Narrabri Conference

I attended a conference in Narrabri, about 300km from Armidale, this week. It lasted just two days and I drove across starting at 6am to reach the venue just in time for the 9am start! The route taken was across country avoiding major highways where possible and included about 50km of gravel roads which produced clouds of dust in my wake. Fortunately, the road was very lightly trafficked at that time of day and I was able to survey the very beautiful landscape bathed in morning sunlight.

Well, that day was a long grind, but I managed to stay wake through masses of presentations, some inspirational and some rather plodding, but all on the subject of growing and sustaining rural communities, while obviating conflicts between different interest groups - miners, farmers (themselves divided between different commodity groups), environmentalists, or even town-based interests - some of which are inter-generational. All this is set against a background of rampant globalisation of production, soaring currency values (reaching A$1 = US$1.05 this week, well above parity), and a massive raft of new technologies. Some of those exciting technologies will transform rural life and include the possibility of conducting advanced surgery in which local medicos are guided by specialists in remote centres using audio-visual techniques enabled via broadband. UNE has a collaboration with the University of California at Irvine in which our medical school is development remote surgery protocols. So, it's possible that a small hospital in a town of 10,000 people could see operations more typically performed in places with populations in excess of 500,000 or 1 million, reducing the expense of travel. And the specialists guiding proceedings need not even be in the same country ... they could be in the USA!

The event was a gastronomic extravaganza at morning and afternoon teas, lunch and the evening banquet, and it was all free. This made staying awake a little difficult, especially after that early start. So I exited the banquet a little early as I had a 40 km drive to my accommodation in Wee Waa, 40 km away to the west on the banks of the Namoi River. I couldn't see anything at that time of night (9pm) and anyway I was looking out for kangaroos and other wildlife. One doesn't want to hit one of those at 100 kph, especially in a brand new car.

The following day was more of the same, with the first presentation starting at 8.30am, necessitating an early start (7.45am) from Wee Waa. This time the drive was again very beautiful as I roared across the dead flat plain bordering the Namoi River towards the mountain vista behind (eastwards of) Narrabri. The Nandewar Range rises spectacularly and almost vertically out of the plain to a height of 1650m (5,400 feet) or more at Mount Kaputar. During lunch, the organisers put on a strange display for the delegates. A group of ten or so kids armed with Kelpies (a form of cattle dog) put on a display connected with a dog-training program they were enrolled in. This took place next to the well-appointed Crossing Theatre, which was the conference venue and itself next to the Namoi floodplain shown in the picture.  By the way, Narrabri is 212m (690 feet) above sea level. Now the water in the Namoi at this point (shown in the the background) travels maybe 1500km to reach the sea, dropping therefore at the rate of 1 meter per 7 km (or the height of a person every 14km (8.75 miles). That's flat!

And then, at 3.00, I left a little early for the return journey, arriving home just on dark. All up, the full-bore trip took 36 hours, with 7 hours sleep in the middle.

AS