"Chookie" wrote in message
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote:

Frankly, you don't either. Talk to a Sudanese refugee some
time.
It's all a matter of degree.

Well of course it's a matter of degree! However, I dare say I
have a
much better idea about drought than some Sydney dweller who only
has
to turn on a tap to get water.

And we aren't talking about Sudan. We are talking about
Australia.
Sydney people should try living under the regimes in say Goulburn
or
Byrock where the residents recently went for 4 and a half days
without
water. They don't kick up a fuss because their water is taken
from
hundreds of miles away to feed their gawping needs.

I don't see why Sydney people wouldn't be able to put up with that,
if
necessary.

Well they may not have much choice so they would have to put up with
it or do something about it to sort out their own problems - not easy
if they live in as unit or flat though.

My letter on a related subject was published today. I am now
awaiting the
backlash from the anti-germ brigade. (Near the bottom of the
page...)

http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index....e#contentSwap2

Again, not in my experience. They lack the sort of curiosity
and
solution orientation of country people. They have everything
handed to them on a platter and so don't have to come up with
innovative or real life solutions or have to spend time
thinking
about things that country people do.

Sydney is not Cranbrook. Nor does it consist entirely of the North
Shore.

Truth be told, there are probably too many people in Sydney who
don't 'think
about things' because they are trying to keep their heads above
(metaphorical)
water of some kind. I work in TAFE and I see these people.

You mean you have such things as TAFEs within easy access?

Of course all of Sydney is not posh but at least it has such things as
hospitals and schools and police stations and all sorts of other
services. On a platter.

Contry people being well-known for the speed with which they
embrace
change...

:-))) Nice job of stereotyping.

Yours too ;-)

Yes I did realise that which is precisely why I wrote what I did.

However, I have reached the stage and age where I have seen and heard
so much shit come out of the city brain and mouth that I'm not very
tolerant anymore. The city people are very busy and talk lots (and
that is even the ones I know and love) but they really don't observe
too well. Too many fleeting glimpses or thoughts and not enough
cogitation before saying or half thinking about soemthing before
heading off to the next social engagement or need for busyness.

Farmers were talking about Global warming and climate
change
long before the bulk of the population. Only the real
lunatic city
fringe were talking about those things when I knew of dead
boring and very conservative farmers who'd noticed the
impact on
their land.

When?

I bought my copy of Blueprint for a Green Planet in 1987, the
year I
did my HSC (in a middle-class suburb), and it has a page on the
greenhouse effect.

Really 1987! Bit slow off the mark.

I was 17, you geriatric! Couldn't afford to buy books before I
turned 16 and
became eligible for Austudy.

Not You! The book was slow off the mark, you silly young thinglet!

Those stereotypically slow to accept change country people you
think
so little of, first noticed such issues as salinity about a
century
ago and they noticed dryland salinity in the mid 1920s. And
farmers
in the WA SW first noticed and started commenting on the start of
the
change to rainfall patterns in the 1970s. My own family also
started
to talk of the decline in rainfall on their farm in NSW about the
same
time and they live in a high rainfall area on the same farm which
was
first settled by my GGGfather in 1862.

The question is: what did they DO about it? For example, farmers
were still
*clearing* the WA wheat area in the 1920s. The plantings/earthworks
I saw
were, I would estimate, ten years old. Bit of a gap there.

Yes, I agree. But to solve dryland salinity and all sorts of other
land related problems is not one where a quick solution or rushing in
and doing anything and/or everything will always work. It was many
years before it was found that the way to treat erosion was to treat
the head of the erosion and not the body of the erosion.