Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I note Senator Ronaldson nodding—as did the minister in 2005, back when the state Labor government, the Bracks government, got the cattlemen out. The federal environment minister at the time received advice that there were significant heritage values to this particular community, and I think it is about time we started examining that in more detail. As I flick through the book I think that if we can list the MCG, post offices and Mawson's Hut then surely we can list the cattlemen's huts which provided such shelter over the 180 years of our very young country's life and where people have been working and living and practising their cultural skills in those communities.

In fact, I remember a story my Pop used to tell me about the hut. On cold nights you would get the cattle in, settle your horse down and get into your hut. You might be up there grazing with a few other guys, so you would come across some old crusty folk and gather around a fire, with a big pot of steaming soup on the fire, and talk about your day: how your day was, how many you lost, what you saw et cetera.

The soup was good so they drank the soup, right down to the last of the four to six men, and when he was tipping it out—because he was the youngest, he was told he had to tip the leftovers out—he saw it was a mouldy sheep's head that had provided the stock base for the soup. I do not know whether that was a story to frighten young children about the hardships and about how easy we had it, but it was one that stuck in my mind. I am sure that those huts that did not burn down in the '39 fires are very worthy of heritage listing.

With the themes around the National Heritage List there are six criteria. I will talk about just three, which actually do relate to the cattlemen. First there is how we peopled the land over white man's time in this country, how we built the nation, living as Australians. I think Banjo Paterson's words evoke a time when we all felt we owned a sense of nation; we all felt we owned Clancy of the Overflow.

In 2005, when Victorians hit the streets after the cattlemen got thrown out of the High Country, Melbourne was clogged with horses—you could not move down Bourke Street, not just for the cattlemen but also for all the pony-club riders, the eventers. They were all out to support this iconic culture and heritage, because we felt it owned us. Country Victorians, people who did not even reside in our pioneer era or had no direct connection with the High Country, felt that that image really represented what it meant to be a rural Victorian. I think we all value that heritage and that culture and that it is time we looked in greater detail at formalising those heritage values. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.