Are You Bogged Mate?
Ep.11 - Peter Frazer
Peter Frazer, or Fraze... is a lifelong mate of Marys. They worked together in the DPI for a number of years.
Fraze was pivotal in the TB eradication program working as a Stock Inspector, testing up to 1000 cattle a day on properties where those
cattle could be spread across 3/4 of a Million acres.
His career was nothing short of a steep learning curve having to work on diseases from the Hendra Virus to the Equine Flu... even Prawn Spot.
He shares a passion for Bush Poetry with Mary, who wraps up this chat with a very fitting tribute to Fraze through her own poetry.
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- Broadcast on:
- 30 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
G'day guys and welcome back to the Aebov Mate podcast. Today I sit down with my dear friend Peter Fraser. We work together for Boris security Queensland, the Queensland DPI and he's a bit of a bush poet and he's got some interesting tales to tell from his stock inspector days. Well, let's keep it off, Peter Fraser, you're finally here and I guess we have a long association and friendship and probably it even goes back to my mother, New York parents and mum worked on the property next door to where you grew up and so that was out in South West Queensland, Easter kind of maula at a property called warona but you've got to do some pretty cool stuff in your life so give us a little readers digest version of your childhood out there and what you used to get up to on those hand deals. Well, I go back to 1956, my family had a property there called warona which was south west about two-hours drive from kind of maula off the Boland Road, 84 miles I think it was about 80 miles of dirt, just take us about two hours to get your town if it was serviceable if it wasn't where you stayed at home and I grew up there mum and dad and four brothers and sisters, I always say there was mum and dad and there's five kids, three or four dogs and about 7,000 rabbits, the rabbits were in full force in those days out there and it was an isolated life but it was a good life because as kids we didn't know or have to know about any worries of the world, there was just mum and dad and us kids and it's funny in a small mind, we knew the mailman came once a week, while he was the mailman he was the god and you'd have smoke over with him but we never really wondered where he went afterwards, he came because you were completely sheltered like you might have had a radio but there was no TV, there was nothing like that and your mother might have enjoyed the isolation so much because you were born in 56, so not in 56 was the year of the Great Flood, the big floods out there and so you were actually literally born in the middle of that and she had to get out because they built a raft to get mum to town, we had a lake on the place which used to bank up across the road and it was about maybe three or four miles from the homestead and when they knew the time was approaching they parked the old Dodge truck on the town side, up on the hill and it was no limousine, I'll tell you that but it could drive through the heavy bogs and they made a raft out of 44 gallon drums and they put it on the house side of the lake and then when she went into labour they put a wall pack on the back of the tractor's carry-all of the track, the Ferguson tractor and they dumped her in that so she would have been just bouncing around and they drove up on the tractor to the lake, the three or four miles and put her on the draft and dad and the stockman pushed her across the lake which was shoulder height probably and then put her in the Dodge truck and then drove in to cut a mallow over the next three hours or something. She's with that sort of a start to your labour, you're probably lucky, you weren't born up on a sand hill in South Glen. It's a wonder what was between that and the bumpy roads, I could have been born in dummy lane or something like that and mum was a city girl, she came from Clayfield and Brisbane so it was a quantum leap for her but she used to say on the property we were just her and us kids so we're happy with sandboys because it didn't matter what the outside world did. It was, you're so sheltered from it as a kid out there, not so much these days but still to some degree but there was no option to go in and watch TV, it wasn't an option. You had to entertain yourself. You had to. You said there were a lot of rabbits. Yeah. You're a bit mad on catching rabbits. Rabbit trapping, because I was the older boy I suppose, I had some rabbit traps and we had sugar bags and we'd go, my younger sister was allowed to come with us, sometimes she had to carry the rabbit traps and we'd go and set the traps at the warrens near the homestead there somewhere and of course as bush kids you learn all those things, you know we could do it and we used to go down, set the traps and we'd catch rabbits and the next morning we'd go down and get them, put them in the bag, sugar bag and carry them back home and we used to dump them in the meat house in an empty, a 44 gallon drum that had grain in it and the rabbits would stay in there and at night time dad would kill them and feed them to the dogs. So apart from controlling a few rabbits we were supplementing the family income by providing dog food. Yeah. But we'd walk for miles, you know, again imagination. We built cubby houses, we knew we were all the different types of birds, nests and what sort of eggs they had and dad was a bit of a bird man so you weren't allowed to touch any of that stuff but you could have a look at it, you know. And being so close to the lake, like it's a big lake out there and it's very well known in the area when we were kids we'd all go there to the lake and cook damper or whatever and then we started skiing on the lake and stuff so there's a huge amount of bird life at that lake and it's a massive breeding ground for black sporns and heaps of other. A lot of the migrating birds from Asia used to come, you know, in the pelicans. The pelicans and I used to always wonder as a kid how they knew there was water there, who told them to come because you know they could be dry for five years, you know, and then it had come through and the other thing of interest as a child was the frogs because it was so dry for so long and when it rained within 24 hours the noise of the frogs would be deafening. Yep, they just peered on there. They'd come out of the ground and activate so yeah, no wonder I've got a bit of a naturalist back to me, you know, it was, I wasn't a city kid when I moved to the city I found it hard but I knew everything that a bush kid needed to know, you know. So you grew up on Marona and what did you do for school? We went, my brother and I went to the local hostel in town, I was in grade four, he was in grade two which I think was dreadfully young but they sent us together and we used to board there at the hostel which was a council thing and they sent us off to the schools next day, the convent or the state school and we'd come back for lunch and we'd go back to school and then we'd come back and then stay there so it was our residence. And in those days it was probably about 30-odd children there but again, you know, we were babies, we were sort of grades one, two, three, four, five. I made sure, and I got one child but I made sure he didn't go to boarding school I didn't think. You didn't like, well not at that, it's a very young age to go away from your family and leave isn't it? And there was kids there that drove his children, you know, grade one he couldn't make us bed, we had to make our bed and we used to help him because, you know, he was in grade one. I looked at my child as he grew up and I thought, my God, it's nothing. But it was a necessary thing to do to get an education. We did correspondence for a couple of years but I think we drove mum nuts after a while. Then he went to kind of mum and drove the nuns nuts. So we rode the nuns nuts, yeah, and I said that's the biggest abuse of the trades description act I think. And so you went away to boarding school and you didn't like that much, you thought it was pretty? Yeah, I'd actually never boarded, I went there. The when I was going to secondary school level was when we sort of relocated to Twomba. And I went to school in Brisbane for a couple of years and then finished off in Twomba. And then from there I desperately wanted to go back to the bush and by that time the family had sort of sold up the property and moved in. And I went to get an agricultural college and did a cause. Now we hear a lot of stories from various people over the years about Ag College and they're especially the old Gatton Ag College and you must have a couple of yarns from the old Gatton Ag College days like way back before there were rules and regulations around all sorts of things. I mean mischief down there I believe. There was and again we were kids great out of the bush most of us but also straight out of reasonably strict families. So suddenly we were at a place where they had rules but you could get round most of them if you tried. So there was a lot of growing up done and wicked behaviour at times but harmless sort of stuff. Like what? Oh well I remember that. Without incriminating yourself. Without incriminating. Or anybody else? No, yeah. I mean they'd have fundraising nights for the football club or the polo cross club which I was associated with and I remember one particular one they called it a priest and prose night. No jeepers. And you had to go dressed as a priest or a prostitute. Well there was. What year was that? That would have been about 75 I think. And when we got you know and everybody that went to a bit of trouble and they had a band and of course there was alcohol things like that but I think it was a salubrious little hall at Glen or Grove or somewhere like that. But there was this motley collection of very large, very hairy prostitutes which were the first 15 football team basically. And then there was the polo cross fellas and there was various arrays of polo cross gear and sattawa and I seem to remember that I went as a priest and I had an altar. Put down in a skull cap, much to my mother's horror. And the lady. Would you have acquired such an outfit? Oh, you had contacts in those days. But it was the real thing. And the lady I went with at the time she wouldn't go as a prostitute so we dressed her up as a nun. So yeah we went as nuns but again harm was fun but dreadfully we could really think back on it. So when you finished at Gatton what did you come out with? Okay, well I finished, it was a three year course and when I finished that was December 78 I joined the Department of Primary Industries then as a stock inspector for the vet services department as it was in those days, the DPI. They were under way then we were doing the national brucellosis TB testing program and Queensland was right into it. So we went, I went to Kanamala my first posting took me back there which I was delighted about because though I was learning the job I knew the country and I knew the people. So I knew the shortcuts through the properties and the back roads and but I was going home as far as I was concerned so that was fantastic. And how long were you at there Kanamala in that? So this is the brusso bleeding stuff so the national testing for brusso, explain that to people who don't understand what the brucellosis is a disease that cattle get. People can catch it we tend to call it other names but basically it was a disease that could affect the meat workers and people like that so they decided that they'd eradicate it and it causes the cows to abort their feeders. So we had to take a blood sample from all the adult cattle, male and female and in the herds. So this is the whole country is doing this right? The whole country. So that's a massive coordination right across the country to test every adult beast in the whole of Australia and it was a huge success. It went on for a number of years the national TB and brucellosis eradication program but it was a national program and it was success because Australia now claims and it's been the monitoring the abattoir has proved it that we have eradicated that disease, brucellosis and tuberculosis from the Australian cattle herds. So as an international marketing thing that was huge but in the channel country we used to test a thousand cattle a day was basically numbers. And so for like a lot of people that might listen to this might say oh that's easy you just go and muster the cattle and just take a little blood sample and they might be thinking of you know periurban sort of blocks where you know you stand at the house and you can see the cattle. Give me like just an idea of the size of the properties out there in South West Queensland out in the channel country where and these are not quite cattle these are not ones when you bang the tin they come. No. What in no means? No. Some of these cattle have never actually seen humans. No that's it. Some of them are very feral. In those days. Very feral. Yeah. And the further waste you went into the channel country the bigger base is like some of those properties for three quarters of a million acres you know and you've got to get every beast off it. You've got to get every beast off it and test because if you miss one and they've got it then they'll re-infect the herd and it was interesting some herds we found it in more than others and some of them could have been that they were in a very old enclosed herd and the brucellosis or TB was there and it stayed there where the neighbouring properties didn't have it. It was also some suggestion that some breeds were more disposed. We used I used to get into trouble from the graziest wives particularly in the Caramela district because I used to find it sometimes in the dairy cows. Now most of the properties the sheep property in particular they were sheep properties but they had a few milking cows. They had a few milkers. Yeah. Yeah. And of course the women used to potty them so they used to say they were theirs. I remember one lady in particular she was very upset because she said my husband has got you know 7,000 sheep and he's got 30 head of cattle and I've got six and you've killed two of mine. So what was the thing? So if you tested them so you believed them you get the blood you test that and you had to go back if they were positive and destroy them. Yes for what we used to do is we did a field test ourselves which take the blood back to town we do a screening test next day. So out of a thousand head you might end up with say 50 that showed on the screening test. Yeah. Now rather than hold a thousand we'd contact them and say these are the numbers get those ones out and they'd hold them while we sent those samples to Brisbane for confirmation testing with them or eventually they put a unit in charlival and they used to do them there. That's a massive inconvenience to like landholders out there to hold cattle while you go and get those tests done on that. So I'm old enough to remember the Bruce Loses and TB eradication program running as a kid and we had to get choppers in to get these mad cattle because we had cattle that had never seen humans and just wild but that's you know get in a thousand head or to keep this 350 eat in a holding paddock and I remember in the 70s and a lot of holding paddocks being built on our property. And the hold cattle because to block them up because you get one mob in they come and bleed them and you'd hold whatever. The next mob the holding paddocks got no feet because it's trampled out. It was a huge project for them. The government did put some money into infrastructure for you know a fence building and holding yards and things like that but nowhere near what the producer would put out but the government given it due was determined that this was going to work so they were helicopter subsidies. They used to pay subsidies for reactors if you killed an animal and things like that. But if we had to kill one then our job was to post-mortem it and take tissue samples and lymph node samples and then we'd send those away and they'd culture them to confirm that it was definite particularly with tuberculosis. In some of the herds in the channel country I would kill and post-mortem at 10, 12 beasts sometimes out of a herd of 1,000. The biggest thing was because you had to get the clean masters was getting those last stragglers. So some of the big places there was no option but to trap them with trap hay and water and turn the waters off or we used to go in with helicopters and shoot them out which was not a very nice deal to do but in any cases in one instance I do remember there was an old bull that we finally got him and he was full of it but the ringers had left him behind many times because he wouldn't walk because he was a shit and they just thought I would drop him out dropping my Hebrew right and when we realised what had been happening of course then he was coming in contact with the younger animal heifers and that and it kept going. So some of those places that big and that so you're based in Kalamala and you're bleeding all over South West Queensland. Look after bull urine is that? No no I didn't go as far north there used to be a group in Quilpy that did that top in. I used to do from half way to from Boland basically due west to the South Australian corner, Cameron's corner, Nakatunga, Nariel Cove, Oriente Oriente, Bullardines all those places. Yeah right. So this is not a job where you can just pop back into town for the night? No. No we camped out many times or sometimes I used to go to Tipperboro in northwest New South Wales. Yep. That's an interesting little town. In the middle of nowhere you're suddenly coming to this town with the lads boulders like much like you see down in Stanthal and that's totally alien to that country out there. There's gold there. There's a gold, they mine for gold there still and it would say if there's going to be a big discovery it'll be at Tipperboro. But I remember going there one night with one of the vets and we landed in the little light plane because we'd been out into South Australia at Frome Downs testing cattle I think and we ran out of daylight literally. So when we got over Tipperboro we had to land and we landed there and walked into town and it was just on dusk and he said to me you almost feel as if you could walk into a gunfight here and it was exactly that their hitching rails are still there you know. You will. Incredible and of course that's where. So that's late 70s early 80s or yes that would have been very early 80s late 70s here. Then I went away from there for a few years and I was actually sent to Southport on the coast and I was a fish out of water I stayed there for the posting but I really didn't belong there. So you went from Western Queensland like out in that scrub, bleeding and post mortem and cattle you know living in a swag a lot of the time and they transferred you to the Gold Coast. Now tell me about the job difference of what you did down there compared to what you were doing in Western Queensland with Bruce had bled him. It was a quantum lead. I mean I did bruise last at breeding down there and there was a large dairy herd down there at the time that. Are you testing for Bruce? I was testing for Bruce A2 but I was also down there involved in the catalytic control particularly with the thoroughbred horses going to the race was in to New South Wales or up on to the Downs. Yeah right. So I used to do quite a lot of spraying of horses for ticks and things like that. So these are the like the premium race horses. Yeah. This was the time of fine cotton and all these things the big substitution of the horse. Yeah. I'm not. You weren't involved in that just to me. No, no, no, no. But I have a sneaking suspicion I could have sprayed him because he saw this looks an awful lot. Well fine cotton. Well the horses there were there were stables in the hinterland where some of the trainers had their horses. Then there was the Heap Street trainers right near Chevron Island the race course and that was where all the hoy pulley. But I did spray for trainers that won Melbourne Cups and horses and then they had the yielding sails once a year. So we were right in the thick of all the grandeur and of course he was I, you know someone quite happy in Western Queensland and I was working. Fortunately the bloke I worked with he loved race horses and racing and I said to him how about you do the race horses and I'll do the hinterland. So the hinterland took me up to Springbrook, Beachmount, Coombra and I used to go to Boders at Relieving and Boona. And that's my only tick work, all the tick works. So it's going to people who don't understand what the tick thing is. Well the cattle ticks and we've got the cattle ticks. The cattle ticks is a tick that came into Australia through Darwin 100 and something years ago and it spread south on the cattle herds. Now we do have ticks in Australia we've got dog ticks and kangaroo ticks and things like that. This particular one carries an organism which creates what they call tick fever and it's probably like malaria in humans. It ruptures the red blood cells as it multiplies and then the animals die. So it's a major economic thing for cattle producers with stock that have never been exposed to it. So the government for many years in New South Wales and other states have been very, very strict on making sure that host animals don't move into the clean country. And so that's all around the movement and permits to move stock in the station and across tick lines. So we've got a tick line essentially, a bit like an invisible, well it's the invisible dog fence or rabbit fence or whatever is equivalent but for ticks and so to move livestock that are hosts of these cattle ticks across that you need a permit and you need to have them sprayed and you have them inspected and treated and if they came up with ticks they couldn't go. You have to respect them a week later. So the racers you used to get sprayed as well and I was doing that. Well they crossed the tick line. If they were crossing tickle, going down to run it casino racetrack and back they had to be treated and they used people had various opinions of it but the fact remains one tick could lay a couple of thousand eggs and you only needed one viable population the way you go again. You've struck some interesting characters and particularly in the tick spraying and especially when it comes to horses. There's certain types of people owned dogs and certain types of people owned horses and all different things, certain types of people are into cars or whatever. Give me a little bit of a snapshot of the people who own horses that you got to deal with a fair bit. Well yes of course you've got the different types you've got the hobby people and then you've got the pony clubbers and the questrion lovers, trail riders and you've got the livestock people and then of course you've got the racing industry. Well the racing industry, professional people in their own right but they're a breed unto themselves too because they know all the lurks and perks and everything behind it and they running it for business. I suppose the funniest group I used to deal with and I made this up myself but it was over a period of years of observation and I'll be accused of being sexist here but if a lady younger old came in to see me and I was dealing with her with regards to her horses, I used to call it the bangle test and if she had one single bangle, silver bangle on I'd say well that's just normal, that's pretty, two silver bangle so used to get a bit worried and three or more I knew that I was going to have trouble because there was a certain group and they were Sky or Penelope Jean and things like that but you could bet your bottom dollar that their horse was a special horse, more special than anybody else's, so yes the silver bangle test that I used to use and people that say you're mad and I'd say well just try it some time, you'll find you're not too far off it, you know. Yeah it was a pretty good test and we obviously worked together at DPI for a long time but I remember you're coming into the office and muttering and the silver bangle brigade strikes again and you said yeah the number of bangles determined how difficult that client was going to be to deal with and there was also the hyphenated name was another good indicator, hyphenated surname was another indicator, yes we always used to get used to it but a reasonably accurate assessment, based on your observations and many years of experience, even with like you're working Western Queensland, the Gold Coast etc but you must have come across some real old characters out there in the bush. Oh yes, yeah, as I say, people you could write a book about, you know, some of the people who write out in those isolated properties, men and women I must say, I often think there was one woman there, she used to be, we used to communicate on the radio, the transceiver radio because they didn't have cellophones out there so what was that and there was one woman, lovely, full of the bush but as rough as rough and if she got angry and swore you knew that she was angry, I remember people used to laugh because they'd hear her on the radio and they'd say, oh, cell and say, oh God, she's rough, that one and I said to somebody one day, I've seen that woman break down and cry over a dead calf in the cattle yards and I also saw her sweep the house out because she knew we were coming to stay to do the testing and a dust storm came up and day became night as it happens, you know, and the sandhills just inundated. We got inside the homestead and sat there for about an hour or so while it blew out and when it stopped, it didn't really become daylight again that day, there was the cloud hose but her little house that she'd cleaned up for us was full of red dirt and she sat down and cried again. It's pretty soul destroying, I've just got to tell you from experience, you clean the house and then one of those dust storms out there comes through and you can just write your name on everything in the dust, like it's just full, even just matter how well you shut the house up, just put tracks down the floor down the rest. So Margie would never fit in at the Melbourne Cup or a nice tea party in Brisbane or something like that but she would keep you alive and fed no matter where you went if you needed something, you know, so those sort of things, people, I ran into some people who were the other way that had an opinion of themselves and almost delighted in pushing it in other people's faces. They're the ones that I tend to call them a little bit too happy with the way they turned out. Yeah, I call them the born to rulers, born to rule because the rules of life don't apply to them and I don't judge them excessively hard because that's the way they've been brought up and they've been brought up in the world where they were the only ones that made decisions and geographical isolation goes with that but there are some people who have worked hard all their life, have raised their kids and things like that and they have a happy, simple, on-us life and they're just as much an Australian citizen that you're proud to shake their hand with. So you, what other sorts of programs, these other ones that you've been involved in? Well, in the early years it was very much disease control in the West and plant poisonings and ticks and things, Bruce Lose at TB, in latter years, because I joined in 1979 and I retired about 2021 or something like that, but the department was heavily involved in chemical residue situations. The international market would pick up a chemical, organochlorine chemical was one and they picked it up in some meat in Japan or Korea or something, immediately then the alarm bells ring, it wasn't going to poison anybody but it was there, so we had to trace it back to Australia, to the state, to the property and find it and then we had to go to the property and work with the producer to find out where it was on the place. How did it go into that house? How it got into the food chain basically and there were a number of chemicals of that thing, they were legal at the time, so they were contaminated, sheep yards or wool sheds or cleaving dips or whatever and because the chemicals don't break down for centuries, if the stock had access to it, that was the problem. So I was involved in that detective work quite often, sometimes we'd go and take fat samples from the animals, have them tested and I was involved in the instigation of trialing and developing the chemical detection dog, which they call norm because that was the National Organochloro residue management program. Yeah, so that was the national program for looking for that, finding those chemicals that are probably, well I'll call them older style chemicals that were more persistent in the food chain, once they go into food chain, DDT and deal with those older style chemicals which are obviously no longer used their band but they're persistent in the soil and so protecting where that was found on the property and the sniffer dogs became part of the norm. And that was the Queensland first, and Greg Horrocks is the gentleman that took it on, he trained the dogs and took the dogs out and was very very successful in finding it. Other states then copied it and things like that but the dog would detect the chemical residues in soil which we couldn't pick up. Yeah, it was amazing the work that they did because I got to sit next to Horrock when I worked there as well and I love talking to him and the way he trains the dogs and the way he works with those dogs but the stuff that those dogs could pick up and that's a super successful program, the first dog was called Norm after the program, the National Organochloro residue monitoring. So that was something that I fondly remember and look back on and I'm glad to be involved in, but then there was HDP growth per moten thing where suddenly Italy and some of the European countries said they didn't want cattle that had been treated with hormone growth per moten, although that was a common thing and still is to some extent. So we had to immediately invent a situation where we invented a pink paint identification and it became a pink tag where we could identify the animals quickly and easily that had been treated or hadn't been treated. And our job was to implement that program but also to work with the producers to understand and accept it. So the ability to communicate and build a rapport in rural communities was important too. But then there of course there was the bigger diseases as I call them, the exotic man-killing diseases such as the Hendre virus when that turned up in Hendre and Brisbane and the train that died, no one had ever seen it before, anywhere in the world. They really didn't know what it was. They worked out afterwards that it was a lisovirus which is a family of viruses, similar to rabies but different to rabies. And I was down there with the inspectors rostered on immediately. We were in the stables there within our days if not ours. And I actually took blood samples and temperatures, definitely took temperatures, from the stallion cugent which was one of the ones that they destroyed later on and we were there day and night. And at that point did you know what it was? Were you in the full sperm seed PPE? We had the PPE of the day, we had the overalls and masks and gloves. But you did have masks? Yes but they weren't really... They weren't rated for what it was. They were the masks that we used at the time. And obviously now we know how deadly Hendre virus is and that it passes to humans and that people die from this stuff and you just pop in there with a bit of a smell, a mask that nowadays we'd probably wear to the supermarket with a bit of COVID. Well along the same lines as what you see in the supermarket, and you're going in and facing a completely brand new disease, never seen anywhere in the world, should be right now we'll just put this little P2, P1 mask on. They gave us the guidelines as best they could and said right this is what you do. Don't lick your hands when you come in. Don't lick your hands, don't chew your nails sort of thing. But then again, a lot of the diseases that we dealt with were what they call zoonotic in the... They can infect you. Bruce Loses and TB, inspectors we dealt with that face to face and yet it was a man-killing disease if we got it. We were given cards eventually, in my time there we were actually given a card to carry in our wallet that if we ever take in a hospital or anything just say that we work with zoonotic diseases. Somebody pull this out of my wallet if I'm passing out on the floor, it gives them a bit more of a... Bit more information. I wonder what they've been touching. What do they lick today? Well a number of inspectors contracted Bruce Loses from testing... Cue fever? Cue fever. And it has dreadful side effects like depression and fever and serious illness and things like that. But I do remember the inspector that I worked with and he got it. He got Bruce Loses. He was living at the South Coast because he was working with the dairy farms with me and he was going to the doctor for quite some time and they were treating him for all sorts of things. And then one day he said to the doctor while he was there, "Oh, if you're taking blood, then you check me for chemicals because I exposed to chemicals and we used to get the blood test occasionally." And the doctor said, "In what capacity?" And he said, "Well, I'm a stock inspector." And the doctor stopped and he said, "My God, I didn't think of that." And they tested him for Bruce Loses that day and that's exactly what he had. You're right. But again, back to the card, unless you tell them the GPs aren't expecting that. No. That's right. And we had to sort of deal with that. The heck Ryan flew when the horses got that disease. We were very involved in that in particularly networking with the horse owners and explained to them why we were locking down their area. And the concept I used to use was it's a bit like fighting a bushfire. If you can get ahead of it and burn back with the firebreak, then it'll burn up to it and burn out. And once you sort of put it in that sort of thing rather than just saying, "We're going to lock you down," they got an understanding and most of them cooperated. Yeah. Well, I was even there for econ influenza response and I was involved in that and that was interesting and interesting learning curve. And then there was the prawn spot in prawns. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, there was a lot of diseases on and off over the years that you had a very steep learning curve to understand the etiology of the disease. Yeah. But our training and our rural background meant that we could slot it into place and say, "This is why you have to do this." Yeah. But we had the ability to identify and earn people's confidence in a rural environment and travel to remote places and live. I think the other thing that probably helped in that role with, you know, shutting down and locking down, quarantining properties and stuff, which you've had to do, I've had to do with various things, mine more in the plant and chemical side, yours in the stock side. But I think having that rural background, having that empathy for what they're trying to do there, that these, you know, the majority of these people are not setting out to upset the animal cart and spread disease or cause any harm to the community, our export markets or their livestock. No. Sometimes that's a pretty bitter pill to swallow when you've got an exotic disease and everyone's coming in and going, "Well, guess what? We're shooting everything." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a pretty hard thing. You've also got the social stigma around when properties, something happens like that. Everyone's like, "Ooh, they've got that disease over there." Yeah. Yeah. And so that can also impact on their mental health and their standing within the community or even whether that's real or perceived, but they feel like the lepers in the community as well. Yeah. And that's very true. And I used to say to all the staff when I was a supervisor in older and years, confidentially is very important because you don't need to mention to people about stuff about their neighbours. If you were going to get the trust and work, then their information was their information. If you had to lock a neighbour down because of something, then you had to share a certain amount. Yeah. And very easily alienate yourself, but do a lot of harm if you weren't discreet with the information and professional in that. Yeah. Absolutely. And I dealt with a lot of farmers probably over the years, too. The other part of ours was the drought assistance. Yeah. So we used to do a process drought claims. We'd go and do property inspections and to say whether they were eligible to claim assistance for drought. And many times, I've sat and held a hand of someone while they cried in the kitchen. Yeah. Or if they came into the stock office, I would say come and we'll have a cup of coffee in the tea room. Yeah. And just listen. And I couldn't do anything major, but quite often it was the listening. And see, I think that's in that role, and there's lots of other roles out there in that rural sector where you become the accidental councillor. You do. You don't need any training. All you need to do is listen. Yeah. You don't have to have the answers. You don't have to solve the problems. No. But just by, in my talks I talk about the buckets and emptying your bucket of shit, and if you just listen and let people just get the shit out of their bucket, they're going to feel better walking away. Oh, yeah. You haven't fixed their problem. No. But they've offloaded. Yeah. And sometimes when that burden gets too heavy to carry, that just a friendly year or have a cup of tea, it just makes them feel that much better. Well, I used to have wives sometimes would say, "He doesn't make a decision. He just sits and drinks tea, and I have to tell him to go and plow the paddock or go and shift the cattle." And she said, "He's never liked that before." And I said, "He's at a stage of his stress level where he can't make the decision." Mm-hmm. So I used to encourage them then to get someone to come and talk. But a number of times it would be just us. Yeah. And then up on the side of the road, if I saw them, and we'd just lead on the mute. And the interesting thing was I was regularly accused of oversurfacing. Take too long. Should have been back an hour ago. But I could spend a half an hour or an hour leaning on a fence trail in a non-threading environment listening to somebody and talking. Yeah. And it did them good sometimes. Sometimes it didn't. But that person also then would stand up for me in a meeting of disgruntled producers and say, "Well, hang on a second. This blokes a fair fella. Let's listen to what he has to say before we condemn him." Yeah. So that network building was a two-way street. Let's face it. We used to joke about it when we worked there. It's like, "I'm from the government. I'm here to help." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's this thing that goes with that. It's like, "You work for the government. Yeah, you're not really here to help." And so... What's next? We went upstream anyway. Yeah. So to have that rapport and that respect with the people you deal with is good. So great career in DPI and the stock industry. I want to go on to, and I guess off the back of what you were just talking about is listening to people and the strife that people can get into. And if you are comfortable to talk about your life experience with suicide close to you. And I guess the era of when that happened and how things were dealt with then, was it shoved under the rug? Was it no? We don't want to talk about that. And if you want to share your life experience with it. Well, of course, people didn't talk about it. It was within the family, you know, and if the family had a problem, there was a sort of a solid image, most times in smaller communities, people found out anyway and my father had a drinking problem and everyone in the community knew about it in the end. But you didn't hear your public linen, you know, he was sick today or something like that. He died quite young as a result of it, but he came down from the bush when we left the property and really didn't belong in the city. He'd spent his whole life out there. So he was a little bit like the cage, bullock thin, suddenly in a world that he couldn't live in. And the alcohol was the thing that within a couple of years he died. And I often see the old farmer type sitting in the shopping centers. And I regularly, I stay out of the shopping centers as much as I can because I don't belong there. But if I am there quite often, I'll see an old fella sitting on one of those seats and I generally will plock down beside him and just say, "G'day." So they'd be like a magnet to someone like you, just going to the aunt's room. And nine times out of ten, you'll get a "Hello, how are you?" If you realise that they don't want company, then that's okay. But quite often we'll just start talking and we can spend half an hour talking about "I go up in Charleva or I was at Junior Creek" and just letting them tell you about their life. And you realise that there are a lot of people that are very, very lonely even though they are in this city, you know. Yeah. It's actually one of the things that I do hear a lot and particularly from older blokes who, and one in particular that sticks in my mind, but there's been many where he had lived, worked, managed stations right across the north from Cape York to the Kimberley. And it's been his whole life and some of the most remote parts of this country. And he had retired to a very populated area. And he said to me, "I have never lived in such a densely populated area and I have never been so fucking lonely." So lonely. It was his words. I've never been so fucking lonely. So I've got a story I wrote about just that and women are the same, but women quite often will find an interest or something or someone to talk to. But I often say to people, "Don't walk past the old bloke sitting on the bench because quite often the five minute chat or even just g'day how you travel them is very, very important, you know. But you're not being intrusive, you're just letting them know that we're here too." But you know, family tragedies happen. I lost a brother, and he had one brother, my younger brother, and he got depression and issues and anxieties and things. And I knew he was in trouble, but talking to him any time I could, I felt that he was handling it. And I actually referred him to a doctor on a new who helped me when I was going to a bit of problems, and with me it was more the moving to the city, that era. The adjustment. Yeah, the adjustment and things like that, and I suppose the middle-age sense of worth. They talk about women with change of life. I believe that men don't necessarily have change of life, but we do go to a stage where you start to wonder why. Why have I spent all my life in this, and you know, all those questions. And so that came up for you when you moved to the city, so you left the bush, moved to the city, and you're like, "Well, what's my purpose? What am I doing this for? Am I in my mouth on a wheel?" Yeah, and probably in my 40s, so I'd already been back to the bush, but by that stage then I was in management level and living down in here, inside again, as we call it. Down inside, yeah. Yeah, we'd go inside where the properties are smaller, so yeah, it was more that I was still doing the work that I loved, but less and less hands-on, and more and more conscious of the fact that I'm... Yeah, more paperwork, less hands-on. Yeah, and I was the Register of Life's Talk brands by that stage for Queensland, and since I've retired, the thing that I miss is the contact with the people of the bush, because even though I was living in the city here in the end, I would be talking to someone at Julia Creek, someone at Thargaminda, someone at Mira Mill-Maron, so I had my bush contacts, you know. And particularly being the Register of Brands that you were, in that role, there's so much history in that. Oh, yeah. It would be incredible history in those brands. Some of those brands are very old, and some of them have been families for a long time, some of them have moved from super interesting places over the years, too. I mean, it's a sense of pride with some of the families, you know. Absolutely. Well, some people say, "Oh, you know, it wouldn't matter, it's only just a brand." And I said, "No." I said, "It is part of the family heritage, they're pride, it's their crest if one of another name." Well, it is, because Dad's Cattle Brand, I actually got made into a silver pendant for myself and my two sisters and a type in for my brother. Yeah. So we've got Dad's Cattle Brand made into a silver pendant that we all wear regularly. So it's something that we'd never let go of, Dad's Cattle Brand, and we keep it alive, it's still on cattle itself. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, those sort of connections, but again, I would find myself having an extra ten minute talk, because we'd then be talking about the drought, or I had one old lady well under eight, he said, and I'd dealt with her quite a bit for a few months sorting things out. She'd never met her in the state histories in a big properties. But she said to me one day, she said, "You know, Peter, they've all gone and left me." Now, I didn't know this woman, I've never met her again, but I had spoken to her as a person interested in the property and the life and things like that. And this day, she said, "You know, they've all gone and left me." And what she was saying was that all the family members are dead, and she was the last rung. Yeah, well... And, you know, what can you say apart from the fact that when you come from tough stock, you know? Well, even those that may have still been alive had lost interest in that property and the history of it. Yeah. And that's the other thing too. Some people who have heavily invested their emotion and life in a place, and then through family tragedy or whatever, find that there is no one wanting to continue with the property. Yeah. That is a huge risk. They talk about succession planning and things like that. But how do you plan succession when you realize that no one wants what you valued in all your life, you know? Yeah. So, you know, again, it gets back, I think, a lot of the time, I've no psychiatrists, but I think just the willingness to encourage someone to talk and tell them what they're feeling. Yeah. And they are over a cup of coffee sometimes, I think, is worse than seven years at a clinic. Yeah. And I think that's, like, being able to talk and to tell that story and to, I guess, get that emotion out. And now this is where I come into that you and I share a common interest in bush poetry. Yeah. Now, you're a very accomplished bush poet, and you have written a lot of poems over the year. I don't write many, or a decent one about every four years, I think I've worked it out. So I don't write a lot of bush poetry, but I do write a few. Yeah. But you actually have a book out. You drag me into a competition, into a bush poetry competition, and I'm no performer, but you love it. Yeah. But you're on the stage and you just come alive into this great performer and the theatrics of it you love. And to me, it's like, oh, just, can I just write it? Can I just read it? Yeah. I'll just read the poem because I've got too much, I haven't got any room on the hard drive up top here. So... Need a few more gigabytes. Yeah, I need some more gigabytes in there. And an upgrade that I can't remember, Palms now, I'm hopeless at it. But your memory is incredible for poetry. And like I said, you've written a lot, you've always in competitions or organising bush poetry. You've started a bush poetry group in Twomba, which meets once a month. You are also the president of Queensland. Is it the... The Queensland representative. Queensland representative. Australian bush poetry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For Australian bush poetry. So you're just always busy doing that. And like, you've got a book out. Yeah, sorry. You've written a book. I've written a book. It's only a... It's got 18 Palms in it. It's about 60 pages, I suppose. But... And I called it beyond the boundary gate. And it stems back to the world inside the boundary gate on the property. Yeah. And then the world outside the boundary gate. Yeah. So, you know, most rural people can identify with that sort of an idea. And I'd always thought I'd write something. And anyway, I finally didn't. My brother-in-law put it together in a book for me. And there it is. There you go. There you go. My son's a photographer, so he took some photos down the road from the property, which has got the west... Oh yeah, so that looks a very much like Verona? Yeah. And we went to the property in the homesteads in ruins these days, but took quite a few photos and things like that and included a lot of farms. And it was nice to have my son involved as the next generation coming back to the property, but taking some photos there then, you know. Yeah. I have one criticism. This book... He took that photo and I said there's too much cloud in the sky. There is. Yeah. He needed the big blue sky. It doesn't rain out there very much, but yeah. So any other stories that you wanted to share with us? Because I'm going to get you to tell me a poem, a poem that you'd like, or what's one of your favourites or... Well, the poetry I write, and I started writing years ago when I was driving around the Channel Country by myself. Yeah, right. Six or seven hours driving through the scrub. Keep yourself entertained. Keep yourself entertained. And I'd... Something had come into my mind or I'd race an emu down the flat or something like that, and I'd start writing something in my mind and never took it seriously, but then I started doing poems for friends retiring from work. Yes. And it started off just being one or two, but then it became a bit of tradition. Yeah. So that for many years, everyone that was retiring in our department are used to end up doing a poem and they would talk about their career and make it something we used to give then as a presentation. And I did a bit of political satellite too, because I have a bit of a twisted sense of humour at times, so I could say things sometimes that you couldn't possibly say straight up to your boss. To management. Yes. But when you put into a bush poem, you could get away with it. Yeah, well, I did. And I did have a couple of full and frank discussions afterwards with people that said... What was that about? Yeah, they said that's a very good phrase, but don't push it, you know? Yeah. So you knew where your balance was, you know? But yeah, I... It's all in the name of art. It was all in the name of art. And then the friends of those then started to say, "Well, some of them would get me to do a poem for someone's 70th birthday or Golden Wedding anniversary." And I do quite a bit of that, you know, which is good, but they were encouraging me then to say, "You know, you need to do this seriously, don't just fiddle around with it." So I started writing down the things that I was putting together. And since I've retired, I do more and more of it. Yeah. Because I realise I can do it, but I also think it's painting pictures with words. It is. So... And we're catching moments in time. And I say to people when I'm doing it, I visit a lot of the retirement villages and provis clubs and things. And I usually say, "Is anyone got a family member that wrote something?" And most people say, "Yes, somebody wrote... I wrote something." And I say, "Well, where is it?" "Oh, it's in the cupboard at home somewhere." And I say, "Well, dig it out." We have a monthly meeting at the Cobham Co. Museum, and we're on the second Saturday of each month. But bring it along, and we'll read it for you or you can read it, because the snapshots of time, you know, Henry Lawson's poems, Banjo Patterson's poems, they describe and capture a feeling of a people in an era that's long gone and never come back. So poems that are people written in the '50s and the '30s and the '40s and even today are their recollections or their attempts to capture that moment in time. And I say to people, "We've got the internet now. And we've got all the technology. Get with someone who can help you and put it down and you can go as far as putting it in a book, or you can send it to a group or a club of interest people. But don't let it just be tossed out in the garbage when an estate is finished because with it goes that person's soul. So there's a number of different ones. As I say, I write humorous ones. Yeah, you've got a lot of funny ones too. You've got some nice, serious ones as well. I've got some serious ones. I've got a couple of ones when I was angry, and I thought, you know, I've got to say something about this. What's one of your, what's probably one of your favourites? Some are longer than others. But I have one. You've got a bit of a bugger for writing long ones, aren't you? Yes. And it's easy to get carried away and do that. I have one I quite enjoy is about a country race meeting, where it beats all the characters making the best of a harsh, dry climate, you know, having fun as country people can do. Yeah, the picnic race and this particular person runs a fail of a goanna that ends up on top of her head and she, you know, goes on from there. So what are you going to share with us today, phrase? Um, this one, this is a shorter one. What's that one? This is called lunchbox memories. Yeah, do that one. I don't know if you've heard this one. I tossed it out the other day, all battered and scratched on top. The closing latch was gone, so shut it wouldn't stop. We're sitting in the cupboard with some trinkets from my past. You know, the things you keep, it must throw out at last. As I held it for a moment, my mind flashed back in time to a schoolhouse in a pony and a scrambling old grapevine. For a moment I could see them all, Jack and Tom and Fred, perched up in the cedar tree behind the old woodshed. And there was Ole Miss Margaret at the blackboard with a frown, declaring woe and vengeance unless we settled down. Howie laughed at Freddy the day the cow got away and followed him to school bellowing half the day. Twas just a little lunchbox on the lid was drawn a dove, a sandwich and an apple and a biscuit made with love. No longer was it needed for its own as long since grown. In fact I'm a granddad now with granddad kids of my own. The day they all have tux shop, credit cards and a phone and drive to school with mum never walking there on their own. In air-conditioned classrooms with desk and comfy chair, a laptop and a teacher's aid encouraging opinions to share. I know the world has moved on and today's children have too, for life is light years away from the childhood that I knew. But I wonder what will they cherish and some days throw away as I did my little lunchbox that I tossed out the other day. Oh I love that one phrase, that's one of mine, that's definitely my new favourite, I like that. Yeah because it covers, and it doesn't just have to be about the bush. No. I don't know why our life will be our, our life today will be our grandchildren yesterday. And I think we see that in the poetry that comes out, the modern Australian bush poetry is not the stories of the drover and the mean from snow river type scenarios. We're seeing a different, you know, it's a different reflection. Because we're a semi-urban population now. But every, you know, I guess anyone from, you know, rural Australia, particularly the bushes they know, the cedar tree and all of that and that's, yeah, that's beautiful. And it can be any generation because the world has changed and will change, you know. Yeah, we can't stop that. No. No. And you said before that when people used to retire from DPI or leave DPI, you was, you got the job, ended up with the delegation of writing a poem about them and their life and their, well, their work life in particular and that became the tradition. And so when you retired from DPI, there was a problem that I had left DPI, but we're still friends. And the problem was that the great bush poet was retiring from DPI and no one was there to write. To write a poem. Right. The poem for him. So I sneakily contacted the, my colleagues or ex colleagues there and said, right, phrase isn't getting away with this one. So the poem I wrote for you, I'm going to read for you. Oh, excellent. Yes. And this was such a delight for me to write because of our friendship and also our shared passion for bush poetry. So I called this time to hang your hat up. There's a story of a stocky. It's a tale I need to tell, a bloke we proudly call our mate as phrase. You know him well. So pull your stump up near the fire, fill a panicking with rum. It's time to hang your hat up, mate, relax, enjoy some fun. It was back in 1956, a great flood swamped the land. He was born at Kanamala amid salt bush and red sand. With his childhood on Marona, chasing rabbits was his quest. On the edge of Lake Eliza, he watched the black swans nest. He's kicked off his schooling years via correspondence, but I guess his fertile mind may have led to some despondence. So off to Kanamala, to the convent he was sent. The nuns were strict and would not stand for any discontent. Like so many outback parents who don't wish to raise a fool, in his teens they shipped him off to a city boarding school. With a deep fond love of language and history, so I'm told, he progressed to further study and college life was gold. When he got that piece of paper in disbelief and shock, Fraser exclaimed with great delight, "I'll be an inspector of the stock." So he joined the Queensland DPI, Kanamala, he was bound. Back to that Mooger country, his much-loved stomping ground. Beneath the Kanamala sun, he relished his first job. The days were long and dusty, checking cattle by the mob. From the knee-bine to the blue, he lived the outback dream. Many miles and cattle-tried, in the brusso bleeding team. He was in that western sunshine, also the story goes. Our phrase of Kanamala fell for her cheeks of rose. At outback picnic races, it's no a near and far. The love bug often bites you, in the shadows near the bar. Flashing blokes can get quite torn, I think it's fair to say, between the bar and betting tote. But phrase, he chose bathe. It really was an easy choice, not just for her pretty looks. He had sneered himself a clever wife, who could balance up the books. Then the bosses they decided, a transfer they'd bestow. It would take a special kind of stocky to fill this job, you know. Flash horses and big names might change the likes the most, but not our redsoil bushy when he landed at the coast. The sand that oozed between his toes was far too white and clean, and he never got that surfy tan through his moleskin gene. It seemed the champagne wasn't cold enough, and the cheese not up to par, as he couldn't quench the calling of those your punya trees on far. He daydreamed of the warrigo, and that peaceful Paru River, and if you mentioned Wigie Creek, it gave him quite a shiver. So phrase packed up his wife and son and headed for the west, back out to God's own country, where the mulga trees grow best. And it was in that cut-a-muller sunshine, where sandalwood grows thick, that phrase chased bruso and TB in scrubber's mighty slick. His next post was to ochie, with frost across the land, and with the dairy farmers. He toiled their hand in hand. His last and final posting was to oombre on the hill, where he worked on many matters, like ticks and feeding swill. Between the equine, bird and swine flu, he coked we know not how. There was norm and chots and yonies, and masses of mad cow. This phrase moved up the ladder, he healed respect across the lands, with his final role at DPI as a registrar of brands. Now, our smooth talking phrase, he sensed trouble in his bones, especially if their bangles clinked, and name was Watson Joads. DPI has seen some changes, and mostly to the name. First, they called it Diddy, and things were never the same. Then some Fs were added on, and Daphne made him cry. And since that day, it's just been dubbed the F and DPI. Phrase loves an outback story, tales of drovers and bush nurse, and he doesn't need much coaxing, to recite some ozzy verse. His dulcet tone seeps softly down, a tender feel cool glen, with banjo smiling from above, as phrase gives song to pen. With an overload of free time, we wonder what you'll do. Perhaps you'll write more poetry, or embark on something new. Maybe you can take up golf, or consider meditation, regardless how you fill your days, which will be done with dedication. When you hear the song of magpies, as they greet the early dawn, and you feel them pull of saltbush to the red soil you are drawn, then why not wander westward, when the mulga is in bloom, camp next to lake Eliza, where the blacks one fluffs her plume. It's time to put your feet up phrase, look back and enjoy some smiles, reflect on all the memories, good friends and dusty miles. So pour yourself a good stiff rum, 'cause now you're off the clock, it's time to hang your hat up mate, as inspector of the stock. Thank you for your hard work, and friendship through the years, we wish you luck and heaps of fun, now you're changing gears. Today you work mate's wave you off, and turn you out to graze, but you'll always be a stocky, the one and only phrase. Oh, thank you, yeah, that was marvelous, well done, well done. So it was my great honour to write that, when you retired a couple of years ago. I've got it up in the frame, with the mulga trees in the background, hanging up with the mulga trees in the background, and again it's painting pictures with words, isn't it? Yeah, the story. The memories of what makes our life and what we do, and you look back at it through something like that, and yeah, it's good for the soul. It is, I guess the trials and tribulations and things you've faced and stuff you've done in life, what's one thing life has taught you, and if you could go back and tell yourself at 18, what would you tell yourself? I think be kind to yourself. We can be very tough on ourselves, and even those other people can, and I do jokingly say now I look in the mirror in the morning and say who asks you, and you can't get a good mirror or a good camera these days, but really I'm a big believer in looking in the mirror and saying to yourself are you a good person, and if you can't say that then probably you have a conversation with yourself, but if you honestly can look at yourself in the mirror and nobody else around and just say I am a good person, I mightn't be perfect, but I am a good person, then take that with yourself, and it just be kind to yourself, be honest with yourself. I think that's lovely advice, so thank you, I've enjoyed it, thank you very much and we've been mates for so many years, I must tell you that the sheepier tag that you found for me that had been on the property from the 50s, since I've had it down here, it's still sitting in a private place on my desk, but it's reconstitute itself, it seems to have swollen back to what it was after all those years of dislocation in the bush. Because I grew up not far from the property that you were born and raised on, and we used to stop in there when we go to the lake as kids and scratch around the old homestead, which was abandoned in those days, and I think it was in the meat house, there was bags of ear tags, and so we'd pick up because we were mad and collect an ear tag, so we looked like ringers from the top end, we looked a bit more like thumbtacks than big hat and little kids, but we used to grab these ear tags, the sheep ear tags, and they had Fraser on them, and we were always mad on getting those Fraser. Every 1950s, 1960s, yeah, we were picking them up all through the 70s and 80s. You didn't find the gold, so you most will find ear tags. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Very good, thank you. No worries, catch you next time. [Applause] [BLANK_AUDIO]