Bass Coast Post
  • Home
    • Recent articles
  • News
    • Point of view
    • View from the chamber
  • Writers
    • Anne Davie
    • Anne Heath Mennell
    • Bob Middleton
    • Carolyn Landon
    • Catherine Watson
    • Christine Grayden
    • Dick Wettenhall
    • Ed Thexton
    • Etsuko Yasunaga
    • Frank Coldebella
    • Gayle Marien
    • Geoff Ellis
    • Gill Heal
    • Harry Freeman
    • Ian Burns
    • Joan Woods
    • John Coldebella
    • Jordan Crugnale
    • Julie Statkus
    • Kit Sleeman
    • Laura Brearley >
      • Coastal Connections
    • Lauren Burns
    • Liane Arno
    • Linda Cuttriss
    • Linda Gordon
    • Lisa Schonberg
    • Liz Low
    • Marian Quigley
    • Mark Robertson
    • Mary Whelan
    • Meryl Brown Tobin
    • Michael Whelan
    • Mikhaela Barlow
    • Miriam Strickland
    • Natasha Williams-Novak
    • Neil Daly
    • Patsy Hunt
    • Pauline Wilkinson
    • Phil Wright
    • Sally McNiece
    • Terri Allen
    • Tim Shannon
    • Zoe Geyer
  • Features
    • Features 2022
  • Arts
  • Local history
  • Environment
  • Bass Coast Prize
  • Community
    • Diary
    • Courses
    • Groups
  • Contact us

Beasts of burden

9/3/2018

9 Comments

 
Cover of Just a Bunch of Cow Cockies, a history of the Murray Goulburn Dairy Co-operative, by Catherine Watson
Bob Middleton mourns the loss of Australia’s last great dairy farmers’ co-operative. ​

By Bob Middleton

FRED Hollows, the New Zealand/Australian ophthalmologist famous for his work in restoring eyesight to thousands of people around the world, and especially to the indigenous people of Australia, was a fan of the author Michael Ondaatje. I recall reading a newspaper article about how angry Fred was when his life was ending and he realised he would not be afforded the time to finish reading The English Patient, Ondaadje's most famous novel.
 
The news item has stayed with me, not just because of my admiration for Fred Hollows but also because of Ondaatje, my favourite writer. His novel In the Skin of a Lion, written five years earlier, is at the top of my list. Part of the reason is that, as one reviewer put it, "... it is a poem to workers and lovers".
 
Ondaatje took the title for his book from a passage in The Epic of Gilgamesh: "The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion."
 
Very early in the book Ondaatje tells about a young farm boy watching in the faint dawn light as thirty itinerant loggers carrying lanterns move to the side of the road in hushed politeness to let cows move from pasture to barn for milking. "Sometimes the men put their hands on the warm flanks of these animals and receive their heat as they pass by."
 
I, too, know that feeling. In my early years I had to rouse cows in the morning darkness, gathering and herding them in their silent protest towards the cow shed. I was assigned the ones that had to be hand milked and was grateful for their warmth on those cold mornings as I rested my head on their flank and enticed them to let down their milk.
 
Now, after a life time spent elsewhere, I find myself settled down in country inhabited by herds of dairy cows, fields dotted with bales of silage wrapped in plastic coats the colours of the rainbow, disused butter factories or their ruins as I pass through places like Archie's Creek, Kongwak and, on a first recent visit, Glengarry.
 
I know this is a bit of a stretch but what has prompted these thoughts and memories of my fleeting affair with the dairy industry is the sad news that the once all-powerful Murray Goulburn Co-operative Company is teetering on the edge of oblivion. Due to cut-throat competition, milk prices, commercial performance and other complex issues beyond my ken it now has a binding agreement to sell out to Saputo, the Canadian dairy giant. We are saying goodbye to a company that is 100 per cent controlled by its dairy farmer suppliers and that operates under co-operative principles.
 
The co-operative commissioned Catherine Watson to research and record their history and her book Just a Bunch of Cow Cockies was published in 2000. The title was inspired by one of the 100-plus interviews she conducted during her research. Jim Gemmell, the founding chairman, said "You know, we were as rough as guts when we started out. We were just a bunch of cow cockies who did our best. But look at what we have now!”
 
Catherine relates a story from their formative days of a meeting held at the Cobram factory. A delegation from the Kraft head office in Melbourne had travelled down to remind the Murray Valley company (as it was known then) that it was set up as a cheese factory and should not be supplying whole milk. After discussing the matter, the Murray Valley directors told them they would adhere to their city milk contracts. That didn’t go down well with the men from Kraft, and their spokesman replied "We’re very sorry that’s your decision, but I have to tell you we'll break you if we can."
 
It used to be said that the co-operative was bound to succeed because the directors were too pig-headed to know when they were licked.
 
Ordinary men and women representing ordinary farmers, sticking together.
 
The cover of the book pictures a lone milkman hand milking in an old lean-to shed. And I think hey! that looks like me. 
9 Comments
rosemary Loughnan (Asquith)
9/3/2018 04:56:32 pm

We were visited by Catherine for the Devondaler years ago when we did our best to soldier on as farmers in the area - sadly too small we exited and went in to beef cattle grazing - I lay the blame of the demise of the dairy industry at two areas - the deregulation of the dairy industry and the floating of the shares - very very sad

Reply
Helen
9/3/2018 07:59:30 pm

The board need to take some ownership for the demise of Murray Goulburn. They employed a CEO who didn’t have a good track record and he walked away with a huge payout

Reply
Joy Button
9/3/2018 09:47:09 pm

Thank you for this story Bob and have never been able to understood the demise of Murray Goulburn. As a city person will read Catherine's book, Just A Bunch of Cow Cockies, from the library as I have not been able to understand how this company could go. Agree with Helen though on what I have read so far. Interesting pic Bob.

Reply
Pete Granger
9/3/2018 10:39:53 pm

An enormous tragedy. Jack McGuire would be spinning in his grave. The unlikely, but visionary cheesemaker from Cobram who built a dairy empire from nothing. The years of adversity and struggle just frittered away by his successors. Its beyond sad.

Reply
Geoff Ellis
10/3/2018 07:33:29 am

"Just a Bunch of Cow Cockies" - beware - if you read the first page you can't put it down till you've finished the entire story - and what a great tale, pity the unwritten recent history is so tragic.

Reply
Joy Button
10/3/2018 08:32:14 am

Thank you Geoff and really looking forward to reading "Just a Bunch of Cow Cockies" .... can't wait!

Reply
bob middleton
10/3/2018 10:27:37 am

Joy, if you cannot get a library copy for a while you may borrow ours. Geoff is right. Just reading the foreward and preface is rewarding in itself and the photos Catherine collected are great. As you would be aware I am not well versed on this subject, I was just telling a story.

Reply
Catherine Watson
10/3/2018 11:18:58 am

Bob, thanks for highlighting the tragedy of MG’s ruin.
The uncertain nature of the dairy industry – climate, currency, world trade – makes mistakes inevitable. Some can only be seen in retrospect.
In 1981 MG was in equally desperate straits. It had expanded just before a big economic downturn. It was forced to drop its milk price to farmers. A hundred farmers a week were moving to other companies. Murray Goulburn was bleeding to death.
Then a resistance movement started among loyal suppliers and staff who forced the board to bring back Jack McGuire, the man who’d run the company for 30 years. McGuire went round the state reminding the suppliers that this was their company and it was worth saving. Within a year he had turned MG around.
So much of economics is about confidence. McGuire gave that to the farmers and they backed him.
The Saputo takeover of MG is not quite a done deal. It still has to be approved by suppliers. We need another Jack McGuire.
I still have this faint hope: cometh the hour, cometh the wo/man.

Reply
Joy Button
10/3/2018 09:38:24 pm

Thank you Bob for your generous offer of a loan of the book but I think there may be a couple of books available. Thank you Catherine also for your comment and feedback about Murray Goulburn ... makes me want to read more and understand more. Thank you!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Bob Middleton

    Bob Middleton spent his working life in the wool industry, classing, buying, selling and teaching. He has a weakness for horses, dogs and pigeons. Bob died in November 2018.    

    Archives

    March 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    March 2017
    March 2016
    November 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed