Cows: A Column By Len Johnson

By Len Johnson.

Don’t Have a Cow, Man

‘Don’t have a cow, man’ is a saying adopted by Bart Simpson as one of his catch-phrases and meaning, ‘don’t get worked up.’

Ted Baillieu and Peter Ryan want us to have lots of cows _ and at Falls Creek, Australia’s premier alpine training venue, to boot _ and they hope we won’t get worked up about it.

In the desperate thrashing around for issues in the Victorian state election due this year, the leaders of the Opposition coalition parties (Liberal-Baillieu; National Party-Ryan) sense that there might be votes in bringing back cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park.

The pair probably aren’t so silly as to imagine there’s a lot of votes in it _ the issue impacts directly on only a handful of grazier families with negligible spin-offs to associated suppliers and businesses. And fewer tourists come to the High Country for a Man from Snowy River summer experience than to walk, to ride (bicycles, not wild bush horses) and to run.

But with rural discontent an unknown x-factor in the coming election, the Nationals have probably convinced their more sophisticated Liberal partners that this is a symbolic issue that feeds into a potentially critical mass of city v country arguments. One of the key factors in Steve Bracks’ upset victory over Jeff Kennett 11 years ago was rural discontent, and the Opposition probably hopes the same tide may run in their favour in 2010. Opinion polls suggest they have little else to cling to.

Rural romanticism no doubt does have an emotional pull over some voters. Years ago, the Liberals won a crucial by-election with support from the Mountain Cattlemen Association in Nunawading, the thoroughly middle-class suburban seat within which I live. The Cattlemen attracted massive, uncritical media coverage by riding horses along Spring St to the Victorian Parliament (the fact that they had probably off-loaded said horses from Range Rover-drawn floats just around the corner was conveniently overlooked).

I’m going against self-interest here, as all my personal bests were run with cattle grazing on the High Plains. Victoria did not ban alpine grazing until 2005, long after the ACT (1908) and New South Wales (1972) had given the cows the boot.

The arguments for restoring grazing seem bogus and are easily countered. Tradition can be celebrated without continuing practices which are now known to damage the environment _ theme parks, educational displays; no credible study endorses the view that grazing reduces fire risk; and the visual despoiling of bogs and water-courses is plain for anyone to see.

For runners and walkers, too, the cows, or rather their droppings, bring hordes of annoying bush flies as well. It’s no fun shooing a herd of defecating bovines along the trails and aqueducts until they find a spot to get out of the way.

Finally, the Bogong High Plains Road was sealed and surfaced this year, creating a 230km bitumen loop through the high country from Falls Creek across the plains to Omeo, up to Mt Hotham, down to Bright, across to Mt Beauty and then back up to Falls. This loop will attract more vehicle traffic and cyclists and it would seem dangerous folly to allow cattle to roam the area, including across the road.

At this stage it might be long odds the coalition will be in a position to adopt its policy after the state election, but it wouldn’t hurt to let Liberal and National pollies know that this one has all the attraction of putting your foot down right in the middle of a fresh cow-pad.

Of course, the alpine grazing issue affects only Victoria, but it is one of a number of ways in which runners are being ‘got at’ around the country. To name but two or three, there is the increasing difficulty facing state athletic associations in finding suitable cross-country courses (metropolitan parks in Sydney and Melbourne are for passive recreation, which does not include running it seems), the growing trend to replace low-maintenance gravel paths with no-maintenance concrete surfaces, and the nit-picking restrictions (not the genuine safety ones) imposed on road events.

No individuals or groups should ever get their own way all the time, but it never hurts when runners let their representatives know their views on these issues.