ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Betoota area cotton farmer who’s also chopped rocks since his birth has taken time out of his busy morning to speak to The Advocate about how things have been going recently.
He’s a clue – they haven’t been going too well.
There was a time when Alistair Burgundy-Pajero, a Northwest Betoota farmer, was proud to grow cotton.
In addition to his pride in being a wanton environmental vandal, the 58-year-old was also proud be a Catholic.
He invited our reporter out to his sprawling, intergenerational property on the north side of town which has miles and miles of frontage to the roaring Diamantina River and the appropriate irrigation lisences to boot.
“When I was growing up in Betoota, the town was much more divided than what is it now,” he said.
“You where either Protestant or Catholic. Things were much different then, you couldn’t even marry outside your Christian sub-sect, let alone your own racial background. So there was a sense of pride in who you were – and I was proud to be a Catholic,”
“And I was proud to grow cotton, just like my father and his father before him. Until we had all the unplesantness.”
Last year, a bunch of ABC ‘reporters’ with practically zero primary production and agricultural understanding, broadcast a smear piece against our nation’s proud cotton farmers, painting them as vile, disgusting people who destroy the environment.
“That was when we first started to lie a bit low,” he said.
“Somebody put our information on that Aussie Farms map, then ‘activists’ started phoning up and threatening us. People started cutting fences, slashing tyres and putting drain cleaner in our diesel tanks,”
“But it all started to die down and the Greenies found something else to be upset about.”
Alistair rocked back on his chair.
“Then all this fucking Pell shit started and we Catholics got thrown out with the bathwater!” he said.
“Tell you what, it’s been a tough couple months for me and my family.”
More to come.
