U3A Benalla and District Inc.
  • Home
  • Benalla
    • Benalla
    • Benalla District
    • Who, What and Where? - Benalla Rural City
  • About
    • Our U3A
    • President's Page
    • Executive Committee
    • Policies
    • Convenors >
      • Convenors
      • Convenors A - Z 2025
    • Program Ideas
    • Newsletter
    • Website
  • Groups
    • Groups A - Z
    • Recent Groups >
      • Armchair History
      • Chess
      • Cooking Solo
      • Demystifying Psychology Course
      • Enjoying the Internet (S2)
      • Family Research Drop In
      • Lifeball >
        • Home
        • Lifeball Videos
      • Sky's the Limit
    • Archived Groups >
      • A - M >
        • A Different View Of German History
        • Armchair History (British)
        • Armchair Traveller
        • Booker Reading Group
        • Bushwalking - Mid-week Walks
        • Comparative Religion
        • Facebook for Mentors
        • Family Research - Advanced
        • German - Beginners
        • Google Apps/TS Plus
        • History - An Introduction to Western Civilization
        • History - Moments in Australian History
        • Hot Topics/The News - Fact or Fiction?
        • 'In the Lap of the Gods'
        • Investment I (1996 -2015)
        • Jane Austen Book Club
        • Legal Matters (Short Course)
        • Meditation
        • Making the Most of the Internet
      • O - Z >
        • On Target - Learning to Shop Online
        • Opera
        • 'Over There'
        • Rail and Tourism
        • Russian Literature
        • Tech Savvy Apple - 'Pages'
        • Tech Savvy Apple Devices - Intermediate
        • Tech Savvy Community Projects
        • Travel Group
        • Wise Guys Book Group
        • Zoom Short Course
  • A-Ch
    • A-Ch
    • 'A Taste of Art'
    • American History
    • Art Appreciation
    • 'As Time Goes By'
    • Australian Shares and Stock Market
    • Be Connected - Android
    • Be Connected - Tech Advice
    • Birdwatching
    • Brain Games
    • Bushwalking - Easy Walks
    • Car Torque
    • Cards '500'
    • Chat n' Chew
  • Co-E
    • Ch - E
    • Coin Collectors
    • Collectors
    • Colour Mixing and Watercolour Techniques - Botanical
    • Come and Learn Croquet
    • Community Singing
    • Creative Writing
    • Demystifying Psychology - Discussion Group
    • Demystifying Psychology - Perception
    • Exercises for Fun
    • Exploring the Universe
    • Exploring Writing Children's Books
  • F-Pa
    • F- Pa
    • Family Research
    • Film Discussion
    • French at the Table
    • Garden Appreciation
    • Garden Team
    • German >
      • German Home
      • Lessons
    • Let's Talk Books
    • Mahjong
    • Meet and Mingle
    • Music Appreciation
    • Page Turners
    • Patchwork and Craft
  • Ph-W
    • Ph -W
    • Photography
    • Play Reading
    • Politics & Current Affairs
    • Recorder
    • Singing for Fun
    • Spanish
    • Stock and Land
    • Sustainability
    • Tech Talks
    • Train Buffs
    • Ukes4Fun
    • Wine Appreciation
  • Join
    • Join Us
    • Membership Application/Renewal Form
    • Program Guide
    • Timetable with Dates
    • Venues and Maps
  • News
    • News Update
    • June Newsletter
    • 'What's On' Calendar 2025
    • Monthly Calendar
    • Website & Facebook
  • FB
  • Gallery
  • Links
    • Resources and References
    • U3A Network Victoria
    • Seniors Online Victoria
    • U3A Albury Wodonga
    • U3A Beechworth (Indigo U3A)
    • U3A Bright
    • U3A Goulburn Valley
    • U3A Murrundindee East
    • U3A Wangaratta
  • Contact

'A Test of Courage'  - 'Whistle blown on export fiasco'

26/10/2015

0 Comments

 
In 1965 my father, a breeder of pedigree Hereford cattle, decided to contribute a bull to a trade effort aimed at encouraging sales of Australian Herefords and Poll Herefords to Chile.So in July our bull joined a handful of other pedigree bulls and 750 commercial Hereford females in Sydney, to be shipped across the Pacific.
     
I was drafted to represent the Hereford Society on the voyage and on arrival in Santiago, to spend three months at that city's show ground,  preparing the stud animals and then showing and selling them at the capital's annual agricultural show. But that is another story and a successful one.

Not so the fate of the Hereford heifers.
    
There had been a moderately severe drought in many parts of Victoria and New South Wales which had made it difficult for Dalgety, the buying and shipping agency, to acquire the most suitable cattle to be exported.  In any event its agents bought in-calf heifers largely from New England, on the proviso that they would not calve until some months after they arrived in Chile.
   
The cattle, with considerable feed, were uneventfully loaded on the 7000 tonne Danish owned ship the Cimbria in Sydney. 
    
But we were only an hour or so outside Sydney when the engines stopped.  Then we heard the ship would have to be towed back.The engine had failed because it had been serviced in Sydney and the huge pistons had been chromed when they should not have been. So the cylinder heads came off and men with angle grinders worked for a week removing chrome.

The cattle remained on board and we again set sail, this time without stopping as we ploughed our way across the South Pacific.
    
But only a week or so after leaving Sydney, the heifers started calving and I and my two colleagues - one was Terry Ryan from Finley who now lives in Benalla - were hard pressed as we helped the many heifers having difficulties producing their first calves.  In rough weather it was quite an experience doing the All Creatures Great and Small arm inside the heifer where is the calf thing, while feeling miserably seasick.
   
While this was bad enough, the feed supplied, while from a reputable miller, was fairly liberally polluted by bale hooks, vicious barbed devices for holding wool bales closed.  The cattle ate these with the feed and they tended to lodge at the bottom of one of the stomachs which was very close to the heart. This caused quite a few deaths.

After three weeks we arrived in Concepcion and the commercial heifers and their calves were unloaded and held on a quarantine farm. Luckily our stud cattle went straight to the showground which was effectively their quarantine area.

Now foot and mouth disease was a problem in South America and the cattle had to be vaccinated.  But being patriotic Chlieans, the local vets would not use an excellent vaccine made by Coopers in Argentina. Instead they opted for what I was told was a live brew cooked up in Santiago backyards.  The end result was that many of the cattle died of foot and mouth while in quarantine; fortunately we were able to wangle some of the Cooper product for our 12 strong show team.

It was at this stage that I felt obliged to report what had been going on to the secretary of the Hereford Society, my boss.  I pulled no punches, so was horrified to find that the Society had reproduced my letter and mailed it to the several hundred members of the Society around Australia. I was then told by Mike Frost, the Chilean Dalgety representative that the second in charge of Dalgety Australia, was on his way to Chile and as the saying goes, wanted my guts for garters.  Fortunately for me my report had been accurate and I never heard a cross word from anyone in Dalgety.

The whole exercise was most unfortunate because it was funded by the United Nations to enable the Chileans to produce more beef. At the time it was illegal to eat beef for three days a week and we often ate horse meat instead.

Strangely enough, my brother the following year accompanied a shipment of Herefords to South Africa.  While in a taxi in Durban he was offered an Australian passport for a considerable sum.
​
He reported (blew the whistle) on the incident to the Australian embassy, demonstrating whistle blowing skills he continued to draw upon throughout a most adventurous working life! 


David Palmer
​October 2015
0 Comments

'Cringe'

19/10/2015

0 Comments

 
Trees and aeroplanes don’t mix
 
It was a summer day in the early 1980’s and I was working for Stock and Land Newspaper. 
 
The previous day I’d flown my immediate boss, his wife and teenage daughter, from Benalla to Bathurst to look at and do a story on some agricultural enterprise with Murray Grey cattle as the centre piece.  We’d refuelled at Bathurst to the extent that I filled the fuel tanks and we flew into a mountain top resort airstrip above Mittagong and about 1000 metres above sea level.
 
I can’t remember what we did there, but in the late afternoon we taxied to the far end of the not very long runway – I knew we were fairly heavy – stood on the breaks and opened the throttle.
 
Unfortunately, because the day was warm and the altitude high, the air was less dense than it would have been further down the mountain.  The aeroplane did not accelerate as nimbly as it should have done, although I had an inkling of the problem because of the weather before we took off.
 
I managed to lift the plane into the air, but then we sank through the top of a dead gum tree.
 
Fortunately, just beyond that the ground fell away sharply and we were able to pick up almost normal flying speed, although there were some serious indentations in the front of the wing.
 
At the same time, it was obvious that the tree had ruptured at least one of the wing fuel tanks because there was a stream of fuel in the airstream, in much the same fashion as war movies tend to show a troubled aeroplane.
 
I could have returned to the airstrip we had departed from, but because it would have been difficult to repair the damage, chose to fly on to Goulburn about 20 minutes flying to the west.  This decision was not helped by a teenager who seemed to be convinced we were doomed and screamed all the way to Goulburn.
 
Fortunately we were able to land safely, tie the aeroplane down, advise the Civil Aviation Authority and the Eildon owner of the aeroplane of the damage, hire a car and drive back to Benalla, where I bailed out and the other three proceeded to Melbourne.
 
Obviously it was very traumatic for all of us, but after doing the due reporting, I was quite keen to forget the whole thing.
 
Unfortunately  the Goulburn Newspaper picked up the story and a school friend of my cousin, who lives near there, sent him the cutting.  That meant the story was out in the wider family – which is where I hoped it would stop.
 
However, the following week I went to a Farm Writers and Broadcasters Society monthly meeting in Melbourne and there was my boss passing round photos of the damaged plane to an intrigued audience.  To give him his due he did look slightly embarrassed.  The cat was well and truly out of the bag.
 
Much later I wrote up the particulars of my stupidity for the Aviation Safety Digest (aka Crash Comics).  They were kind enough to publish with ‘Anonymous’ as the writer. 
​
 
David Palmer
October 2015

0 Comments

'A Snake Story'

9/10/2015

0 Comments

 

Berry was a Queensland farmer who loved snakes.  He was also a practical joker and one time he released a king brown in his local pub. That caused instant panic with one man exiting the bar through a closed window and another vaulting the bar and getting his foot caught in a beer tap with beer going everywhere.

A friend who worked on Berry's farm said it was quite usual when mustering cattle to see 20 snakes enjoying the Queensland heat.

A successful breeder of Hereford cattle, Berry did not allow anyone mustering his cattle to use horses, bikes or dogs to help the job along. That meant walking long distances around the farm bringing cattle together, so the musterers had a high risk of being bitten by snakes.

Not all were king browns or deadly taipans though.  Quite a few were more or less harmless pythons.  However my friend woke one morning to find a large python coiled round his neck, an experience he did not wish to repeat.

Berry was quite fearless around snakes and would pin down their heads with a forked stick while with his other hand he would grasp their tails and lift them into a sack. These captured snakes he would send to Brisbane where they were kept cosy for the rest of their lives and milked for their venom. The venom was used to make a vaccine to save the lives of people bitten by snakes.

Berry's wife Vera was also keen about and quite fearless where snakes were concerned.  She said it was silly to kill a snake, even when one was close to the homestead, because another snake would always take the place of the one you killed.

"It is much better to have an old snake staking its territory around your house and knowing your movements, than continually killing them and encouraging young and inexperienced snakes into your yard, which you were likely to tread on because they were not familiar with your movements."

Vera knew where all the nearby snakes lived and would even feed them dead mice.  Her favourite trick was to dangle a dead mouse by its tail about half a metre from a snake's hole in the ground.  She would not flinch when the snake came out, took in the situation, and struck at and grabbed the mouse.  Vera said there was no risk of being bitten because the snakes knew her as a friend and that was the way they always took their prey.

The only time Vera relocated snakes was when they started eating her chook's eggs.  Not that it was easy because they had a great sense of territory.  Sometimes she would move them up to 10 kilometres and they would nearly always come back!
Editor's note:   The brief here was to write something for children, such as a bed time story or fairy story.   David's 'Snake Story' is a vivid example of a reminiscence based story for a primary school age child curious about a particular topic.  After listening to David's story our group went on to share lots of snake related stories, including memories of reading Henry Lawson's 'The Drover's Wife' in one of our primary school 'readers'. 
0 Comments
    'Our Stories'

    David's page

    One of our original members who has written many stories over the years,  David also wrote newsletter reports for the  'Stock and Land' ,and the 'Sky's the Limit' groups as well as articles publicising U3A in the Benalla Ensign. David still submitted a story from time to time, that's if he wasn't helping someone out on a farm somewhere. 

    Picture

    '500 words'

    All
    Adulthood
    'Advice'
    'A Farm Forged Friendship'
    'A Fortight's Walk In Spain'
    'A Friendship Tested'
    'A Girl In One Port Was Enough'
    'A Love Letter To Travel'
    'A Snake Story'
    'A Story For Children'
    'A Test Of Courage'
    'A Trampoline For Freddie'
    Aviation/Flying
    'A Walk In Japan'
    'Backpacks And Blisters Matter'
    Benalla
    'Car Stories'
    Childhood
    'Cringe'
    Don't Wing It'
    Early Adulthood
    'Faking It'
    Family History
    Fatherhood
    'Fish Out Of Water'
    'For Better For Worse'
    Getting Older
    Gliding
    'Good Vibrations'
    Grandparents
    Growing Up
    'Heartbreak'
    'Here And Now'
    'How We Met'
    ''I Grew Up ... '
    "I Quit!"
    'I Was There'
    'I Was There''
    'Joanie Delighted In Rural History'
    Joan Palmer
    Journalism
    'Life Changing'
    'Lost And Found'
    'My Gap Year'
    'My Mother The Writer'
    'My Other Life'
    'New Boy In Town'
    Palmer Side
    Parents
    Rebellion
    Relationships
    'Right Here
    Right Now'
    Schooling
    'Shaped By Childhood'
    'Stand Up Comedy Set'
    Stock And Land
    Sydney
    'Sydney Writers' Festival 2018'
    'The Moral Is
    'The Sky's The Limit'
    'The Year That Changed Me - 1974'
    'This Beat Up Has No Reference To Journalism'
    'Ticket? Don't Take It!
    Travel
    'Travel Tales'
    'Triggers'
    'Vibrational Big City Move'
    'Walking The Camino'
    Writing

    Other writing by David 

    As David convenor of the Stock and Land group, until mid 2024 David wrote the monthly newsletter reports also posted in our 'Stock and Land'  and 'Sky's the Limit' news blogs. 
    ​
    A number of David's family stories also appear 'David Palmer' on the Family Research page.

    During his time as  Publicity Officer on the U3A Benalla executive committee articles written by David also appeared in the Benalla Ensign.

    Archives

    July 2024
    June 2024
    February 2024
    November 2023
    October 2022
    March 2021
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    September 2018
    June 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    RSS Feed

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay our respects to their elders - past, present and emerging.
Picture
News
​Newsletter
Facebook Page
​
Program Suggestions
​CO-VID Safety

U3A Benalla & District Flier 2025
Membership Application/Renewal 
​
Semester 1 Program Guide 2025
Semester 1 Timetable with Dates 2025
Developed and maintained by members, this website showcases U3A Benalla 
​Photographs - U3A members; Benalla Art Gallery website; ​Weebly 'Free' images;Travel Victoria and State Library of Victoria