Tropical Fruit

Gord bought a bottle of tropical fruit at Aldi recently. Lib packed it in our pantry box and we've enjoyed it with yoghurt for breakfast this past couple of mornings. We all commented on what a pleasant change it was from the usual peaches, pears, apples. It contained pineapple, red and yellow papaya, guava and passionfruit juice according to the label and it sparked my memory of our visit to Dave Dickson at Charters Towers last year.

Dave's a keen gardener, if of the bush variety, and has surrounded his house with fruit trees and gets about the cattle station sowing pumpkin and melon seeds in strategic places after rain. We were in the garden talking about the Brahman cattle that, along with wild pigs, eat most of his pumpkins and melons, when Dave made an interesting comment.

"These cattle are not much good really. I reckon the country around here'd be better for growing pumpkins and melons and fruit trees than rearin' cattle."

The comment came back to me recently during the live cattle export controversy. Maybe Dave has a point. On the one hand we have millions of cattle roaming about big stations in our north, doing a great deal of environmental damage if you accept what conservationists say, with no value according to landowners if they can't be exported live for the meat trade, which in turn devalues the land; on the other hand we have thousands of refugees who have no place to live trying desperately to get to Australia risking death and detention.

Could it be possible that there's land somewhere up there in the north that could be used to settle these refugees and give them a home and an opportunity to grow food and perhaps enhance our country and it's land use?

Just a thought that came to me after enjoying breakfast. Politicians are always on about growing Australia. The growth may be better in the far north where there's a fairly reliable wet season than further reducing good farm land in the south with residential development and building desal plants to cater.