South Central and West Gippsland
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JUNE, 2014
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Weekday stud groom, weekend bushranger MATT Aldridge is a thoroughbred groom and farmer by day. But – since March – the 27-year-old from Mangalore has become his “other self� almost every weekend. Matt was chosen earlier this year to play Ned Kelly – horseman, republican and hero, or thief, outlaw and murderer, depending on your view of history – for the Beechworth Re-enactment Group’s annual ‘Kelly Weekend’.
The event commemorates Ned Kelly’s August 1880 murder-charge committal hearing in the GoldďŹ elds town. It led to his Melbourne trial and execution in what is now called the Old Melbourne Gaol three months later. Matt has been at Mangalore’s Limerick Lane thoroughbred stud for a year, horse-handling and foaling down and working on general farm maintenance. “‘Stud groom’ is prob-
ably the ofďŹ cial title,â€? Matt says – though you’d say he’s not much given to titles. Every day at the stud he invariably looks across to Hughes Creek where Ned Kelly, as a 10-year-old, saved the younger Dick Shelton from drowning in 1865. Matt also works on his family’s 530-hectare farm at Northwood. There, two weeks ago, he donned for the ďŹ rst time a replica suit of the armor that Ned Kelly wore at Glenrowan that led to his capture.
TAKING AIM: Matt Aldridge, acting as ‘Ned Kelly’, handles Kelly’s Enfield rifle in Beechworth.
‘Army’ routs Landcare By DAVID PALMER THE 2014-15 federal budget has removed $484 million from Landcare and used this money and more - to pay for a so-called ‘Green Army’ that will perform similar work. The cut removes more than one third of Landcare’s funding. The national land conservation program has also lost a grants program by which private land managers would be paid to do environmental work in the public interest. Treasurer Joe Hockey told federal parliament in his 201415 budget speech two weeks ago that the proposed ‘Green
Army’ would be made up of young people assigned to work in Landcare-type sustainability projects. The government also cut $80m from Co-operative Research Centre funding. CRCs have done valuable agricultural research work for many years but the current funding round will not proceed as planned. The budget papers reported that many of the ‘Green Army’ proposed projects would be similar to Landcare work, including tree-planting, weeding and river improvement. Western District farmer and Charles Darwin University
academic Andrew Campbell, who helped to start prime minister Bob Hawke’s “decade of Landcare� in 1989, said that Landcare was now no more than a “threadbare quilt�. He told ABC Radio National’s ‘Bush Telegraph’ that Landcare was little more than “a threadbare patchwork quilt of tired volunteers, waiting for the next government program with a new website, a new logo, a new department name and less money than it had before�. He said both sides of politics were to blame. “We continue with stop-start, piecemeal, ad hoc, policy amnesia, wheels being reinvented
all over the place and unfortunately we’re just seeing the latest iteration of that,â€? Professor Campbell said. He said that Landcare’s strength was its social network. It had for the ďŹ rst time “connected greenies, hobby farmers, fair dinkum farmers and young peopleâ€?. Professor Campbell said that he would rather see Landcare continue unchecked. One project not threatened is the Western Port Catchment Landcare Network’s sustainable farm practices demonstrations. Pakenham-based network facilitator Peter Ronalds said that the project had received
five years of funding last spring . The money was being used to help farmers to establish demonstration sites on up to 40 farms in the Western Port or Yarra catchments to showcase such practices. One already approved was a dairy farmer’s use of river pebbles instead of sawdust on the oor of his calf-rearing shed to minimise gut infections. The network is promoting the program to farmers who had “great ideas relating to sustainable agricultureâ€? which they would like to test but did not have the resources to try, Mr Ronalds said.
“Don’t be afraid to put your ideas forward no matter how ‘out there’ they may seem to be,â€? he told Southern Farmer. “Innovative ideas will be looked on favorably.â€? For CRCs, the budget proposed that only those continuing would be able to apply for funding. Co-operative Research Centre Association chief executive Tony Peacock said that funding for the following two years of new CRCs would be affected. But the extent of changes that would ow through programs was not yet clear. The future of programs is to be reviewed.
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