Windgrove

Life on the Edge

Truth’s in the pipe

Life is full of strange twists. I’m sure all those people who know my history with Forestry Tasmania might find the following a bit difficult to believe, but confess I must.

You see, just after another nasty “Letter to the Editor” where I complained bitterly about the practices of Forestry Tasmania, I had an epiphany and began to appreciate what the prophets, Paul and Evan, have been preaching:

“The Styx Valley and Tarkine trees have been standing around for 60 million years and doing what? Nothing it seems. They are little more than the world’s tallest dole bludgers. Better that they were turned into toilet paper than waste another 60 million years”.

It all began to make sense; the dollars began to line up.

Why, I thought, have I been promoting “peace” when I should have been promoting myself for a “piece” of the action. The kind of action that all of Gunn’s shareholders are taking part in. I wanted dividend payoffs from chips, too, to help pay for my outdoor stainless steel barbecue with attached wok and complete set of steak knives. You can’t hold that against me, can you? At my age of nearing 60 I wanted to wallow in luxurious linen, not guilt.

It just so happened that at this exact moment, our multi purpose Forestry Tasmania was wanting to expand their “chip” market with a supplementary export item. And talking about synchronistic, someone high up in the inner sanctum of political power also felt that if I could be bought out they could kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) both by silencing me and, using my design capabilities, gain a valuable commodity for needless consumer consumption.

I gladly listened to their inspired deception plan and decided to go for broke. Money greased my conscience and I was in the winner’s circle, designated chief scientist/ construction engineer under the auspices of Projects of Extreme State Significance.

salt tomato 1Working undercover with FT’s leading forward thinkers (the same talented, imaginative folk who gave us Southwood and selective clearfelling), we came up with a cutting edge, visionary product: growing the “Pre-Salted Tomato” to slice into the profits of the world’s hamburger franchises.

Immediately (behind closed door approval), I went straight to Monsanto and received their blessings and their expert advice on how to do things in secret. The result was that this summer I was able to produce a small, but ground breaking crop of tomatoes grown entirely with salt water drawn directly from Roaring Beach. Yes! Salt water!

salt dam 1But now my dog and I are hopping mad because all this significant research is in peril because of the Greens. You see, just as I was laying the final length of pipe to augment the salt water delivery system (desperately needed if I am to expand the business and make mega tomatoes and bucks) the Greens and the Tasmanian Conversation Trust have slapped an injunction on my taking any further water from Roaring Beach, a listed conservation zone in their cosmology. To them, salt water can’t go any higher than the high tide mark. Don’t they know about the wonders of modern petrol pumps?

salt damWhat a rotten thing to do. Especially when a lot of work was already accomplished without bothering anyone with plans or need for bureaucratic, time consuming approvals.

Using hard earned tax payer’s money (from you know whom) and a 38 ton excavator taken off a forest coupe, the above photo shows the construction of the massive large holding dam. In order to uphold confidence-in-trading regulations, a government advisor told me to tell my neighbours that what was being built was an Olympic outdoor salt water community swimming pool with wave machine for those days when there wasn’t any surf at Roaring Beach. (Our government is truly clever in ways of “necessary” deception.)

salt dam 2And aren’t the aesthetics of the curving pipe beautiful? I took great pains to achieve this.

This photo shows the actual start of the attractive pipe line from Roaring Beach to the holding dam. Salt water was to be pumped up to the dam and then gravity fed down to irrigate a massive under cover hydroponics greenhouse (yet to be constructed, but several prominent overseas investors are in the pipeline).

But alas, those Greens. I despair. My “meandering pipeline” to the dam just won’t do for them.

In my defence, a senior media consultant from the government’s enterprise sector said:

“Relative to the size of the ocean, the amount of salt water taken from Roaring Beach by senior tomato researcher Mr. Adams is negligible”.

A cabinet level spokesperson further added:

“Not one tomato workers job is negotiable”.

In my own defence I said:

“I desperately want to receive next year’s Federal ‘Export Hero Award’. If John Gunn can receive it exporting chips to Japan, I want to receive it for exporting Roaring Reds (copyright) to every MacDonald’s in the world.”

My motto: “Better Red than Green” should win all sorts of international political and business acclaim.

We’ll just have to see how this story ripens.

Check back again in 2005 on April 1. Another April Fool’s Day.

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