Landline celebrates 30 years of rural stories | Landline | ABC Australia

hey grab yourself a [Music] it's tradition mate it's australian isn't it it's part of what you do on a sunday you what's lane like it's a way of life you've got to be bred into it it's like the trucking they get diesel in the veins farmers get bit of dirt in their veins yeah father always watch landlord and we do like catching up with the two like it's a great show hello i'm kim courtney and welcome to our first show for 2021. we're celebrating a big anniversary this year 30 years of landline we'll bring you a story about our humble beginnings and show you just how far we've come landline has been a huge part of my life for a very long time and what's really special for the whole team is how loved it is and how important it is to our very loyal audience but what many wouldn't realize is it nearly didn't happen hello i'm doug murray welcoming you to the very first edition of landline today on the show the latest news are most comprehensive the abc had a rural program called countrywide and it wasn't quite working because i think it was a city program made for a country program made by city people and i wanted to make a country program for country people so when countrywide was dumped they gave us about one fifth of its budget and said start a daily program and we did harvest time in australia's grain lands and the big jobs being done the crops up and the headers are in the fields but it was the content we didn't have the content and that was the real struggle and that's why we um i lobbied sydney i said listen we've got to do something about this i hear this close us down or you make us into a weekly program good afternoon i'm catherine phillips and welcome to the first sunday landline i was the first presenter of landline when it became an hour-long program on a sunday and i had a chance meeting with kerry lonegan in a coffee shop and he told me he was looking for a host and he was having a lot of trouble because no one knew the difference between a heifer and a hereford and it gave me the idea to apply and in my audition tape i said that i knew the difference between a heifer and a hereford which could be one and the same but i also knew what a hog it was as well and that got it over the line land clearing in the west has created an environmental disaster when i started in the early 90s agriculture was pretty much seen by the mainstream community as being quite destructive of the environment and that farmers didn't care they just wanted to take what they could from the land do whatever they wanted to the land in order to make a buck which is not true as a result we did many stories on landline which were about those early pioneers [Music] tree planting became john's weekend hobby then that hobby became an obsession john fenton was an early adopter like i have never seen he threw himself into planting trees and he did it for 40 years and by the time we went to film it was windswept to almost like an english park he completely changed the environment on his property i thought mr darcy was going to pop by on a hunter and ask me to the ball he was widely ridiculed in his region his kids got teased at school your dad's crazy i didn't care i don't and i care a damn less now and he ended up being a superstar of regenerative agriculture so when we do stories like that or about regenerative agriculture which can be like throwing a match you know into a bonfire because it can be controversial and we do those stories and often get criticized for being greeny and being woke and it's like you know mate we were doing this in 1991 and no one came up with the term woke in 1991. landline tackled lots of issues that even mainstream media wasn't really tackling at the time which were to do with the environment and to do with the climate because let's face it that rules everything if you're a farmer although the fine details have to be worked out it's planned that carbon credits will be traded inside countries from one company to another and from one country to another to put it simply carbon polluters would pay tree planters to fix their problem harry lonigan commissioned stories that really looked in depth at what carbon pricing what carbon farming meant i mean this was in the 1990s that they weren't common phrases then one of the enlightening moments in creating a one-hour program for journalism when peter lewis went out to the other side of delby and did a 18-minute story on tram lining this paddock and this property are part of a revolution that's sweeping across australian agriculture it's called controlled traffic tram lining or farming the straight and narrow the real effect was the effect on the soil and the crop and on the profitability and sustainability of agriculture well not a great deal happens on interior mining once you go up and down the padding three or four times but he succeeded in making an 18-minute story out of tram lighting which was almost a um a seminal moment in history in landlines establishment because people watched it out here on the edge of the simpson desert you feel like you're a million miles from anywhere traveling in an original australians united was very very expensive we had a real struggle for the first couple of years getting it programmed together we had a real struggle it was frantic i have never worked so hard and the great fear which you never have when you work in tv news is we could go to black books have always been popular in the bush and kerry lonigan has been catching up on some reading i decided the only way we can sustain it was to fill it up with some freebie stuff next two there's yabbies for fun fishing and farming a lot of us might not ever consider that yabbies might be fun but there's a book about it at least once it became known that we were reviewing books and magazines they would send us a pile of stuff next up is uh volume one and a series on horse sense and safety there's even a chapter on right and left-handed horses which i'm very much looking forward to reading people loved it because i'd put the publisher's name on there and pretend to read it and give it a glowing report very we wouldn't review a book unless it was glowing we would do cooking segments that might run five to ten minutes yes you can actually eat quite well for about a dollar a meal and i think many of us are going to have to learn how to do that jan power who was quite a chef and a woman who established farmers markets she she cooked a meal with noodles and vegetables and it was meant to cost a dollar and it did wonderful now you can't tell me that that isn't a very highly nutritious cheap wonderful delicious meal for just one dollar and i ran into somebody at some function and went oh come on kath no one's ever going to eat noodles and vegetables g'day this is becky cole and for 30 years australians have been linked to the aussie bush thanks to landline i did my first ever film clip with landline in 1993 so happy birthday landline we used to finish the program with music videos which were all mostly american videos and the audience loved it though but they were asking for australian artists and australian artists didn't make enough money to shoot a video clip so kerry had the idea that well we just make them ourselves sitting on my daddy's knee on the front porch he puts me on the floor to answer the phone it was his biggest countdown to us so we were just really really thrilled and to get the opportunity to make a clip on landline i thought i was like king of the hill i couldn't believe it and my girlfriend at the time who ended up being my wife was like the love interest twirling around on the road in a floral dress and she looked gorgeous and it was just a really really special clip we're the boys from the bush and we're back in town it was a huge boost for all us country artists trying to get going and get exposure and landline did videos for me for my first three albums we smashed it out in an afternoon there was a couple of locations like the country road the paddock and the pub as the song goes you know the dogs in the back and the foot goes down so we had this blue healer and the boys come hightailing it down this dirt road and suddenly somebody said where's the dog and the dog he'd fallen out sorry i'm going to get in trouble for this but anyway a few minutes later here he comes running down the road a little bit of blood nothing to worry about he's a blue healer 30th birthday landline what would sundays be for so many of us without thinking oh it's lunch time gotta head in grab a cuppa sit back and connect with our incredible farmers and learn about so many different things wishing pip and all the team at landline a happy 30th birthday you've absolutely given us something to aim for now think we can make it happy anniversary team wherever we go on the back roads like at this camp draft people come up to us and say how much they enjoy landline as they should and that the abc is showcasing regional australia so you know you're only spring chickens really keep up the good work and long may the show continue [Music] wool is one of my weaknesses yes or passions i've spent a lot of time in wool sheds as a kid i've written a couple of books about warm sheds so over the time of course we featured many boom and bust industries and wool had an extraordinary boom in the late 80s and in 1991 a spectacular crash the most spectacular corporate crash in australian history currently most wool growers would look with envy at the national poverty line of three hundred and thirty dollars a week for a family of four this year the average annual farm income for wool is two thousand dollars down ninety percent on the previous season it was a hell of a mess it took years and years it was probably 25 years before people came back into sheep and wool in many cases let's bring it back that's it but having said that out of that calamity came i suppose realization that wool is a great product but it has to be done right mourinho was our hero and if they don't know that we've got to really scream it quite loud and the lamb's cute we love to tell our story of you know triumph i guess over you know over tough times there's other spectacular crashes i guess one that would come to mind would be ostriches ostriches were in the 90s seen as this extraordinary business opportunity [Music] this plane load of eagerly awaited african black ostriches is worth five million dollars forty two thousand at the background forty two thousand at just an insane rise in prices when there was no apparent market for the meat 42 000 we went to a property where they had breeding pairs and they cost a hundred thousand dollars each and you just couldn't work out but who's buying the end product [Music] they're the biggest birds in the world and depending at what stage in the last 10 years you decided to invest in them you'll either see an ostrich as a golden goose or a financial albatross it's been absolute financial disaster there obviously maybe people out there have done well out of it i wish them well but i wish like hell i've never seen an ostrich in my life it's very easy in australian agriculture to look at failures there's always someone going out backwards through misfortune or bad management but the show's also always been very focused on innovation and positive stories it's market day at wagga wagga in southern new south wales in the pre-dawn bustle the last of 44 000 sheep and lambs are penned up ready for auction lambs are pretty amazing one lamb used to be just a bit of a pocket money exercise for wool growers but then from the 1990s onwards it became really a sought after product [Applause] the land market's never been as hot neither is the mutton market we're seeing levels we haven't seen before and you know yeah trying to deal with it you don't mind using fingers but look at that man how's that you know when i started a decade ago i actually thought i'd struggle to find stories because i wasn't off the land but it has been the complete opposite um there are so many stories out there and people farm the weirdest things this is one of the most delicate businesses of all butterfly farming here is the thai cobra it's the only snake venom farm if you could call it that of its size in australia [Music] this is not a get-rich-quick scheme that you have to be passionate i see why he fell in love with it to begin with i love the sound you can come down here then the wind comes up and the bamboo starts to talk to you it's got a language of its own so just stand there and listen it's absolutely brilliant it is the people and their passion for what they do that for me makes the job fascinating um what makes them tick why do they invest their life savings in this idea i mean look at tony pal the guy who makes pickles for macca's burgers i mean there is a boom bust recovery story at our peak we were worth 16 mil and we lost a lot you know you can't sit down and say gee poor me you know or i can't make a buck because this doesn't work you gotta get into it and go well what can i do to make it work happy 30th birthday landline i have always been an avid watcher including throughout my professional rugby league career a funny story from those days obviously landlord was on a sunday some of the biggest matches in my career for the broncos were sunday grand finals my roommate brad thorne was not a country boy and found it interesting that on the biggest days of our footy career i insisted that landline be watched i love landline for a number of reasons i guess firstly because it's a it's a it's a practical tool and a reference point for people in regional and rural australia it's a terrific current affairs in a human interest program but i guess the thing i really love about it is it's a magic carpet ride to another australian i just love the country love cattle stations love the outback i love it like yeah i wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world very simple life out here you get up you go to work you have a feed you go to bed like no humbug no worries nothing hey like i wouldn't be anywhere else it just gets hold of you and you come to love it the dust the flies the dirt the whole deal it becomes a part of you [Music] one of the best parts is getting to the places that are really out of the way very isolated that most people don't get to see and let's face it that's what they tune into landline 2c [Music] this is the most isolated cattle station in australia possibly even the world alice springs is the closest big town and that's 730 kilometers away but the marvel about being at sipple jack was that i really never felt less isolated in lots of ways because of the people who were there this is the most resourceful and resilient bush dynasty you're ever likely to come across [Music] but in september 2008 something happened which would dramatically change the life they knew i mean it just started off like any usual master you know the the choppers got going early in the morning on daylight and the helicopter he was a passenger in dropped 200 feet out of the sky other than having a broken neck i really wasn't injured there was you know i wasn't bleeding i wasn't in a state or bothered by no means i just couldn't feel or move any part of my body oh the story about rob cook is the ultimate in coming back from adversity he was basically told after he had the accident that he shouldn't live within any further than 20 k's from a major hospital and he'd decided he was going to go back to the family farm and he did he started working out how he could bring in cattle while he was sitting in his wheelchair he started thinking about automation and that sort of thing because he's a very smart man he didn't lose that capability there was a moment when the sun was beginning to set and the children were gonna get choked up the children were hanging off the back of his wheelchair as he pulled this wheelchair up through the dust he only had the use of one hand to do it and for me that was that said everything the most inspiring thing about doing these stories over so many years was seeing the tenacity of farmers and the fact that year after year they roll the dice on yet another season and they don't know what's coming in that year i guess for all the technology all the techniques all the plans that farmers have often mother nature comes storming through this is what cyclone larry left behind just over a week ago this was one of the best banana plantations in the tully district now the three million dollar crop is in ruins we started this all a long time ago from knowing we built up to a quite sizable family enterprise and now it's all laying on the dirt we were just confronted with two kilometers of 30 foot high wall of flame there is no sign of the crop left there's nothing left but dirt normally a fire doesn't burn the whole farm but in this case it burnt our oil farm and a lot of other beavers as well after a big bushfire and we've covered a lot of them on the program it is our job to go out there and show the impact that has on the local community and it can be immense and i think one of the things i find the most heartbreaking even just a film let alone go through is when farmers have to on top of all of that go out and shoot their own injured livestock it's your worst nightmare absolutely there's nothing more devastating than something that you you've looked after all your life and uh and you've got to put them down floods you know the northwest queensland went through this terrible terrible drought and then there was this tropical storm and it rained and it rained and it was cold and all of those cattle that had managed to survive through the drought either were washed away by flood waters or they died of exposure and the people who had shepherded them through that drought then just watched their life's work be destroyed i love my cattle so like this is really like my children really so you know it's pretty hard to sort of see this sort of stuff here yeah pretty um yeah it's pretty hard to swallow but anyway that we're tough so you sort of um just gotta try and rebuild and get on with your life i guess it often feels like there's a power imbalance when you're interviewing people straight after a disaster they're still struck by what's happened they're dealing with the shock of what's happened whereas to come back a year later when they've got things back on track it's a more even conversation north queensland's banana industry is coming back to life paddocks which were flattened by cyclone larry are now bearing fruit at least we were cutting fruit and you had you know you were achieving you felt like you're back in the game we're calling him fire resistant this fellow fire resistant hidden the creek and the flames went over the top of him he's here to tell his story i'm always amazed that people give you their time and their trust when they're at their lowest um and i feel i owe it to them to go back and follow up and and tell the rest of that chapter in their life i'm 72 in a few weeks and that would never have been the toughest year of my life we worked every day continuously for months and months and months never had a day off for months all worth it hi it's been all worth it yes yeah i'd like to think that i'll never have to do it again though i'm not going to let one year pull me out change my mind this is home it's mother nature isn't it she can't be controlled but their devastation is our joy caught a frog i'll be able to bring all my cattle in now into the river when this goes down and it'll be you know it's a game changer now seriously though this is traveling pretty fast one of the most spectacular stories i covered and joyful stories was when flood waters up north reached drought-stricken properties in the outback i mean they they transformed almost overnight it's like lifeblood after so many years of looking at dry and stunted pasture and limited growth and cattle sort of going backwards and this is this is just magnificent this is like manner from heaven a dry riverbed is an unlikely spot for a cricket match but in western new south wales it's been very dry for a very long time so the folk of the lower darling struck on an idea to try and lift their spirits how about we have a game just so everybody can relax and just try and forget how dry how monotonous the feeding's been you know everybody's a bit flat so yep great idea drought's been a recurring theme on landline because we're not ever far from the next drought [Music] how bad does it get you know it's all gone it's gone before our eyes when i was there originally we were right in the grip of that millennial drought this is the belong river i did that many stories up and down the the murray and it was in those early days when we were looking at the the the balance between the environment right in the middle of this drought and irrigators no doubt the river is stressed in some places but so are the farmers irrigators and communities that live along it what i want to know from the government is do they want us here or not we're farmers we're contractors we're workers we're out here we're earning a decent dollar we're paying plenty of tax we're not asking for anything is that wrong water how it was used when it was used who had it the politics of the murray-darling basin at the time were overwhelming the stories are endless and getting consensus is well i don't think i'm going to see it in my lifetime it might take another 30 years but it's awful to see how it rips communities apart and i don't know how you solve it if you've got the legacy of feral pigs you'll soon be cursing their ability to wreck the place it's a battle out there if land holders are the the front line for invasive management feral pigs are the enemy well i've got chainsaw on the back i've got the ammo and i've got poison so let's go farming one of the biggest challenges for farmers is feral animals and i have done a lot of stories on pests in my 25 years on landline one or two dogs can kill 50 or 60 sheep in a night i know they've been taking lambs flat out i can't catch the dog i don't know what to do i don't like seeing animals being you know killed shot trapped any of those things it's there's certainly no blood lust in it for me it's more that i can see what impact pest animals have on landscape and enterprises rabbits for nearly two centuries australia has been waging a war against these small nocturnal vegetarians you know rabbits are a really interesting thing because they're these cute fluffy little vegetarians which cause massive damage to the landscape and to wool growing enterprises they're not vicious they don't attack you but they can eat a place out of house and home we've poisoned them on the ground and from the air their underground homes have been exploded and bulldozed and we've infected them with deadly viruses still they remain our most widespread and destructive pests we know they cost 200 million dollars in losses every year that affects what turns up on your plate so rabbits are everybody's problem [Music] he's supposed to be resilient he's supposed to be tough i thought to myself like you know i'm supposed to be over this like and i just couldn't i couldn't i couldn't just get over it i just wanted to run i just wanted to go somewhere else and i wanted to but i couldn't [Music] today we hear from farmers who have battled the black dog and now have the courage to speak out we know whether it's drought or prices falling or other challenges that they're often there's a lot of mental health pressure on people on the land and we thought given our audience that it was extremely important to have a look at that it was a cycle of exhaustion endless work and anxiety john sudos had no idea he was suffering from depression he was so tired and so wound up he was barely able to function his uncle arrived just as he broke down he walked in the door and i just cried i just broke down and i just could not and that was the finish i just said to him look i've got to go i need help and that was at two o'clock in the afternoon at midnight i was in a psychiatry hospital in melbourne and we saw in the immediate aftermath of that story the support services that we mentioned experienced enormous increases in their volume of calls for john sudos being able to talk about it has made all the difference he now speaks openly about his condition with his friends family and members of the community we were very very grateful for the rural men who who stepped forward the dignity that they had in doing that for us and the humor as well i remember the farmer we spoke to in victoria asked us if he could was it possible to look at our raw tapes of what we'd shot and i said oh look we usually don't but you know maybe we could help help you through with that and he said oh because you filmed me when i was practicing my lawn bowls and i want to see what my actions like on the camera so i said that that we can do definitely we can do in australian agriculture there's always someone selling or promoting the next big thing wow 30 years what an achievement what an accomplishment i feel so blessed to have been part of the landline team as a host and a reporter back in the day and yeah well done 30 years may there be many many more hello and welcome to the program i'm joanne shoebridge landline for me was about people the great people i worked with the country people who trusted us to tell their story and my people it was on a landline assignment that i met my husband greg and we have three beautiful children johnny katie and chloe joe so thank you landline and happy birthday where are your legs [Music] chopped them i think you should have done your homework before you got out of here i mean you know it's a little bit late now cramming jumbuck haven't you ever done it i guess like most rural families i grew up with landline being akin to the holy trinity in our house it was the program you don't miss on sundays dad calls it church our job is pretty cool to unlock i still pinch myself i still feel like how the heck did i end up getting such a good gig in life hello you slacked a lot of shits there you go 73 year old dickie runs the aileron roadhouse which is roughly 200 kilometers north of alice springs we get access to such huge characters that you would not find anywhere else in the world i'm sure of it laughter is the best medicine some people haven't got it in them but that's all right one of the great characters we met was ralph affleck who built a sawmill that he can operate himself he did it when he was 85. the man's brain he's a genius he would be in another life working for nasa i'm sure how many fingers have you got and how many toes i got nine toes and i got ten fingers i chopped one off with a pinch bar one time went straight through the top of my boot my brand new boots i don't know god what a stupid thing to do now i've ruined a pair of your boots i think it's the variety of stories that we get to tell that actually keeps me here because one minute we can be looking at an industry the next we can be digging into a huge rural issue and then we get to tell those golden small community yarns and sometimes they're my very favorites for a century windmills have been the lifeblood of pennong on the edge of the nullarbor plane [Applause] and now a group of locals is preserving this important part of the town's history one more bit of treasure they look good they're all different they've all got their own little mines and grains and whatever we know every nut and bolt in every every meal here's cheers to the windmills guys thank you everybody community spirit is at the heart of so many of our stories you know whether it's in times of of drought or despair or just a town doing something fun [Music] the chinchilla melon festival was one of the funniest events i've ever covered they really turn a watermelon into a superstar for a weekend and it brings people into the town makes people laugh but also lets people know this is what we grow and it's fantastic but there was one event there which we probably couldn't show now it was a miss melons competition and yes if you're thinking yes you're correct and i didn't get a guernsey courtney has reported on the highs and lows of life on the land at a time of enormous change you are the first media that's even taken the time to ask us our opinion or our side what keeps you guys going each other our friends our daughters a lot of support now you gotta go country hospitality is legendary but also what country people do is when someone's in trouble they pitch in and i was on the receiving end of this extraordinary hospitality and care and love when john died and i had offers of accommodation somebody offered me a horse that i'd admired at their property when we were filming with john i had farmer baked brownies and zen it and his wife said he'd never cooked anything for her i had boxes of apples from an apple grower turn up where john and i had filmed [Music] i heard from people who watched the show who i've never met i heard from people who i'd filmed with with john [Music] i've really felt like i was part of rural australia's family and they still ask how i'm doing and just love them right back everybody loves landline especially me with enormous respect admiration affection its influence has been extraordinary the biggest happy 30th birthday to the amazing team at landline and to one of my journo heroes pip courtney from everyone at the ilsc we'd like to wish landline a happy 30th birthday and we look forward to 30 more years of storytelling from the aboriginal and torres strait islander community [Music] one year after the high court handed down its historic decision establishing the concept of native title in the law of the land confusion and uncertainty still dominates the debate land rights was a very big issue right at the start because nobody knew what it meant do people on the land primary producers have anything to be afraid of there seems to be a tendency among some elements that uh aboriginal people are going to be unreasonable in their demands but that's far from the truth in my experience people like father frank brennan and mick dodson they were amazing the way that they presented their case was in a very even handed way that was not going to frighten farmers we're coming to get july and it wasn't that at all it was like this is how we can coexist and that's what it's all about it's about the recognition indigenous people have used fire for thousands of years right up until settlement when traditional ways started to ever weigh that's changing there's been a whole renewed urgency and respect for traditional practices in land management and we're really seeing that at the moment with fire management this is roebuck plane station in the west kimberley here on yaroo land indigenous people are taking back the reigns it's our country and we know about as good as anybody else the nature of what's required to run our business it's so important to capture the story of indigenous stockman and indigenous pastoralists and what they're doing here because it does show other young people that there is a pathway that they can choose and they get to see their people proud and strong and tough and doing extraordinary things we all learn from each other we're not all the best at everything at the end of the day yeah it's a good feeling going back home to the station and knowing that you've did a good hours days work at the end of the day is a bit knackered but that's ringing alive that's the beauty of what we do is we're collecting this amazing tapestry of characters and people that really become part of us the abc radio 1997 australian rural woman of the year is tasmania's jane bennett one of the great things is being able to watch the progression of the careers of the women who've won the rural woman of the year award and to see what it's done for them and jane bennett sticks in my mind the jane bennett that so impressed the judges is a cheese maker i really believe in agriculture and i want to see a great future for our industry and i think that that the best way to ensure that is to become involved and participate so yeah i'm a bit obsessed i guess when i first started very few women would say i'm a farmer and if they did uh somebody would say what you're the father's wife love come on now women happily say they're farmers no one questions it it's not seen as odd or unusual it's just part of the fabric of rural life it's all about working smarter not harder once you know it was considered that the dumb kid stayed on the farm the smart ones went off that's really changed around now within about a five-year period we've had probably 20 young educated people who want to farm come to ki farming is a great career it's a great job and there's a fantastic science behind everything that happens on a farm [Music] i'm always staggered by how sophisticated a lot of the people who are in agriculture are in terms of their understanding and use of technology tractors now are immense a gargantuan whereas once they might have been as big as a vehicle and the sophistication is just tenfold or more than what it used to be in west australia's wheat belt airline pilot yale simpson is enjoying the feel of terra firma and the rumble of a 16-ton harvester they're quite impressed by it i think they didn't understand the level of technology that we actually use in our machinery these days the only thing that's probably lacking for them is the fact that they just can't press ding and get a coffee the thing that's amazed me since we started is the ability of the australian farmer to become more and more efficient [Music] in this high-tech plant breeding center the search is on for hardy crops which will produce more from less we're able to do things that haven't been possible before the range of crops or the varieties that are grown now compared to 30 years ago it's just so different and you've got these scientists who beaver away for years and years to come up with one new variety there they are the unsung heroes of ag landline i think you're following now is even stronger than it's ever been and that's because you're able to tell the story of farming and rural and regional communities in a way that's not just appreciated by the people who live there but also by the people in urban communities i've learned a lot about rural australia from landline innovative communities and farmers great presenters telling unforgettable stories thank you and congratulations landline for 30 years of memorable television every day i get up and i look out and i think i'm the luckiest person in the world my office is as far as my eye can see it doesn't come much simpler than than a line with a hook on the end of it there's no mechanical gear it's all bicep power and there's no net one thing i've learned is that people in the bush can spot a fraud a mile away so you've got to be authentic and fishing is something that i'm authentically interested in this is what we dream of coming on the beach in the mornings and seeing the school like that and getting the net around them you know you've got 100 ton of fish sitting there tailing at you it's a good sight [Applause] the salmon are running on the west coast but the men who catch them may be running out of time it wasn't long after i joined landline that i realized that professional fishing didn't really have much of a voice it's hard to believe that beautiful big fish like these end up as lobster bait and are worth only 45 cents a kilo here on the beach it may be that they're worth much more to the west australian economy as a sports fish the question though is whether the two sectors commercial and recreational can co-exist hello i'm pip courtney in shanghai one thing farmers love doing is looking over the fence to see what their neighbours up to and we've been lucky enough as reporters to travel around the world telling stories there is nothing like this back home the scale is simply breathtaking in this young nation where the average wage is just one us dollar per day something like this is helping to break the chains of hunger this is italy's richest city and arguably it's most image-driven [Music] our trip to europe in the late 90s was an extraordinary eye-opener for aussie farmers because of course the level of subsidies are huge i mean it's a god-given right over there and it just shows how productive aussie farmers really are 30 years worth of service to the bush and 30 years worth of stories and if this bloody covert has taught us one thing as a decentralization to the bush is possible so we look forward to the abc moving out to cloncurry night of the first rounds of chardonnays are on me and pip courtney you are a treasure and an ornament to the bush you keep up the good work too don't ever leave us it's always been a great show one of the best film shows on the abc and it is so respected in the bush where of course pip courtney's hat has its own following all right let's go hello hello hello and welcome to landline one day we were out here and it was blowing a gale we'd been here for two hours and i think we had one take so i said it's time to pull out the akubra and the boys went you can't wear it it's banned and i said well we've we've just got to get the job done and i'm the world's worst hairdresser we're dealing with the wind the hat just worked and um now i'm the lady in the hat and i can go to an event with a long dress on at night and people say where's your hat well i don't know whether it's good news or bad news and i'm afraid nothing too encouraging to report price-wise well the cattle market but i think up there uh in equal measure are the comments and the mystery of kerry's hair really not a week went by without someone writing or in later days social media comments about how does kerry manage to keep his hair so black it couldn't be real we could push australia i once got a phone call he said mate i've got a bet with my mate in the bar here a hundred dollars that you don't dye your hair i said well i don't and he said i'll need a i need a stat deck to get the monies so i had to go to my old mate steve accurately the hairdresser he could do a static to say that i don't own my hair i stretched it out to him and he sent me a note saying i've collected the 100 thank you very much and i don't do my hair thank you very much [Music] getting ready for kerry's commodities [Music] the markets are an intrinsic part of what farmers and grazies are all about i mean the farmer's optimism depends on two things when's it going to rain and what are the prices like do you have permission to do this you're intruding on my privacy mr taylor you're in television terry oh rarely does it combine when the prices are up and it's raining really but when it happens it's heaven on a stick for farmers and graziers we started all one two and then uh when the prices start coming and go to yep number one yeah i've been with the country hour now for 14 years and i'll be honest i would always binge watch the commodities report because often what was mentioned on that i'd steal for the next week's country hour on many occasions so the big question is what will cattle prices do in the year of the ox the legendary kerry lonegan tweeted the other day that nothing fixes high prices like high prices every time kerry called me on a friday to pick my brains you know as he was getting ready to record his segment massive highlight of the week it was um so and yeah never thought that i'd be on the other side so it's a bit daunting but it's exciting we have a rule here no hay pickups no interruptions between 12 and 2 so we can watch landline every week to the show that doesn't age landline happy 30th happy birthday landline from colley ambly new south wales we watch the show every week let's hope you're around for another 30 years i grew up in the city but i loved watching landline ever since i was a kid a happy 30th birthday landlord landline's ability to get into city homes has been remarkable it's absolutely remarkable most of our audience in fact if you count the number of people who watch landline every sunday they are in sydney and melbourne brisbane etc adelaide perth in the city in the inner city sometimes they love it they may not agree with us all the time but they love us the enterprise has actually made us better farmers this is not a fad we're getting back to making real food out of all the crops that we grow everyone wants to talk to me about kale i think 30 years ago if you'd told a farmer you're our food producer first a farmer second he or she might have laughed at you now it's very front of mind added to that there's now a well-being sector of the market meat alternatives plant-based veganism gluten-free that sort of thing so they're obviously not meat patties they're vegan yeah and then and that's not cheese what is it this vegans picnic is more than just about the food the people here are all committed animal activists this is my life trying to prevent and trying to educate the public about the exploitation of animals there's no doubt there's been a lot of scrutiny on agriculture brought about by the emergence of animal welfare groups radical animal welfare groups these distressing images released by animals australia last april sparked national outrage i feel a villain in the debate in the media which i'm really unhappy about because it's in our interest to keep the stock in good water and alive and well fed and watered farmers always produced livestock carefully and humanely but now it's really front of mind i think things like the the 2011 indonesian live cattle crisis was a real wake-up call last night i ordered the complete suspension of all livestock exports to indonesia for the purposes of slaughter when the abc's four corners program broadcast evidence and highly gruesome footage of australian cattle being subjected to barbarous treatment in indonesian abattoirs australia's live export trade was plunged into chaos and crisis it didn't matter that the cruelty was confined to a few facilities the images shattered the belief that australian cattle were humanely slaughtered it was a huge shock and and we everything our world stopped the consumer backlash if you could call it that has been that that's grown in the last 30 odd years and the live cattle trade ban was a knee-jerk reaction it was silly and the courts have proved it since but there are reasons why we send live cattle to indonesia and they all relate to custom and the lack of electricity they can't store the meat in the fridge i think it's so important that landline has helped keep the perception and the reality of farming at the forefront of our conscience in this country the reality of farming can make people uncomfortable things like abattoirs intensive operations but we do those stories because that is the reality of what paddock to plate actually is i think sometimes that phrase is idealized a little bit like you see something lovely in the paddock and you see something lovely on the plate but you don't see much of what goes on in the middle and on landline we show you the whole lot [Music] commercial artificial insemination has so far proven elusive in the alpaca world mostly because of the complex way in which they conceive the boys they all vary a little bit some made as quick as five minutes some go for half an hour and when we have them all going it's sort of a bit of a competition thing i can go longer than you can type of attitude but anyway boys will be boys well it's all part of the animal kingdom and the and the farming process there are moves to make things more of a year-round meat rather than just festive fare in here is a fish that's over a meter long and 20 years old her name's flossie let's see if we can find her one of the fun challenges of working on landline is dealing with all the animals i love going to uh properties where they've got farm dogs and then seeing what special dog a farmer has the dog that gets to sit in the front passenger seat while all the workers are in the back my dirty little secret is i love cats and well not many farmers think cats um are great last year we finally got a cat in a story and i still owe the cameraman a slab of beer [Music] how's the mood back there they're very happy campers right now just seeing the boys do their bush mechanic style uh tinkering it's not a day on the road boys yeah i think i can honestly say that i am the ohs people in the abc's least favorite reporter any crooks i'm not um we are working in a really different part of the world it's still pretty last frontier in some respects and and you do get to go on some pretty hairy adventures christie's driving something can happen we really have to fend for ourselves and i tell you what we've had it all thrown at us you're still alive you're not leaving unless you're kind of a little bit scared i suppose and we just love being out there we sort of throw off the shackles as we head out of town and we think oh thank god we're back on the road [Music] cheers buddy no worries what do you think she doesn't like i can tell no do actually is it okay yeah i do like it it's a lot better than the way mum used to make it sorry mum cheers cheers enjoy that is disgusting isn't it that is really terrible we have filmed in some fantastic places where they've been cooking on campfires in remote areas in farm kitchens in orchards where you basically are pulling the produce off the tree and having a garden you know in the orchard or it can be with celebrity chefs in some of the top restaurants it's been a pleasure to work with landline over the years i love it i watch it every week and i hope they're here for a long time to come happy birthday 30 years of putting such a lens onto the life of those on the land you know the beauty the hardships and the innovation and all that comes out of that landline thank you so much for telling the stories of rural australia and farmers with such depth and integrity and to do it for 30 years deserves the hugest congratulations look at that that is epic great for um social on youtube i was drawn to the program in 1991 because it appealed to that core of me that was my connection to the country and it appealed to me again you know like 28 years later would you like to come back and be the executive producer of the show for a while well yes i would because it's still a part of me and when i hear that theme play my heart still lifts hey john my name's helena from abc tv how are you today 30 years ago none of us knew what our digital future was going to be and i think it'd be really good online too okay a short form one landline story then has another five or six lives on other platforms this is a good story and it needs to the world needs to see it john my vision for landline is for it to be as relevant in the future as what it is today [Music] i did my job and i appreciated so much all those good people who worked for me i'm proud that i started something that worked [Music] the way's old head i used to work for in television said the definition of a successful program is it run seven years well if we'd run four or five years i thought we'll almost make it anyway here we are 30 something 30 years later so [Music] i think at this time of year [Music] but there seems to be a lack of messaging from the queensland getting aboriginal kids back in the saddle [Music]

Channel: ABC Australia

Views: 180,111

Rating: 4.9827614 out of 5

Keywords: ABC, Australia, ABC Australia, Pip Courtney, Landline, Landline ABC, ABC Landline, farming, agriculture, food, economics, innovation, climate, infrastructure, Regional, rural, abc rural, rural australia, regional australia, outback, outback australia, bush, pastoral, pioneer, land, Indigenous, Aboriginal, history, cattle, wool, sheep, drought, pests, nature, environment, conservation, fishing, seafood, drones, photography, beauty, Wild Rides, Meet the Ferals

Id: atI-jI3gIt0

Length: 58min 33sec (3513 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021