Tuesday, 12 December, 2006

by Adrienne Francis
ABC Country Hour

Today we met one of the two young outback Territorians who are going to represent regional youth, in the nation's capital next year. They were chosen as Heywire winners, after speaking out and asking to be heard. Heywire is an ABC Rural initiative which airs the stories of regional young people on ABC Local Radio, Radio National and Triple J.

Kelly Casement of Alice Springs was one of the winners and in the Top End, Batchelor's Natasha Thompson wrote about her family's business growing melons in the bush. She also described the changes underway in the small community, with the Compass Resources mining development. When she wrote the story, her family was even considering relocating their farm after 30 years in the district. It was a worrying time. Her Heywire story is called: "Bushy Conditions."

"Growing up in the bush is not such a bad thing. I wouldn't have wanted to grow up anywhere else. It's quiet, you can hear birds whistling, wind whispering and rain on the hot tin roof. No engines, no sirens, no hustle, no bustle. It can be strangely lonely and sometimes I crave the comfort of knowing that someone's there. I live 10km out of Batchelor, on a hundred and fifty acre block.

"My family runs a business. We grow watermelons, rock melons, honey dew, cucumbers, zucchini, and pumpkin. I help plant, pick, wash, pack and worst of all, weed. All my family helps because it brings us together. We're a very tightly knit group, mum, dad, two brothers, my sister and I. If we weren't, our business would have gone belly up years ago. That's the way it is in the bush, family is everything and we all support each other."

"Soon, we'll have to leave, move away, because a mine has reopened in our backyard. Who'd want to buy watermelons that are grown right next to a mine? We have to leave to keep the family business running. People tell dad to retire. They reckon he's too old for the heavy work involved in farming but that's all he knows. He'd shrivel up and die if he left the land. We all would. Farming is just what us Thompsons do! It'll be sad to leave our block; we've owned it for thirty years, I know it like the back of my hand."

"We're not anti-mining. The mine's good for our region. It's created employment. It's just our bad luck that we live in the middle of it. My block's like Noah's Ark, dogs, cats, birds, geese, chickens and a lonely duck, these are all part of the family. My house is a tin roofed shed, concrete walls and floors, but I call it home. I don't know any different. I don't even have hot water. I wake up at six on cold dry season mornings and have a cold shower. That wakes you up, believe me. I don't have town power.

"We go and start the generator even during a thunder storm. With the price of fuel, it's lights out at 8 o'clock even on the weekends. We get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun. This is what you get for living in the bush, but I would be lost with it. The bush is a part of who I am."

Since the story was recorded and produced for radio there is some good news, the family has now decided to remain in Batchelor. They say that the start of the wet season rain is dampening down the dust from mining exploration, and that the company's plan to bitumen the service road that passes the melon farm will help reduce some of the ongoing disturbance.