Each year thousands of stockmen and women choose to take a little time away and pack up their families and horses to go campdrafting. One of the big meets was in Cloncurry last weekend and Landline went along for the ride.
The early settlers planted some 3,000 hectares of sugar gums as shelter belts on the windswept and bitterly cold plains of Western Victoria. Until now this humble, spindly eucalypt has been considered only good for fire wood but now this legacy of the pioneers is being re-evaluated as a high value plantation timber.