A cool night , got down to around 4 degrees , so there was still a chill in the air with a southerly wind blowing as we walked up to the front office for pick up .
With everyone picked up , they drove us around Goondiwindi showing some of the highlights before taking us over the river to the farm . The farm is 2,500 acres , one of 4 owned by the same family , and they are in the process of picking the cotton - at least they were until the 30mm of rain on Tuesday night - that put a stop to everything - nearly everything - the plants start to sprout new leaves which makes life difficult for the harvesting , so they have to spray the crop to defoliate it . They use salty water and spray from a crop duster plane . They fly millimetres above the plants , and even below the high voltage power lines that run through the field !!!
On the way in we are going past the crop that has been harvested and the baled cotton , the crop duster doing his job in the distance from us . The new round bales are from new technology harvesters , which also helps with the processing of the cotton back at the cotton gin in town .
This is the edge of the harvested field and the unharvested section across the irrigation channel .
We then went over to the sheds near the trees in the photo and had the process explained , from seeding , growing , and harvesting . They are much more efficient with their water usage than they used to be , and now lead the world in water usage - in fact it uses far less water than growing rice does ! As a side note , the boom irrigation sprays that were in yesterdays blog were in fact very small, they have one in use here that spans one kilometre !!!
They use water probes to gauge how damp the ground is and only water when required . Water runs around the property via canals and channels , and is redirected back into the holding dam from all spots on the farm - everything is laser levelled to run the water into one point and is then pumped into the holding dam .
The rain stopped the harvesting , and they won't be able to sort again until it dries sufficiently to get the heavy machinery back in , the cotton also has to be dry to be harvested .
With all that information safely locked in , we headed back to town and out to the Water Park . The Water Park is a recreation area the local council built , it's a water ski area and is unique in that they ski in an anti clockwise direction around an island - a length of 3 klms . There's a beach and roped off area for swimming , grassed areas , picnic tables , an amenities block and boat ramp . This is it -
Back to the tour , we headed around to the cotton gin , this is where they process the cotton into bales ready for export . Prior to that , the bales are delivered here and samples taken to a classing shed - not far from where we are staying - they class all the cotton that is produced around here and Narrabri , Dalby and other towns around here . Once classed the cotton is then processed and baled up . These are the new round bales and the other large rectangular bale - the size of a truck !! - are the older way - they still do both , but the larger bale is much more labour intensive .
These are the finished bales ready for loading onto trucks .
The cotton gin removes the seeds from the cotton , the furry seeds are then sold for oil or stock feed .
The cotton bush is a member of the hibiscus family - this is one at the retail shop in town , you can see the buds , some have opened and the cotton is expanding out .
The retail outlet promotes Goondiwindi Cotton products - mainly clothing , but they also do soap and body lotions . Needless to say we didn't buy any clothes , we didn't have any clothes to replace , the price also was another reason !!! hahaha .
And so ended the tour , back to the van and the many hundred Corella's that were squawking and flying around the billabong behind us .
Lunch was next , then we headed back to town and went for a ride on the bikes along the levee bank beside the river , then out to the water park for a total of about 14klms .
Day done , here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KB1nz33NM-u-3Ct3KUd6yMzwltg&usp=sharing
No comments:
Post a Comment