Bourke - 2 July 2014

It is our last day in Bourke today. On Monday, we had ordered some meat at Willoughby's Butchery. They were going to cryovac the meat free of charge and have it ready for us to pick up this morning. We had morning tea at Grubby Mick's Café first, which wasn't too bad, did some grocery shopping and picked up the meat before heading back to the van.

After lunch we did a tour with Mateship Country Tours around Bourke and to a couple of places just out of Bourke. It was a great tour with Stu. He has been running the tours for the last 19 years, and is also a Councillor on the local Council. His father started Hungerford Hill Wines in the Upper Hunter Valley. Stu is very passionate about Bourke.

We drove around Bourke first, with some of the lovely old buildings being pointed out, including the fact that there are 2 Court Houses in town! The authorities didn't realise there was already one built, so they made the second one a Maritime Court. Stu did say that Bourke is improving and that some of the shops have started taking the grills down from the front of the buildings.

From being such a huge rail depot and moving so much wool, the last train left Bourke in 1989.

Stu also talked a bit about the Darling. It plays such a big part in the life of the town. Bourke suffered through 6 floods in 3 years. Enough water flowed down the Darling in those floods to fill 25 Sydney Harbours. When there are floods in Queensland, it takes about 8 weeks to reach Bourke. The river flows 5 kms/hour even in flood. It just spreads out over the land instead. 26 rivers flow into the Darling. There are 75% of primary producers reside in the Murray Darling basin and you really need 100,000 acres to support yourself. A water licence costs $1.6 million which gives you a 400 acre licence - 2000 megalitres.

European carp is causing lots of problems for our rivers, and the Darling is no different. The carp eat away the vegetation along the edge of the rivers which cause the banks to collapse. One of the fishing clubs caught 2.5 tonne of European carp in a weekend, in an effort to reduce their numbers. Native fish are slowly being reintroduced. You are no longer allowed to remove snags from rivers as they are habitats for the fish.

We then went out of town to a navel orange orchard. The orchard was started by a Russell Mansell on 40 acres. He built it up to a big concern, borrowed money during the drought and then the Government in a deal with the Greens a few years ago, took away his water rights. He ended up in financial difficulties (at age 69) and the bank took over the farm. With Woolies and Coles and their lack of regard for Australian farmers and screwing them down on price, the new owners are going to plough in the orange trees. They also used to grow table grapes on the property. They were ploughed in. They then tried rockmelons. Unfortunately, they were only paid 12.5 cents for each rockmelon, so they were ploughed in. Before we know it, all our food will have to be imported.

With the trees going to be ploughed in, we were given a plastic bag each and told to fill it with the oranges from the trees. We did, with mixed feelings.



Leaving the orchard we then visited a cotton gin. It was supposed to be working, but unfortunately the machine had broken down. We still did a tour through it and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Cotton is a desert plant and gives a better return than fruit. You only need to water cotton for 48 hours and this is sufficient for the whole year. They have a long tap root. It is planted in October and picked March - May. No chemicals are used.

The above is cotton seed and is used in the production of different foods, e.g. oils.

Stu showed us a film of the machinery used to harvest the cotton. It can do 600-700 bales a day, wrapping it in a plastic film before spitting it out.

Once the bale of cotton goes into the gin, it only takes 90 seconds for it to go through the process.