Bus Driver for a Day

I hold, under NSW law, a light-rigid license for driving vehicles and a colleague of mine who wanted to run a field class for his students asked me if I'd like to drive the bus for a day-trip to Guyra and Deepwater. That license enables me to drive 22 seater vehicles and, since I invented the course he was teaching some 34 years ago and it's still my area of research interest - rural development - I agreed to perform the task.


Guyra (population <2000) lies 26 km north of Armidale and is very high by Australian standards at about 1400m. It's main industry is agriculture and after years of hard knocks on the back of a declining (but very prosperous) farm population and the decay of rural processing industries the economy is now bouncing back big-time. The trigger was its selection as the best site in Australia for tomato production by this country's largest horticultural produce operators, the Costa family. I will not go into the reasons why one would want to grow tomatoes at 1400m asl at one of the coldest towns in Australia, except to say that Guyra has a lot of sunshine, heaps of reliable water, and it's much easier to heat up a glass-house than cool it in hot weather.

The farm started only 6 years ago with 5 ha of glass, rapidly doubled that size and then doubled it again by last year. So, now there are 20 ha (50 acres) of glass-houses and that may en route to 30. This is reputedly the largest such facility in the southern hemisphere. Moreover, the current facility employs 250 people - a huge bonus for a place with just 2000people. The farm produces truss tomatoes - 5 tomatoes on each - for distribution to Australia's major supermarkets across the whole of the eastern sea-board (all 3000km in length). These are the best tomatoes for flavour and quality and fetch a considerable price premium.

The pictures show some of the hi-tech glass-houses and the bus party.