#066 Wooleen, A Year On
Carbon trading, COVID & harnessing mining for regeneration, with David Pollock
David Pollock is one of Australia’s most prominent regenerative pastoralists. You may have seen David and his wife Frances on ABC TV’s Australian Story. You may also have heard my previous conversations with them on this podcast. The most recent of those was when David’s brilliant book was released, almost a year ago. It’s called ‘The Wooleen Way: Renewing an Australian Resource’, and it’s been described as ‘The astonishing story of reviving the oldest land on Earth’.
The Wooleen Station Homestead. You’ll find more photos from this visit to Wooleen Station below. (Pic by Anthony James.)
“I don’t think we’re going to stop digging the minerals out of the ground any time soon. But why don’t we actually get some good environmental outcomes from that as well? There’s really nothing stopping that from happening, except that the public needs to understand that there’s a bit of a trade-off. Yes, it’s an ugly hole in the ground, but it’s paid for rehabilitation which has been long overdue, over an area which is 2,000 times the size.”
Well, a lot has happened in a year, so I’m back at Wooleen Station to see how David and Frances have been experiencing it. David’s book has been shortlisted for the Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer, carbon trading has been formally introduced on pastoral lands in Western Australia, and of course COVID-19 has happened.
We also talk about one of David’s key proposals in his book, that we didn’t cover last time – how mining could be harnessed towards the regeneration of country. There are a few other updates on our chat from last year too. And while it’s barely rained here in the last year, unfortunately, this meant we got a look at how the enduring health of the landscape was holding up.
David and I took a walk around the Station museum and workshop on a cool afternoon a little over a week ago, for this conversation.
Title slide: The Wooleen Station Homestead.
All photos by Anthony James.
L-R below: The Station Homestead; the Museum (and kitchen of the original stone homestead); and some of the things we walk by and chat about in the podcast.
Get more:
David’s book ‘The Wooleen Way: Renewing an Australian Resource’.
You can hear the detailed conversation David and I shared on the release of his book ‘The Wooleen Way’ in episode 44.
You can also hear David and his wife Frances in conversation with Charles Massy and me in episode 16 ‘Grassroots Revolution’.
And my conversation with Frances back at Wooleen Station in episode 9 ‘Regenerating Land & Food Systems’.
Music:
Some of the sounds of Wooleen.