RURAL Notebook is not just the name of a column, it’s a way of life, according to long-time Western Advocate contributor John Seaman.
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“I always have a notebook in my pocket. Every week, two or three times a week, someone will say something and I'll think that's worth a mention,” the Perthville district resident said this week.
Mr Seaman’s Rural Notebook contribution in the Advocate this week marks the 25th anniversary of his popular Thursday column that was once bashed out on a typewriter but now, in the digital era, is sent via email from the “Brooklyn” property.
And when it began, Mr Seaman wasn’t even sure if it would last weeks.
“In 1992, three or four of us started the BMA [Bathurst Merino Association] and we had about 60 members to start and no money,” Mr Seaman said.
“We did not want to spend money posting letters, etc, so I went in and had a yarn with [then Western Advocate editor] Mitchell McRae.
‘I asked him if I could have a bit of space on a regular basis – I was thinking each fortnight, maybe three paragraphs.
“He said ‘we’ll see how it goes’, as much as to say ‘this can't last’.”
Mr Seaman said his intention was to have the district vet and district agronomist contribute material, and he “would fill in the gaps”.
“The district vet only wrote once and the district agronomist was not there much longer, so that left me,” he said.
And Mr Seaman has written the column – apart from a three-year period in the late 1990s when Col Ferguson wrote it while Mr Seaman was president of the BMA – ever since.
The long-time columnist said he had a simple philosophy for Rural Notebook: “I like to think it's just a country person's observations of rural life in our city and tablelands.”
But his wife Rosemary said it plays a much bigger role than that in keeping country people informed.
“We have had a lot of big drought years and it [the column] is a way to tell people what grain is worth, where you can get it, who has supply,” she said as an example.
Mr Seaman said two of the aspects of the column he enjoyed most were not to do with the rural game at all: paying tribute to well-known Bathurst and district people who have passed away, and mentioning when a baby has been welcomed into a local family.
The column is also notable for its jokes, many of which come from a group Mr Seaman refers to as “four old desperadoes”.
”They are old mates who give me yarns,” he said. “Some you could not print, some you can.”
And if he is ever in doubt about some particularly risque humour, he turns to his wife, who he says is the column’s “printer and censor”.
He was once gently chastised in the nearby village about one of the items in his column, so he says all material must now pass what he calls the “Perthville nuns test” if it is to see publication.
The major items covered by Rural Notebook in its 25 years of inclusion in the Western Advocate, according to Mr Seaman:
- The crash of the Wool Reserve Scheme – Australia’s biggest corporate crash in dollar terms.
- The Ovine Johnes Disease (OJD) controversy which resulted in the importation of Gudair vaccine - in widespread use in five states.
- The 10-year drought of two lifetimes from 2000-2010.
- The spread of Bathurst city onto quality farmlands.
- The establishment of annual sheep events – the ewe competition and now expo.
- The closure of Bathurst saleyards and establishment of Central Tablelands Livestock Exchange, Carcoar.
- The NSW Government reviews of the Rural Lands Protection Board (RLPB) and Livestock Health and Pest Authority (LHPA) systems and creation of the present Local Land Services.
Mr Seaman says the column is “not about us, it’s about our lovely city and district”.
“It’s a privilege to be given space in our paper for a quarter of a century,” he said.
He said Phill Murray, Chris Seabrook, Mitchell McRae, Brian Wood, Andrew Meenahan, Murray Nicholls and Nadine Morton had been “great friends at the Western Advocate” over the years.
