Alan, if you seriously don’t know that billions of dollars have already been spent trying to set up viable horticultural, agricultural, aquacultural ventures in remote communities then you need to do some research.
Countless programs have been initiated, local staff trained, facilities provided etc. and it all goes brilliantly until the non indigenous staff leave and everything is left to rot.
As Joe pointed out, many groups have been have been handed viable ventures, only to run them into the ground.
In the north the missions were all almost self sustaining when run by churches. They had goats, cattle, pigs, chickens, fruit and vegetable gardens, bakeries etc. . When the church moved out, these ventures were handed over to the self managed communities, to be managed and worked by those who had already worked there for years, in some cases decades.
Needless to say, none of those activities exist today.

Hi Big Nana,

Yeah, my late friend Rev. Bill Edwards, Superintendent 1958-1972 at Ernabella, laughed (hollowly) once when he noted that, when people on the gardens there found out they could get welfare for doing nothing, they walked away without even turning off the sprinklers.

Self-determination. Let the people decide. Consult extensively, the people are always right. The people always know what they want; yes, indeed.

Joe

Hi Alan,

Did I mention the 300-acre almond block ? All dead now. How come ? Well, when the CEEP scheme there was ordered to be closed, the local CDEP administration paid every body out (about 180 people) for all their back pay, sick pay, holiday pay, super, etc., amounting into the millions. The government department, the debtor of last resort, DEEWR, took out the pump in response, trying to get its millions back. So the trees died. Nobody gave a toss. Now everybody's left, there's only one family there now. But I notice that people do have very nice 4WDs.

Everybody could have chipped in and bought another pump, but of course not. Thinking back, there was no need in the first place to rip out the grapes and stone fruit and lucerne to put in almonds. With 8000 acres, it would have been no problem to open up another 300-acre patch for the almonds - and another 300-acre patch for pecans - and other 300-acre patches for pistachios, avocados, peanuts. Etc., etc., etc.

That's self-determination for you :)

Cheers,

Joe

At the 'community' above, not the one that closed its new dairy but the one which ripped out its grapes/lucerne/stone-fruit (and maybe 10 ha of citrus as well), the DAA funded the development of a yabbie farm, to the tune of at least two million dollars.

Being on the river with all its billabongs etc., there was one stretch about a mile long which was always packed with yabbies: as the rubbish-collector, I well remember huge rubbish bins full of yabbie shells. What a great idea, set up a yabbie farm. [There was one operating just up the Torrens Valley which they could have bought, fifteen km from the city centre, but ......]

Yes, a great idea. But a DAA bureaucrat pointed out that that billabong got flooded periodically, flushing out the yabbies, which would interrupt production, so maybe it would be better to build a yabby farm half a mile back from the river where it couldn't ever got flooded, so that they could have a continuing supply of yabbies for the Adelaide market. So a huge trench was dug, filled with water and yabbies introduced to it; the right feed was worked out, and away it went.

I don't think it ever produced a single commercial crop of yabbies. But it had (from memory) at least two managers and directors and supervisors for some years, all closely related to the council chairman. So, for barely two million dollars up-front plus on-going expenses, the 'community' had the promise of an enterprise. Of course, with nobody in the 'community' qualified in riverine biology, environmental science, etc., they had to employ a white fella.

With unlimited funds from Canberra, self-determination can be a wonderful thing. There was probably a rumour that the Aboriginal 'community' up near Coober Pedy was also thinking of a yabby farm.

Joe