I read a few things of late about grief and one article that suggested that the loss of a four legged companion can rival the loss of the two legged variety… and after this recent episode in my life I do tend to agree.

Like everyone, we experience tough times and few moments in life will rival the loss of someone or something we cared for or relied upon heavily for an extended period of time… and for me it was my old mate Archie.

When I was a younger fella I lost both of my grandfathers within a few months of one another and that was a pretty crook time, not just for me but for the whole family. A little while later I lost a mate or two in rural and outback accidents and they shook me up, well & truly. Over the years I’ve been a pretty lucky sort of character and always had friends and family close, plenty of good mates and a wing of dogs and assorted other animals about the place. I had a poddy calf that grew into a mountain of a bullock that had to be sold before his feet went soft, I had a goat that was more in love with my old mum than anyone else and even a couple of pet rams that used to try and put me on my arse from time to time… but there’s always been dogs… and for the last seventeen years there was this little bloke by the name of Archie, but better known as Superman.

I grew up on a place with working dogs and so it would be no surprise that they would soon form part of my life and that I would be half lost without em. The grandfather had a mad old hound called ‘Blackie’ that didn’t get off the chain too much as every time he went anywhere in the back of a ute he used to lean out and bite the tree branches as they went by… and as you can imagine… that didn’t end well. My old man had a black & tan pooch called ‘Edward Casey’, which I believe was a tribute to a favourite historical figure and he served the station well for many years. My uncle who I spent many a day in the paddock with had a red & tan dog he named ‘Baldie’ that almost never left his side and helped with every facet of property management over many years.

These three men and in turn their three trusty companions so endeared the working dog notion to me that as soon as I left school and was knocking about the district and at home on the station I had to have myself an offsider. I took on a couple of, shall we say, hand-me-down dogs and as expected none of them ever really amounted to too much. ‘Cody’ & ‘Soot’ both eventually met with sad demises after many second, second, bloody second chances and were replaced by a young male pup named ‘Rocket’. He was a black barb & black kelpie cross and was the first dog that I would ever have from a pup, and be it for good or bad his moulding would sit entirely with me. An ex-girlfriend / childhood sweet heart (of sorts) had given him to me, free of charge and with just a few gentle words of advice.

‘His father ‘Whitey’ and mother ‘Socks’ are bloody brilliant, so if you can’t make something of him… give him back or get rid of him, but don’t let him be useless’, were those kind words of advice and well-remembered to this day. The young lady who had been so kind as to give young ‘Rocket’ to me was a pretty unique individual herself and had a way with animals that I’d never encountered before. Given enough time & interest she could get just about any animal (and I mean bloody ANY animal) to do just about anything. Knowing this and having seen it with my own two eyes I was sure keen to give Rocket the best chance of being something that I could… but how, that was the question. I wasn’t by all accounts a working dog trainers arsehole or bootlace, depending on your preference, and as there were pretty much no other dogs left on the place for Rocket to follow… it was down to he and I to sort it out.

Sure there were dogs on the places we worked and the family dogs were still floating around, but most were too old to be of much help. In the end Rocket and I just agreed to spend as much time together as possible, no matter what it was that I was doing, and always looked for things to learn and new ways to do stuff. In a way I guess I wanted him to be able to do cool stuff, but for the most part I just wanted him to be able to be of more help than hindrance when there was work to be done. We practiced pretty much every day, jumping in and out of things, riding in things, sitting, backing up, going back, way back, WAY FKN BACK just to mention a few… and then we just worked.

It was a pretty busy few years and between my persistence, his natural ability and I suspect a bit of good luck coming from an ever increasing bond from all that time spent together… he developed into something pretty bloody special. He was no show or trial dog, although he did run second out of about twenty at the dog jump in the local show one year… but the back story to that was that he could fight a bit and I think he had most of the other hounds in fear of their hides and that was putting their minds off the job. All except one little bittsa mongrel that could have climbed a ladder or jumped over the moon that day… brilliant little thing was a treat to watch and impossible to beat, so old Rock and I had to settle for the silver medal.

The years passed and on more than one occasion I was invited to send or gift my old mate back to where he’d once come from, as ‘Whitey’ and ‘Socks’ grew old and their owner was keen for a worthy replacement. In that I saw respect and also a compliment for the almost all black offsider that I’d spent so much time on and with. Of course I never gave him up and it would be many years before his days were up and our partnership would come to a close. I tell you of him, for he was my first gentlemen dog, a rough & tough, bold and brave black hound that kept on learning till the day he died… but also because he would be the dog that made the dog I would soon know as Archie, but as I say, often referred to as Superman…

Rocket was one hell of a dog, but I always felt that he could have been better had he been lucky enough to have an owner that new more and had more skills to offer. I had also often wondered what would have become of him had he had another dog to follow, someone to lead him and show how to do stuff… someone other than me. And while it pained me for what may have been with one dog it gave me great hope for what it may have meant for another. I took delivery of Archie in early 2000 and like Rocket before him he was gifted to me with similar advice and from similar blood lines. He came from a place where good dogs were treasured and bad dogs were not long for this world. His mother was a greying old dear in her late teens and his father was a bought dog with ‘actual’ paper work.

We laughed about it at the time because in our part of the world dogs with paper work were trial dogs, trained for shows… and not for station work. Sure they’re talented as hell, but there were three types of dogs in our minds and you had to get one that was bred to be what you were after. There were show dogs that were trained to operate in front of crowds and obey every single command – poor bastards had no personality… Then there were working dogs, fully fledged and half mad hounds that were bred and trained to go hard all day every day and for the most part looked a little high strung… and then there were station dogs… our dogs… my dogs… these were the fellas that could lay around under a tree for half a year, but still be right to go mustering or yarding up for shearing or crutching at a moment’s notice. They could settle on the end of the chain without barking their guts out half the night and were happy enough to just poke around and be a part of the bigger show. You didn’t have to worry about your chooks getting cleaned up if ya left em out over night or your poddies getting chased when they came back to the house for a feed.

Station dogs had to be able to work when you needed em to… but also be a pleasure to have around the place for the rest of the year. I took mine with me to many a job, but for large sections of the year they could be left to idle around the place at home. They had to be calm and considerate; they had to be bold, brave and have some brains… they had to be smart but not be smart arses! Dogs had to be more help than hindrance and be able to turn their hands to more than just the one task.

To get dogs to do this and master the mixture or requirements and the steady flavour of life on the land was difficult, and while some struggled and often met their sad and often sudden demise, I was blessed to have had dogs that managed it. Rocket for one was brilliant at it, he set a steady but deliberate pace to whatever he was tasked to do or assist with and could be relied upon in almost any set of circumstance. Old Rock and in time young Archie both mastered the half dozen vitals for a working dog… ‘Get up & hop down’, ‘Speak up & sit down’ and ‘Go back & come here’. No matter where they were or what we were doing they could always be relied upon to do those six commands… and boy was it handy to know.

Sure they could do other stuff and I’m not one to skite, but those two made my life a whole lot easier by being there… but with those six simple commands and the knowledge that they would be adhered to, there was confidence and a safety in the way I (we) went about the work. It didn’t matter if it was sheep or cattle, goats or pigs… hot or cold, going mad or going to plan, those dogs would stay on task and do whatever was asked of em… every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

As Rock grew old and Archie grew up there certainly was some need for planning as to who you used for what; but as they were both gentlemen dogs with not only a father son type relationship but an enduring mateship and comradery where they complimented more than competed with one another. Both were lead dogs that’s for sure, but as one dog’s legs grew tired and the others confidence grew they somehow managed to share the role. When Rocket did finally move on to the big paddock in the sky or the shady tree on the hill, it was Archie’s turn to steady the mob, lead the others and support me in all that I did.

He and Rocket alike had more talent in one foot than I had in total, but it was their and certainly his strength of heart that made the difference. Just as I had carried Rocket out of the back of the vehicle after a huge day or week on the job, so too had Archie given all that he could. He was small of stature, fine featured and particular in the way he carried himself. He was well mannered if that makes sense and an absolute gentleman, so much so that I still find it hard to believe that to some people he was just a dog.

Dogs are trained to do as they’re told, but when push comes to shove and the situation gets real! it comes down to the individual as to what they are going to do… and this little bloke was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. On more than one occasion and especially in the close confines of a forcing pen in stock yards AND when everything and everyone else was over the fence and looking for cover… Archie would come to the rescue. No matter how big or how pissed off the bull was or big a rack of horns the mad cow was sporting… in he’d go. And even pinned down or ground up in the corner and when most others dogs and folks alike would be looking for a way out… he’d be giving as good as he was getting and more often than not he’d prevail.

He’d run all day on the lead of a mob and if you were working the tail then he’d look after the wing, and if you were a bit steady or parked up in the shade for too long then he’d give you a couple of looks from that lead corner and then come back and push the tail along as well. He wasn’t a fighter or even that much of a biter, he didn’t swim none too much but preferred instead to paddle, and wouldn’t take food out of your hand… but only off his dish.

He suffered more than just the odd injury over the years and one stage smashed up his back right leg and hip. The pain was pretty solid when he slept and for a time there I had him in a bed on the floor beside my bed side so I could sleep with my hand on his side hip… his pain in a way was my pain and by touching him it seemed to be a load shared. In those younger years I never put as much work into Archie as I had Rocket and in a way I didn’t need to, because of Rocket. As the years rolled by many other dogs, people and places came and went… and yet his loyalty and almost his canine professionalism never waived, not once.

He fathered two sons to two sisters did Archie and both were of reasonable mention. Eldest was and remains is Chumba, son of Archie & Tiny (youngest daughter of Rocket & Betsie) while the other son was Panda, son of Archie & Leftie (eldest daughter of Rocket & Betsie). Panda died of a brain related injury and much suffering long after a bad fight with a strange dog, while Chumba lives on at home. These two boys were and are their father and grandfather’s disciples in both nature, ability and spirit, all though I doubt neither had the opportunity nor the challenges of the two that had come before them.

As Archie’s final years, months, weeks and days counted down to when he was gone I still recalled the effort he made, the days he saved us and the company he provided. It may sound strange to some to remember a dog as honest, well mannered, genuine and a gentleman… but these are the words that describe the feelings I have and the images that fill my mind when I think of him. He was heroic and freakishly strong, brave and in a crazy way almost too brave for his own good. This little black and white fellow was and is to me the thing of legends, of amazement and honourable kinship. So blessed I have been in this life that mine was to have shared the passage of time that also was the life of not one but two animals, two beings, two heroes such as Rocket & Archie. One was the old black shadow that helped me become a man with purpose, while the other was a four legged superman dressed in a tuxedo… who filled the gap between my aspirations and my abilities… 

I have tears now for these two old mates of mine and suspect I will for some time, for they were certainly an extension of me, but also a better part of me. Be it dogs or other animals or mates or even children for that matter; be it husbands or wives, brothers or sisters… these bonds, these times and most definitely these memories are the instances that make life so very real. To be able to treasure a fond moment or a special memory where we’re involved with or witness greatness is something to truly value.

These dogs, these spirits, these two rare individuals that carried me through so many years are gifts that I’ll never truly understand. My father and others often said you needed to have ten dogs before you got a good one… and perhaps they’re right, perhaps I got my good ones first… or maybe I was just lucky. Either way these two gentlemen hounds changed my life… or perhaps they helped make it.

Thanks men…

Thanks for reading, this one was special… This is most certainly Black Rat’s Back Chat and you’re welcome. JM xo

#GoodANuff #DogsRmytypeofppl #Mansbestfriend #Dogsknowbest

You could not be blamed in any way, shape or form for thinking the answer here is a tricky one… I mean with seven billion people, thousands of languages, hundreds of countries and an endless amount of differing cultures… it sounds pretty tough. But it’s not, not even close… here’s ya answer… it’s not anything mind blowing and certainly not something new or out of this world… it’s actually a bit of a throwback to times gone by. It’s something we all have the capability to play a part in and it’s certainly something that can be done almost right away… as soon as we want really, and here it is…

Just do better, try harder and generally be a nicer person and that’s it! That’s the whole bloody game right there… done and dusted!

After all we’re meant to be living in a time of the ever improving civilised society… aren’t we? We’re all getting more and more educated, we’re in contact with each to the point of almost obsession and there’s a Book for Dummies for just about everything we do… life should be easy, shouldn’t it? We get up in the morning and we’ve got people telling us how and when and why to do just about everything we could ever think of doing; we’ve got the God Blessed internet to deliver every and any possible fact we desire to the end of our finger tips and so I just don’t see why there’s an issue. Or perhaps I do.

We the human race have out grown our basic nature to look after one another, not because we’re bastards, but because we’ve become numb to it… and we’re numb to it because there so much… of everything! There are just so many things in our lives, some good, some bad, some indifferent, but most at the extreme ends of the spectrum. We get to be a part of so much stuff that has nothing to do with us, so much stuff that we’re not fully understanding of or educated to, and so much stuff that we’re not old enough, mature enough or sensible & open enough to take on board. We no longer live and worry about the first six feet in front of our noses like the cave man used to; not us, we’re across everything. We’re like mice shit… we’re in everything OR at least we think we are, or feel that we’re entitled to be… and therein lies the problem.  We’re not all global entities and nor should we be… we’re people, we’re human beings, we’re individuals and should to an extent remember that. We have friends and families to interact with, look after and tend to, and we have jobs and social lives… but we’re getting around like we’re professional socialites without a care in the world… and that’s a little bit bloody crazy! 

Once upon a time people used to live their own lives, worry about their own business and let the rest of the world do the same thing, but not anymore. Where we were once happy to look after our own and get personal reward from living, playing and helping locally, we now have moved to such a broader but strangely shorter attention span. We’re outraged at what’s going on in far flung corners of the globe but do sweet FA to help those in need locally… we cast aspersions and offer opinions re the outside world, what they do, what they said, how they govern and who has been ill-treated or put down, and yet local volunteer & community groups struggle to keep going through lack of support and general participation. We throw garbage out the window of our cars (and we DO! All that crap along the roadside didn’t get itself there), we step over rubbish in the street and then complain that the local council aren’t doing a good job. We bitch about the ref at the kids sporting event on the weekend or about the coach when the teams are a bit dysfunctional, but we’re absent on training days to help prepare the kids, just like we rouse on our school teachers but do very little ensure our kids behave or do their homework.

We road rage when someone cuts us off in traffic or drives a few kms below the speed limit, but the list of stupid shit we all get up to ourselves when driving cars is long and varied (and growing!). We speed, we talk on the phone, we speed some more, we text, we email, we eat, we drink, we do our make-up, we sing, we talk while looking away from the road, still speeding or not driving to the conditions, we hog the right hand lane, we tail gate and the list goes on and on and bloody on! And we know that WE do it, because we are the ones driving all these fking cars… Oh! And we don’t car pool, we don’t share the drive and we don’t buy vehicles that are fit for purpose. We sit at the traffic lights in fuel guzzling wagons, two lanes in every direction, cars parked ten to fifteen deep… and only one person in each car… and we’re all pissed off, we’re all running late and all more than happy to complain about the levels of traffic, car fumes, road noise, delay times and countless other self-inflicted and or self-contributing annoyances with a second’s thought of the part we are playing in it…

I am starting to wonder just how intelligent and self-aware we are as a species… I’m not a greenie or a do-gooder, I’m not a bible basher, a tea tootler or some overly self-conscious bleeding heart… but I am a realest and it has dawned on me in recent times that the situation of this great country and in turn this little old planet of ours is going to get as real AF very soon if we don’t change our ways. I’m not being melodramatic or over reacting here, I’m just at the point where I think we need to not only start talking about this stuff, but also doing something about it. Instead of watching five different reality TV shows about married life and watching our pollies pull the piss out of one another about the rights of which people marry who… how about we get involved and sort some issues out. I don’t care if a fella marries his dog, a woman marries her cat or young people marry their phones… but I do care that this crap rates as both entertainment and a point of public interest when for the most part it’s just a distraction… there’s people dying like flies all over the planet, there’s animals dying quicker than we can breed ‘em and ability to operate as a fully effective society diminishes on a daily fkn basis; but this… it doesn’t even make the seven o’clock news. OR the six o’clock, or the five o’clock… or the first news at four on channel seven or even the 24/7 news on ABC or FOX! And it’s not on the news because it doesn’t rate, and it doesn’t rate because we’re not interested and we for the most part don’t care… and that’s pretty sad.

The human being was and I think we’d all agree meant to be and is often considered to be this absolute pinnacle of life and existence; we the upright standing hairless monkey with a fully affective apposing digit, were for one reason or another blessed with both brains and brawn enough to realise and rule an entire planet. No matter if you’re a religious buff or an complete evolutionist, either way it seemed like a pretty nice thing to have happen that one species could so outshine the others and do so much to impact the quality of life for all and the greater health, well-being and longevity of the planet. Be it written in scripture or dreamt of by poets and philosophers the human race was  capable of and should’ve longed to be the guardian of the planet and all those who shared the world with us… but no. For many years, for decades and centuries even, we have been gradually refining the way we do everything and should by this stage have worked out that be it in the role of guardian or just positive planetary citizens, we’ve run a complete root.

When I was younger and I used to hear people say how they “couldn’t possibly bring children into this world”, I though they were crazy, but now I see where they were coming from and the situation I suspect is far more bleak now than twenty odd years ago. When people spoke of the ‘Yanks’ and the ‘Rusckies’ keeping pace with each other like a crazy arse Mexican stand off so that there would never be a world war three… I used to think that sounded about right. But that’s not right, not anymore, world war three has been going for years, there’s been fighting almost since the end of WW2 in one part of the world or another. The thing is, well, it’s just that most of the western world couldn’t give enough of a shite to get involved. Hell they’ve been killing people in the Middle East and parts of Africa, and Asia for that matter on a nearly constant basis for decades now… but if it makes it onto the news more than once a fortnight you’re doing well… extremely bloody well. We’ve seen too much and often feel completely bloody helpless or powerless to do anything about it or impact any level of change… so much so that we’re immune to it now. All the crap on TV, in the movies and computer games is as violent as hell and we’ve become desensitised to the notion of blood and guts and death of fellow man.

What the future will look like is absolutely anyone’s guess and while I pray that we soon come to our senses and try to do something about… I’m not confident that that is even possible. The human race has become too smart, too lazy, too opinionated (says the guy typing up a blog) and in too much of a hurry to have and do and be all things materialistic that the likelihood of refocusing on community, environment and the sustainability of all is no longer sensible thinking, but crack pot do-gooder meddling. Our general health and life expectancy is in gradual decline, as are birth rates and marriage rates, while pollution, crime and personal debt continue to climb. It’s a gradual thing and it’s an affliction that both affects and is contributed to by every single one of us. The human race is a marathon, but one we as a species believe can be approached as though it were a sprint. The never ending war of attrition that is survival on planet earth compounds every day for every one of us and for the untold millions that will follow in our steps.

It’s time to take one for the team, do something for the greater good of everyone and in a way get back to basics. We need to go for a walk in the morning instead of driving to a gym in our car and then working out on a machine in a corner while surrounded by countless others doing the exact same thing. We need to get off our phones, off our computers and off our arses and do some of the things our grandparents used to do to fill in  their time. Spend time with your family, talk to your kids, read some books and try to listen to understand instead of listening to respond when others are talking. We need to try to learn some stuff and then go crazy and try to put some of seemingly endless cool knowledge that is out there actually into practice. Start a veggie patch, cook our own dinner and ease off on the sugar and the shit we put in our mouths. We need to be nicer, be kinder and when all else fails fall back on that golden oldie of ‘do unto others…’ Yes life on this planet has turned into a marathon, but there is no guarantee that it is going to last forever, and the way we’re going we’re doing everything we can to see that it doesn’t.

Life doesn’t have to be all about how big my house, my car or my bank account can be or how hot I or my partner look. It’s doesn’t have to be about who has the most power, the loudest voice or their name up in lights. It’s not meant to be about how much life, energy and fuel we as individuals can suck up, soak up or use from everyone and everything around us… it’s not that at all… it’s actually the opposite and if we as a species expect or even want to last too many more generation it has to be the opposite. An ever increasing population is one thing for a planet and all its inhabitants to endure and manage, but when one species is so hell bent on self-glory, self-gratification and use of everything it encounters… that’s a whole other challenge. Yes there’s a lot of us, perhaps too many of us, but if we don’t change the nature of our association with the planet upon which we exist and in the environment that we long to dominate… there will be a reckoning. Simple maths and calm observations tells us every time, that the life of excess is unsustainable…  

We need to slow down folks, yes you can smell the roses when you’re running with them in your hand, but isn’t nice to just stop, stand and watch them grow.

Thanks for reading & for playing along… This is Black Rat’s Back Chat and you’re welcome. JM xo.

Nobody wants to do the craps jobs anymore, and fair enough, nor should they, I don’t… but someone has to… don’t they?! These jobs; they need to be done to help society manage, and further to that… a little bit of hard yakka never killed anyone… did it? The cooking, the cleaning, the emptying bins and general mopping up after us all… these are just some of the jobs that stop us as a society from drowning in a sea of our own filth, but with every year and every new invention we seem to find ways to side step ‘us’ actually doing the crap…

So what’s the plan? And not only a plan for what, how and who is going to handle this portion of the crap workload, but all the middle class building, assembly and construction type roles that we seem to be running from like they’re a rapidly approaching bush fire!

In the seventies and eighties the western world had become jack of people doing a number of the manual tasks that had helped to build the society and started the systematic retro fit… upgrade… and replacement of staff in many factories, workshops and production lines with mechanised or robotic installations… In short, some smarty somewhere worked out a way to get machines to do the jobs instead of men and women. The machines could do the tasks just as well, if not better; at the same speed, if not faster and they could work uninterrupted for considerably longer periods of time… because machines and robots as you know don’t need to sleep, eat, shit or live – they just work. So with the removal of dinner breaks, dunny breaks, rest time and weekends; the factories were able to turn out a whole heap more of whatever the hell it was that they were producing… and over time do it a bloody lot cheaper. The cheaper the product, the greater the profit margin and so on and so forth… The companies sacked a wing of their workers and sadly for a some it was the end of their working careers while some others managed to re-invent themselves and go again; the blue collar worker in the production line setting was steadily becoming an endangered species.

Fast forward a decade or so and the advancements in computers saw, and continues to see even to this day, a similar encroachment on the human work force by automation and use of modern technology. Increasingly we’ve seen the reduction in the requirement for secretaries, PAs, typists, mail men, delivery staff, editors, proof readers, bank tellers, servo attendants and ‘check out chicks’ to name just a very, very few. These roles are nearing to be obsolete in many circumstances across the western world because once again we, those, them, us, you, me, we – have managed to one way or another dedicate a level of importance to stream lining these tasks and with the aid of the rapidly improving technologies… designed computers or computer programs to do the jobs for us. Everything is a little cheaper, a little quicker and the removal of the human element has allowed us to be far more effective, productive and consistent… which is great for those who have not yet been replaced by IRobot or a series of 0000 and 11111s or is 010101010101? All this cheap stuff that the machines are now building for us is great… though with even less jobs for the everyday Joe & Moe… who’s gonna be buying it?!

Moving forward a few more years we as a society crashed through the year 2000, survived the ‘Millennium Bug’ and are now galloping towards the year 2020! With the continued improvement in technology and the endless supply of ‘good ideas’ and ‘safety measures’ in the workplace, we will soon see the next round of impacts to the working man’s (or woman’s) status quo. We’re now seriously looking at driverless cars, specially dedicated traffic lanes for fully automated and driverless haulage trucks, continued improvements in the selection & delivery of food stuffs and products plus the never ending shift to purchasing next door to bloody everything online! One couldn’t be blamed for wondering if there wasn’t an initiative to see almost every one of us banished from the work force and every single job eliminated. All this extra time will allow us all the freedom to… do what?!

Now for those of us in the bush, us country bumpkins (so to speak), who think that these advancements don’t apply to us or that this driving desire to eliminate boys from the bush doesn’t apply… well we’re fkn wrong! I see myself as a youngish to middle aged man, and when my mum was a kid on a Mulga block in far south west Qld… places had dozens of staff and houses filled with families. The weekends were filled with social events, team sports and every little town had a pub and a shop and a wing of kids at the school… further to that with all these people there was considerably less stock being run on the properties. Now I know right now the national sheep & cattle mob & herd numbers are well down and people are actually trying to rebuild, but we all know that’s a result of years of drought and a now seemingly endless demand. Sheep, wool & cattle prices are through the roof and that’s making it bloody tough for those in the game to recover and next door to impossible for anyone to try and get into the industry. We’re exporting to all corners of the globe and cutting the head off anything that’s old enough to walk onto a truck… and while I’d love to unpack this current rural situation a bit more, I’d like to take us back to the point at hand, and that being that back in the day (in the day of my mum’s childhood), we country folk were a thriving portion of the Australian landscape with a healthy and robust population.

Over the years we’ve seen the cost of production steadily rise, the rate of return gradual decrease and the eventual and inevitable human exodus from life on the land… and so I ask, why is it so? Now that’s a pretty big question, and one part of the answer is exactly the same as what we’ve seen for decades now across so many industries; the impact of and obsession with technology. Instead of mustering camps with ten blokes on horseback, a camp cook and chuck wagon we now have one bloke in a chopper or small air craft and a couple of folks on motor bikes. Instead of having a long mustering season and each property having enough staff and resources to cover this work throughout the entire year, we now knock the musters over in a few days or weeks and have contractors that come out from town. Sure the really big places still have a bit of a staff, but nothing like it used to be, not even close. The place next door to home when mum was growing had almost fifty odd people including families; by the time I came along it was less than a fifth of that and now it’s just the manager and his wife… and one of them works off farm from time to time to supplement their income. This is a place of several hundred thousand acres with still thousands of sheep and cattle… but just no people.

Now mum tells me there was a manager and his family, an overseer and his family, a book keeper and his family, a bore runner, a bore drain man, a gardener or two, a couple of cooks, a few older stockmen, a black smith, a mechanic, some station hands and a wing of jackaroos. They all lived on farm and as I say, many had families on the station with them and all seemed to be able to be kept busy… and the places made a profit. Over time the external and often downward pressures saw the profit margin narrowed and the business model change, and sadly, every time there was a change it almost always led to the reduction in head count on farm. Just the other day the media were awash with stories of how drones will soon be helping with on farm tasks such bore runs and stock musters… and I nearly fell off my fkn chair.

I marvel at the technology and I salute the commitment and initiative of the people that keep coming up with these ideas, designs and eventually the programs or the products… but enough already, cut it the fck out! Go put your efforts into curing cancer or saving the oceans, but leave mankind the fck alone, leave us to do our jobs. Leave us to stay busy and fill in a days with genuine work and an actual reason for crawling into bed of an evening. We all romanticise over the beauty that’s captured in the enduring image of six or eight gentle horsemen (or women) ushering a mob of cows & claves or hulking great bullocks across a grassy plain or along a flowing river’s edge… but then we are non fussed by the notion of a drone set on auto pilot to navigate a paddock and steer livestock through an automated gate set to open & shut like the front doors of a bloody department store building. We’ve got UHF radios and mobile phones strapped to pumps and bores so they can ring us up when they’re out of fuel or the water level has dropped, and we’ve got tractors that lap the paddocks putting in or pulling off crops all at the guidance and will of a GPS system and satellite from outer fkn space.

This automation, this mechanisation and computer enhanced obsession that has engulfed the western world isn’t as prominent in the bush as it is in the cities, but it’s getting there and it will continue to come. The drivers for it and the motivation behind it are as many as they are varied and it’s sad, but it’s real. The society that we live in, the society that we have as a species created is one that now compels us forward with a dedication to do almost everything quicker, cheaper and with less effort… Some of the current affair shows recently spoke with experts in global trends and highlighted some of these historical shifts in labour use, but they also spoke to the future impacts. One point that was made and a fact that we see more and more of is the shift towards the ‘work from home’ worker. Now at first glance with a casual thought I can see how this sort of arrangement could be a wonderful if not very helpful and useful use of resources. But then it dawned on me; with more and more jobs being done from behind a desk and up close to a computer monitor… it matters less and less just where that desk, that computer and the poor bastard driving it are actually located. With the brilliance of modern technology and in the most part the ‘world wide web’ so many routine tasks can not only be done remotely within the same town, city or state… but from all over the bloody world!

We’ve already seen jobs exported overseas to countries where they pay their people less per week than some of us will work for per day or even per hour in some cases. The amount of telecommunication, insurance and accounting companies that are now based in India or somewhere else on the sub-continent far outweigh those that don’t… and it will and can only get worse. If the current trends, the view of recent and prolonged history and the essential ingredient of human nature are anything to go by; why would we pay someone a thousand bucks a week to sit behind a computer in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Hobart when we can pay some other joker a fraction of that to do it from Asia, Europe or anywhere else in the world for that matter? In short! We wouldn’t, and we won’t.

With technology helping to steal almost all the jobs of those people that toil and sweat for a living my mind once again returns to the crap jobs. No one wants to do these jobs, no one wants to or apparently can afford to pay reasonable wages for these jobs to be done and to a point even less people seem to care if the jobs aren’t done until it impacts them personally. So what happens… what happens to the rubbish in the street, the fruit on the vines and burr in the paddocks across a nation? Who empties the bins, cleans the dunnies and carts away old tyres and endless trash along the road side? In the short term we seem to be happy to just make do, OR we pay through the nose for a company to come along and do it once it’s a complete shit fight and an eye saw that needs remedying yesterday.

I know the bush tends to survive on kids home on school holidays and backpackers to get a lot of the work done – but how sustainable is that? This is a massive country with an ever increasing population and last time I looked more and more of everything we have and use is constructed in a semi disposable fashion with end goal of it finding its way to land fill.  

Through ‘good ideas’ or technological advancements we’ve found ways to do away with the human element in so many facets of the working environment; and through warm & fuzzy and socially desirable language we’ve used things like ‘safety measures’ and ‘product consistency’ to explain away the loss of jobs. The current and increasing mentality says that we are so focussed on speed, quality, cost and human safety that we’d prefer to see one person with a computer or a machine (if a human is involved at all) do the job of ten men (or women). And when I say ‘human safety’, I’m not suggesting for a second that we should put people in harm’s way to complete a task, not at all! I’m referring to the fact that we need two blokes to pick up a bag of chook feed and a fork lift to carry a bag of cement… jobs one bloke used to do all day… on his own.

The examples are so numerous it’s hard to know where to start…

In the western world we can’t handle the notion of physical work being done when a machine could do it for us; so much so, that the mere idea of six or eight blokes being employed to unload shipping containers or trucks or train carriages by hand and create an income for their families as against one bloke doing it with a fork lift is almost repulsive to the modern thinker. It will take the guys SO much longer and what if one of them hurts themselves…? And they won’t restack the contents as neatly in its new location and we’ll probably have to go back to training these guys on how to do it properly and so on and so on… and it’s true! But isn’t it sad. Good hearted men & women built the entire bloody world with little more than hard yakka… and now we’re petrified of breaking a sweat, getting a blister or things not being perfect to look at.

We made the bags of almost everything that comes in a bag smaller so that one bloke could lift them easy, then we built a training and workplace Health & Safety culture that created another entire industry to ensure that the guys that were lifting these ever shrinking bags were doing so in the correct manner, not to mention all the support staff, networks and industries that were growing to look after these people if and when they did hurt themselves or decide they wanted to do something else… then we said Fck it! it’s all too hard. We bought a couple of fork lifts and sacked all the staff… much quicker, much safer, much cheaper… and much easier to manage.

The unemployment rate is now through the roof; the government tells us that it’s at historically low levels and percentage wise it’s in single digits… but they are less forthcoming with sharing how it is that they define unemployed. You only have to volunteer at the local shelter or help out the kids sporting events and they say you’re a worker! We’ve got more people on some form of government benefit than ever before in the history of the nation and of those that do have jobs the vast majority are parked behind a desk or hooked up to a telephone. Meanwhile the robots, the machines and the fully automated systems around the country are punching away at the jobs we used to do and worse still… some of our number that are sat at a desk are spending great amounts of time, money & initiative dreaming up even more ways for technology to do shit for us!

I can understand if they want machines and shit to do the really tough and bloody dangerous stuff for us, yep! Go for it! You talk about using drones to bomb the shit out of the enemy or automated systems for fighting crime, working underground or completing deep ocean tasks… then yep I’m with you. I don’t want to see anyone put in harm’s way or risking their skin for me or mine in such a way that may stop them from going home to theirs… but let a man dig a hole, swing a pick, lift a bag, chase a cow or build a car… let people talk to one another face to face as they buy shit at a shop or get something fixed down the street. We’re not designed to do nothing, not to sit on our ever growing arses all day and gradually turn into blobs parked at a computer.

We try to keep our kids busy so they don’t get bored and dream up ways to run a root and get into trouble… it seems to me that perhaps we should be applying the same thinking or have a similar mindset to the rest of the human race… not just continuing to invent ways & means for us all to do less. All this crap looks great and seems cool at the time, but the long term impacts of us all doing less and less… is bad, really fkn bad.

We, the people, are on an almost daily basis contributing to the gradual extinction of the working human and sentencing generations now and into the future to lives spent sitting idle without physical or mental challenges to fill their days and dedicate their lives to… and that Folks, doesn’t make sense, not one little bit…

Thanks for reading & for playing along… This is Black Rat’s Back Chat and you’re welcome. JM xo.

#bluecollarwhitecollarnocollar #everyoneneedssomethingtodo #nothinggoodfromidlehands

So the world’s population doubles every thirty to forty years… and at the minute we’re sitting somewheres in between six & a half and seven billion people… That’s right folks… seven billion people; seven billion, breathing, eating, sleeping, drinking, shagging, fighting fkn people (excuse my French). These are people of all ages, all religions, all ethnic backgrounds and from every corner of the globe…

After years on the land managing & looking after animals and a lifetime of taking in my surroundings; it now seems clear to me that this planet is a little over stocked… and we need to have a serious look at its carrying capacity. The folks from the DPI or DNRM or whomever the hell it is that looks after all things rural in the government space these days would have an absolute field day if they got wind of you or I running a cattle or sheep operation in a manner that in any way reflected the way we humans are stocking the world… In short folks, it’s too many people, too many fkn people and we all know what happens when you end up with too much of anything…

What’s that old saying about everything in moderation… well, same has to go for global population.

You run too many sheep or too many cows on your block and see what happens, hell you already know what happens – they eat the place out and then things start to go completely to shite. But you know what, it doesn’t end there, does it?… Before long the paddocks are completely bare – with the grass dug out by the roots and any standing timber is trimmed to the browse line… and these endless starving individuals will soon have almost self-destructed as a mob. Too many mouths means not enough food, it also means not enough water or even standing room at the waters… So they push in, they push and shove, they tussle and struggle and fight each other for access to the ever receding water’s edge. Add to that the well-known fact that livestock like to do their business where they stand… you’ve seen it! Piss and shite right there while they’re taking in considerable litres of water to get them through the day… not smart, not smart at all… but they are animals, aren’t they? – they don’t know any better… of course we wouldn’t do that, that’s disgusting!

We’ve all seen this sort of thing before, to one extent or another and in these recent years of drought and the enormous levels of stock on feed, it’s common place. You throw a mob of steers into a pen with a feeder bin loaded up with hay, what do they do… just like the water, they charge in. They don’t bother with lining up, waiting their turn or being sure to share with others… they say ‘fck that!’ and charge, they dive in, head and shoulders deep they go at the feed with open mouths and desperation in their hearts. To us it’s because they’re ‘a bit hungry’ or they’re ‘piggin it in’; but to them it’s food and no matter who or what you are, food is food and without it – you’re fked! If the shoe was on the other foot, so to speak, roles reversed… you know, if it were you and I in there… what would we do?… when we’re starving, when we’re weak and desperate and haven’t seen good tucker in ages. I think there’s a pretty good chance we’d be exactly the same, we’d drop the shoulder, bend the knees and hit that hay feeder like All Black or Wallaby forward packs hitting a ruck or maul.

We’d like to think that we wouldn’t, further more we’d prefer to think that it’ll never come to that… so why worry? Why indeed…

Just a reminder… the world population is on the rise, a constant and seemingly unstoppable rise and food, water and space – that’s it, a place to lay your tired head at the end of a day, it’s decreasing… as we speak, and fast. Right now this second, this minute, right here and now on this planet there is now more people than there was this morning, more than yesterday and a shitload more than last week, last month or last year… and the human race marches on. Births over deaths every year we increase our number considerably (by tens if not hundreds of millions) and all the while we’re decreasing our ability to feed, water, house and clothe said billions.

A solid seventy to eighty percent of the world’s population are in poor shape – if compared to us western worlders that is… some four to five billion (give or take a few hundred million) live on a few dollars day and go without the vast majority of everyday essentials that we’ve come to rely on. Half of these folks live on less than a couple of dollars a day…$2 a fkn day!!! So they have next door to none of the shite we see as essential to existence. What I’m talking about is food, water and shelter… Now while flat screens and Ipads, Air con and room service, to mention just a few of the things we expect when traversing the day, aren’t items of life & death… they are to some, not to most, but to a great deal of us they are a point a measure of how our day was and how we’re fairing in society. We don’t think about it at the time and we’re not terrible people because we don’t, but these things have become important to us and sometimes we can act pretty poorly if our expectations in regard to these items aren’t fulfilled.

I’m on the road a bit and I get this one from time to time… you book into a motel only to find that the TV remote has flat batteries or the AC is set on 24 degrees and can’t be wound down a few notches; the pillows are lumpy, the shower door is broken or squeaky or any one of the many other items of inconvenience aren’t there or aren’t up to scratch… and already you find yourself, ourself, myself – we, all get a little bent out of shape – but we ain’t hungry! No sir, not even close. We’re actually a fair fkn way from hungry and some reports suggest that we’re at the opposite end of the hunger spectrum and should even consider giving the odd meal a miss. Now I know we don’t live in motels and life is more than just TVs and telephones; but they are things we’ve come to take for granted and we do get upset when they’re not there… and we do this because the really important stuff… like food, water, shelter and reasonable health care… is for most of us, no longer in question.

The food is in the cupboard, it’s in the fridge, it’s at the corner shop, the shopping centre or if we ring up most places, someone will probably bring it to us. The same goes for water, in fact there’s so many other options aside from water that we’d prefer to drink that water is actually becoming a bit of a novelty… so much so that we’ve even started flavouring the shite to get people interested in it again. We have our homes, our houses, most of which are bigger than we really need and with less marriages – and at the same time less children; the houses we’re building have strangely gotten even bigger, even though our requirement is reducing – who is living in all the rooms of all these fkn houses?

We have public and or private health care, yep! Some of us choose to have the government (the tax payer) pay for some of our health care even though we’re well off enough to foot the bill ourselves… not saying that’s bad thing, not saying it is a bad thing… I understand people have commitments and every little bit helps, a dollar saved and all that… but there are folks with nothing… absolutely nothing and yet we’re doing our absolute best to get as much as we can… not because we’re greedy, not because we’re bad people or any other crap like that, it’s because that’s the world we live in, that’s what most of us do and it’s become a learned behaviour to do the exact same fkn thing. You do it, I do it, we ALL fkn do it and we’re unlikely to change that… I bring this up because in the context of this discussion… but perhaps that’s a whole other topic for another day… but it is well worth considering the part we all play and how we got to where we are. Add to that the example we are setting for others, both as individuals and as a society as a whole.

The world is a big place and for most of us we’ve got way too much to worry about (we think) than the shortfalls in equality of global living standards… what we also don’t think about is the sheer enormity of the actual problem.

Bill Clinton (that’s the old President that shagged his PA in the Oval office, lied about it to the entire population of the United States of America and still left office with a higher approval rating than most previous Presidents); well he spoke once about the scale of hunger in third world countries. He said, the situation was so dire that even if we could fix things for these folks by the delivery of a single glass of clean drinking water to each one of the starving billions… we’d still fail. Not because we’re bastards or because we don’t care, but purely because of the size of the fkn challenge. There’s more people in some of these cities around the world than there is in the whole of Australia… millions and millions of people and every one of them is trying to carve out an existence… just like you and & I.

We found out just recently that things are so out of whack when it comes to equality around the globe, that the eight richest amongst us have more cash than the poorest half the whole planet… the whole fkn planet! That my friends is over three billion people, and that, is a little bit crazy. And hey don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying those guys should go give all their Johnny Cash away to the endless downtrodden and starving millions around the world, and I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be rewarded for their efforts… but eight guys, eight fkn guys have managed to amass that amount net worth while half the world’s population are literally living hand to mouth, is crazy!

I’m not saying it’s all going to come to end today or tomorrow, not next week, next month, maybe not for years… but mark my words, this world we’re building, this overcrowded and drastically lop sided equality situation has disaster written all over it, all fkn over it.

You know it from your time in the paddock… you can’t have a situation where one bull gets all the hay and expect to continue with a good healthy herd… it just doesn’t work. I know we aren’t cattle and this isn’t a sale yard or a feed lot, but it sure is starting to feel cramped. You know how it is, you’ve seen it and you can imagine it; you give one small bale of hay to the biggest beast or bull in the yards and if he’s half an animal he’ll knock the shite out of anyone or anything that comes near him. Sure some share, but most of them will take it all for themselves. He (the bull) will eat all the hay, waste what he doesn’t eat and walk most of it into the ground… he’ll take a drink at the trough and then go camp in the corner and no one will do a thing about it. The other stock will come along afterwards and lick up the crumbs so to speak… and if this continues for long enough he will grow stronger while the others fade. No doubt the odd one will have a go, challenge him a bit and perhaps manage to steal a mouthful or two here or there, even a full square now and again, but not to a point that will change the end result; because in the animal kingdom (even in the cattle kingdom), the strong survive and weak go without… and they die.

In the animal kingdom the strong get stronger and they do so because it’s do or die… the very act of living from one day to the next is about sustaining yourself over everyone and everything else; but as I said earlier, we ain’t cattle and none of this applies to us… we’re fine. Here in Australia with a population of twenty-four odd million in this massive arid land mass we think we’re doing pretty well and for the most part that our society is safe. When I was a kid my grandfather and I spoke of things such as this and he offered to me a scenario to consider… to our immediate north we have a neighbouring country with a population ranging in some guestimations from 200 to 300 million souls, with many being those that live at the poorer end of world living standards. Imagine for a moment, my grandfather said, if every second member of that society cut a log out of the jungle, tied themselves to it and launched themselves into the ocean… a poor man’s invasion, he said. If only one in every ten survived the journey across the seas anywhere from ten to fifteen million people would still come assure here in Australia… and what then? What would we do and how would our society even manage…?

We squabble over a few hundred ‘boat people’ and we shudder at the thought of an increase in immigration, especially at a time of civil unrest in so many places around the globe… and perhaps rightfully so; but what about the elephant in the room, the billions upon billions of elephants in the room? By elephant of course I refer to the aforementioned downtrodden and starving, and by room… I mean planet. We are living our lives with the expectation that things can and will and should only ever get better… we get up earlier, we work harder, we invest, we save and we keep dreaming up ways to fill our days… but what about the elephants?

I’m a young to middle aged man and if I’m lucky enough to survive to the current age of my father or that of my late grandfathers even, the world population that will continue to be counted by the billion, will by then number in the low to middle teens. That’s too many people folks, too many fkn people…

Thanks folks for reading & for playing along… This is Black Rat’s Back Chat and you’re welcome. JM xo.

#dontforgetabouttheelephants #everythinginmoderation #toomanyfknpeople