From little things big tomatoes grow: A food revolution in the Upper Murray
Richard Cornish
Photo: Richard Cornish
Upper Murray man Josh Collings holds a bunch of radishes high in the air triumphantly. We can feed a town, says the filmmaker turned market gardener. I wasn t too long ago, when the 2020 fires engulfed land surrounding the remote town of Corryong, that Collings saw people in his community go hungry. With trees down and roads damaged, deliveries of fresh food were unable to reach people in the district, he says. In one of the nation s most fertile areas, we had a food crisis.
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It took Allan Wallwork weeks to bring himself to light the match. He carefully gathered the blackened, scorched remains of trees in his yard ravaged by bushfires that tore through his Sarsfield property last New’s Year’s Eve and left them in a pile one afternoon in spring.
“I’ll do a burn-off this week,” he told his wife Lyn.
But day after day Allan stood staring at the pile in the yard, ashen-faced and trembling, before walking back to the shed he has been living in since his home was left a smouldering heap of charred bricks last summer.