ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
“Cotton is the best return on our investment,” he said.
“At the end of the day, we are a business. You have to understand that. With the water we used to get every year, cotton was always the best thing to grow for our business.”
However, this year has been especially hard for a local cotton grower, who says that despite the Diamantina River being in heavy flood at the moment, he didn’t receive a water allocation this year.
And that, Miles O’Hannahan says, means his dreams of growing cotton this year are all but dashed.
“We’re going to grow dryland soybean this year instead,” he said.
Miles said his property has been in the family for generations, a multi-million dollar asset and money-making machine that’s been handed down from father-to-first-born-son for over a hundred years.
Coupled with that, the 68-year-old said his entire family have been growing cotton in the wider Simpson Desert region for nearly a hundred and fifty.
“This is the first time we’ve had to grow something edible,” he said.
“And it’s scared the living shit out of me. Will my son be able to send his boys to the private boarding school that every male in my family went to? If he couldn’t, would he even be able to afford a lesser regional boarding school like TGS or TAS?”
“It’s a horrible prospect. We used up lots of last year’s water growing these soybeans. We are a business and we’ve been forced into making an investment we didn’t want to make. This isn’t fair,”
“We give generously to The Nationals and the Coalition, we don’t deserve this type of second-class citizen treatment.”
More to come.
