The Marist Brothers had (have?) a terrific hut there. I think it was on land leased to the Higgins family. There was certainly a Higgins Hut nearby. Anyhow, we came to think of the cattle, the stockyards and the cattlemen as a natural part of the terrain. Certainly they didn’t seem intrusive.

In year 11 (1983) I wrote a submission to the then Land Conservation Council as part of a geography project. I supported the rights of the cattlemen and opposed recommendations to extend national parks and create wilderness areas.

I’ve got significant doubts about the capacity of the National Parks officers to control weeds and vermin. It was in the commercial interests of the cattlemen to do so.

During our time living at Porepunkah we were lucky enough to see cattle being driven through the town several times on their way to or from the high country. It was a great sight!

I’m sorry the cattlemen no longer have access to that country.

I now live in Western Australia and I’m not across the issue as well as I used to be, but welcome comments on this topic.

It is so exasperating to encounter people who simply cannot distinguish between the imaginery pictures that litter their confused small minds and the picture that exists in the real world.

Cattle do not “graze together and move together in a herd and create a path of fairly brutal localised destruction.”

To whom do you think you are preaching? In the real world of alpine grazing cattle are spread out widely across the licence areas, some prefer the open plains and some the wooded and sheltered sides that run down to the surrounding river valleys.

Cows are vastly more independent than you think. There are no bulls grazing in the high country to keep mobs together and the cows tend to go it alone, or with their calves if they have any. Occasionally they can be found in small groups of four or five but even these groups tend to leave a lot of space between individual beasts.

Your knowledge of this issue is non-existent. What a ridiculous claim. It succeeded only in making you look silly. I have forwarded your post to the VFF so they can use it as a classic example of green lies based on a primary school understanding of grazing.

Why lie by accusing me of ignoring evidence? I answer every point raised against my arguments and you know it. Essentially, that’s what gripes people like you who waste their own time and everyone else’s in vain attempts to justify the unjustifiable.

You’ve tried to pose as someone knowledgable, attempting to lecturing me on the habits of cattle on the high plains when it’s plain you know nothing about the subject.

Your claim that mobs of cattle group together, move together in a herd and create a “path of brutalised local destruction” is laughable for its sheer ignorance. It is the product of an overly vivid imagination.

Mountain cattle in Victoria’s high country are not buffalo on the prairie. You must have watched too many westerns as a child. Cattle move around singly with their calves or in small groups of two or three. You don’t see them gathered in big mobs . If that was the case we wouldn’t have to spend so much time mustering them - they’d all walk home together when the weather got too chilly.

You mention native title? I respect indigenous Australians and their culture. I feel sad that the Jaimathong no longer gather on The Bogongs for the summer moth feast. I’d have loved to have experienced it myself and I would also welcome an Aboriginal presence in the mountains. In fact I was instrumental in obtaining the Gunai Kurnai freehold land near Dinner Plain. The evidence for that can be found in the files of The Sunday Herald Sun.

You’re strong on mythology and short on facts, Alexandra.

I agree with your final comment, though….”Go Bracks……and never come back!”

No matter what evidence people present you to the contrary, you deny it, ignore it and then become abusive.

The point raised re: 1 cow/ 400 acres is an interesting one. The cows are not spread out like that in distance. In fact, they group together, graze together and move together in a herd and create a path of fairly brutal localised destruction.

And then there is the issue of native title. That is one to ignore isn’t it Phil? Especially because mountain graziers have been in the high country for almost 200 years. Australia is no longer considered to have been terra nullius, so what about previous occupancy?

It is a good thing mountain grazing is being questioned and removed from these beautiful area’s.

Go Bracks.

We all know it’s not over yet. This government, if it survives this election, won’t be around after the next one. But we will be, and we’ll keep on fighting until we win.

So, you live in the “region.” I notice you were careful not to place yourself in the thick of it.

You don’t know a great deal about the mountains or the alpine plains, Ray. You don’t have an affinity with them that anywhere near approaches that of those who live in them, work in them and love them all their lives.

Who says I don’t have a right of occupation? You? And on whose authority? I have as much as much right as anyone else and my right extends back to a time when National Parks were unheard of.

Rights are not handed out and extinguished by governments. They can be suppressed but they can never be extinguished and I will go on asserting my right to graze my traditional lands every day for the rest of my life. At the same time I also demand the recognition of commensurate rights for indigenous people with whom I am delighted to co-exist.

Your comment about state parks which start at Dinner Plain and run all the way through to Cobungra also displays gross ignorance of the country. All the way to Cobungra, you say? That, in fact is a very short distance, Ray, and most of the land in between is in freehold ownership.

Cobungra Station’s freehold traditionally extended to beyond Dinner Plain to areas like Precipice Plain until BCR Asset Management, then the owners of Mt Hotham Skiing Company and Cobungra Station, decide to slice the station up.

You don’t claim a right to “occupy” the park, you say. You just claim a right to deny access to traditional land users. I have as much right to claim grazing rights over the land as you have to lobby against me. In fact, I’d suggest I have more right by virtue of prior occupation.

Your post exposes you for what you are - just another green tinged lobbyist who asserts knowledge he doesn’t possess and I’d back it in that you live in town in a house on a suburban sized block and that you rarely ever set foot in the country you profess to know all about.

The days of people like you pushing exclusionist land management policies that result in the devastation of vast areas of public land are numbered. That’s something the rest of us can be thankful for.

In the meantime I will be back on my runs next summer as I have been this year and I don’t expect that you, Ray Dixon, will be able to do anything about it.