminants is the best fertiliser for regenerating soil, augmenting it with beneficial micro-organisms.

Other good and natural fertilisers are tree ash from fires, silt from floods, and ground rock. In contrast, industrial fertiliser for growing grain in quantity lowers soil quality - especially chemicals originally patented as an antibiotic. They deplete soil and can create a dustbowl effect by killing micro-organisms thereby preventing plants from absorbing minerals essential for health. Result? A booming supplements sector.

Noise and dust from trucks? How many additional trucks will be on the roads every day, one or two? Flies, they cries. Flies are a tiny price to pay for the many significant benefits of local production.

Every town needs its own meat processing facility.

The benefits will be obvious to all as time goes by: food security, local jobs, reduced imports therefore lower food miles, therefore less greenhouse gas emission.

It's neither cows nor rotting organic matter whether animal or vegetable that is the number one producer of greenhouse gases but transportation.

So more power to Tammi and Stuart's farm.

Localism and local produce, that's the way to go, for security, sustainability, real prosperity, and peace. Bankers, traders and internationalism not so much.

Which is why, to borrow the words of The Local editor from another context: "It is so important you support them. At least buy local."

At Least Buy Local. ALBL. And all will be well, O ye of little faith.

- Peter Jenkins, Blampied

Letters and thoughts are always welcome. Keep them shortish, to the point and interesting. Email news@tlnews.com.au

Any addressed Dear Sir will be deleted. You know why :) .