GOULBURN VALLEY LIBRARIES

The Ballad of Abdul Wade reveals an alternative Australian history.

Shepparton Library is pleased to welcome author Ryan Butta to discuss his recent book, The Ballad of Abdul Wade. Ryan will be visiting the Shepparton Library on Friday 7th October at 3pm.

Ryan Butta reveals a gritty alternative history in The Ballad of Abdul Wade, exposing the untold debt that Australia owes to the humble camel – and the Afghans who brought them here and drove them through the outback.

When young Afghan entrepreneur Abdul Wade first brought his camel trains to the outback in the 1890s, he was hailed as a hero by local communities. The British colonies relied on horses, which couldn’t access many remote settlements – especially those stricken by flood or drought – so camel trains rode to the rescue time and time again.

But with success came fierce opposition fuelled by prejudice, and in a climate of colonial misinformation, hyperbole and fear, Wade –along with other Afghans involved in the camel business – found himself with a target firmly on his back when his business threatened the livelihoods of the European horse drivers. The anti-Afghan movement took off, propelled by the union leaders and politicians of the time, leaving a legacy of xenophobia that endures in Australian society today. Yet all the while, for those in need, the ships of the desert continued to appear on the outback horizon.

Ryan Butta stumbled on this fascinating, forgotten history when visiting his father’s hometown of Brewarrina in north-west New South Wales in 2018. Flicking through the pages of a local history of the town his interest was piqued by a 19th-century photo of a camel train, and he soon found himself on the trail of Australia’s earliest Afghan camel drivers. Separating the bulldust from the bush poetry, Ryan reveals the breadth and depth of white Australian protectionism and prejudice. Told with flair and authority, The Ballad of Abdul Wade interrogates why some have been written out of history and defies the standard horse-powered folklore to reveal a hitherto unknown episode of Australian pioneering history.

Ryan Butta grew up in regional New South Wales. Before he started writing he worked in international trade and has lived and worked extensively overseas. He is Editor-at-Large for Galah Press and also authors Out of Office, a publication that charts his course of quitting

Ryan Butta

office life to pursue a writing career.

If you would like to join Ryan Butta at the Shepparton Library to learn more about this fascinating aspect of Australian history, please call 1300 374 765 or email shepparton@ gvlibraries.com.au. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

For more information:

Bronwyn Cole

Program Co-ordinator, Goulburn Valley

Libraries

Tel: 1300 374 765

Email: bronwync@gvlibraries.com.au

The Honeybee And Springtime In The Orchards

Spring in Goulburn Valley orchards is always a beautiful sight. It is also the start of a new fruit season. Such a season would not happen unless the flowers are pollinated, mostly by honeybees, to set fruit.

The honeybee is an amazing insect. It has been said that if we do not have bees, a large proportion of the world’s human population would starve to death because bees are the main pollinators to bring about a crop for many major agricultural and horticultural plants.

We know that the effective transfer of pollen between compatible fruit tree varieties will increase fruit set, and the number of seed in apples and pears, which have a positive effect on fruit size at harvest, fruit quality and storage. So, pollination is important, but why do bees collect pollen?

A bee colony has an incredibly complex social structure. As there are tens of thousands of bees within a hive, many tasks need attention, from construction of comb to cleaning and nursing developing bees to foraging. The division of labour is an intricate and fascinating aspect of bee behaviour.

The labour that a worker bee undertakes changes with their age. When a baby bee emerges into the world, she is not yet fully developed and starts out on light and unskilled duties such as cleaning brood comb in preparation for the queen to lay eggs into. Brood comb contains various stages of developing bees.

When she is a few days old, the worker bee moves onto producing wax and building comb. Honeybees have a wax gland that enables them to convert honey into wax, which they then use to construct their entire home with.

When about one week old, a worker bee’s glands produce brood food, the creamy substance fed to developing bees. Both queen and worker bees can develop from the same fertilised egg. The biological pathway of the egg depends solely on the food it is fed as it develops. If a queen bee is needed, usually only once a year in spring when a colony swarms, or in an emergency to replace a dead or failing queen, she is fed royal jelly throughout her development and emerges from the cell after 16 days. She can go on to live for three or more years. It is for this reason that royal jelly is commercially promoted as an ‘elixir of life’ and sought after as a dietary supplement.

The humble worker bee, however, is fed almost entirely on worker jelly, also called bee bread, and will take a full 21 days to develop. She will live for between 4 to 12 weeks depending on the season. Thus, the vast majority of the brood food a nurse bee produces is in the form of worker jelly to raise worker brood.

To enable nurse bees to produce the required amounts of worker jelly, they must have ample supplies of both nectar, which the bees convert to honey providing their carbohydrates, and pollen, which contains proteins, fats, minerals, and amino acids. With these power foods combined, the nurse bee is able to secrete a perfect, whole food containing all the necessary goodies needed to provide a balanced diet to the developing brood.

The final stage of a honeybee worker’s life is as the forager. A foraging bee will collect either nectar, pollen, or both, or water. Foraging bees will focus their efforts on collecting the substance that is of most benefit to their colony at a particular time.

For the orchardist, the pollen collectors are of most value during the period of pollination. The crawling of bees over flowers ensures that a large amount of pollen is transferred by the bee from flower to flower. A good beehive has plenty of brood with a laying queen bee and room for the brood nest to increase. To sustain this, the colony needs large amounts of pollen. But they also need a balanced diet to remain healthy and productive. As the pollen of different floral sources contains different levels of proteins and fats, and a different range of minerals and amino acids, access to a variety of floral sources is essential. When hives are moved by beekeepers to agricultural monoculture crops such as canola, the bees often have trouble getting a balanced diet. In orchards and other horticultural crops, there is often a variety of non-target pollen sources nearby, so dietary concerns are not such an issue. Unfortunately for the bees, orchardists are mowing out competing floral sources down rows and around orchards to ensure that as many bees as possible pollinate the flowers of their fruit trees.

Bees also have to find and collect water and can fly as far as 1.5 km to find it. A muddy pool is often enough. While they are looking for water, they are not pollinating flowers. Placing a suitable container, such as a birdbath made of rough concrete, so bees can’t drown, is often very much appreciated by the bees (as well as the birds).

It’s tough to be a bee. - Bas