In a new twist to what is being described by analysts as the biggest man made risk to Australian Agribusiness since the formation of the Australian Greens Party, hysteria has today ramped up as a Betoota Plains farmer discovered a needle in a haystack which had been delivered to his farm as part of the nation-wide drought relief campaign.
Police were called to the drought stricken Channel Country cattle station this morning when Anthony, a local 5th generation farmer, made the troubling discovery.
With the farm located squarely in a district that has been Drought Declared since July 2015, Anthony reckons it was just like any other typical morning.
“I had just returned on the bike from shooting dead our last 150 odd head of cattle, all of which probably hadn’t eaten since Easter, when the Today Show truck rolled up with a few bales of hay”
Flanked by his shoeless children and wife dressed in a stylish hessian sack, Anthony struggled to mask the jubilation he felt when he saw Dickie Wilkinson throw him a Bale from the back of the truck.
“It’s been a tough couple of years” explained Anthony.
“We are all doing it a little tough and we make cut backs where we can”, pointing to his childrens’ callused feet.
“I’m glad the government didn’t intervene years ago when we were just holding onto our decent standard of living, if that happened we may not have got these free bales of hay today!”
The jubilation quickly turned to shock and disbelief as Anthony felt a shooting pain in his right hand when he grabbed a bale from Dickie.
“I couldn’t believe it, I went to grab a bale from that old leatherman from the Today Show, and I pull my hand away to find a needle lodged right in it. Disgraceful”
Police were soon called and a crime scene established. They soon linked it to the worrying trend of needles being found in agricultural produce across the country.
Linguists are also reeling from the discovery, with new meaning given to the common idiom ‘like finding a needle in a haystack’.
Juark Pentbridge from the Australian Linguists Association has voiced his concern over the incident and the ramifications it will have on ordinary Australians.
“Usually to say something is like ‘finding a needle in a haystack’ is to imply though technically possible, there really is no chance of ever finding this particular object.This is now clearly not the case. Perhaps a phrase like ‘finding a sophisticated person in North Queensland’ would be more suited as a replacement.
More to come
