Tony Moody memories

I came to NSW Agriculture after another career, mainly in Tanzania and Kenya, doing agricultural research and extension, and managing livestock, forestry and water projects. The agriculture of NSW was an unknown for me, but I very quickly developed a passion for it, which is what has kept me here so long.

• When I started, my second son was in Day Care and now he looks after a drill on an oil rig in the North Sea.
• When I started, Head Office was in the McKell Building near Central Railway and Chinatown, and we smoked in our offices!
• When I started, Jack Hallam was Minister, and I worked directly to his Director of Marketing, Rod Wise, who was part of Hallam’s circle. So the Christmas party I was invited to was the Minister’s – a beach party on exclusive Quarantine Beach, because he was also in charge of Fisheries, and he brought along all the young ladies from his office. I thought: “I’m going to enjoy working here!”
• When I started, I wrote all my reports by hand, and a lady at a desk outside my office typed them up with her new Golf Ball machine.
• When I started, our reports were typed onto stencils and were printed on Gestetner duplicators. Maps had to be hand-drawn onto the stencils with special pens.
• When I started, the lovely Carmel Romano was already the DG’s secretary!

Some memories

Armed with new powers (the MPP Act 1983) the Director of Marketing soon sent me down to Griffith to persuade citrus growers to have a marketing order. I was met by the District Horticulturalist (I was feeling distinctly foreign and probably unacceptable, being such a new Australian) and he said “Before you start here I want you to meet someone”. We went to meet a local businessman outside a local supermarket, and I was introduced to him. Just that. No agricultural discussion.

My first February in Australia I was sent to meet with the Murray Valley Citrus Board in Mildura, and told I could drive. Africa had got me used to long road trips so I enjoyed it, except that the departmental car was an early Corolla with no air conditioning. All four windows open across the Hay Plains in 40º!

I have always used every excuse to get out on the road. How can I know about agriculture across NSW without looking at it? Another time was when the drought support workers started. I visited them in all their locations. One day, very hot, very dry, I arrived in Booligal at lunch time. I knew there was a Duke of Edinburgh pub so I went up the counter and asked for a feed. He did not even lift his eyes from the Form Guide, but just said “Food off today mate. She don’t work today”.

At one time I acted as “Registrar of Farm Produce”, supposed to use the Farm Produce Act to investigate and act on wholesalers in the Sydney Market who were either very late payers or non-payers to distant producers. It was all smoke and mirrors stuff, because we never had the resources to be effective. One day, in my naivety, I pushed on with an investigation of major apparent non-payment by a potato trader, who also happened to be a major donor to various bodies. Shortly afterwards I was asked to hand over the responsibility, and stick to my other work. The spud trader had better friends than I!

On the whole it has been a happy and enjoyable slab of life. Working with many good people, not just technically inspiring, but also open and friendly.

There have been dark moments

Sitting in my Flemington office, receiving a phone call from the police in Temora to say they had found an apparent murder/suicide, man and two kids, in a camper van in the forest, and did I know a Filipino man called X? He was one of my inspectors. I had to notify his distraught wife.

A female colleague in the McKell building came to me in a panic. Another female colleague had locked herself in a cubicle in the ladies. Could I help? I had to climb over the partition, get her out, apply CPR and ring the ambos. She had over-dosed on smack.

In the searing February heat in Tooleybuc, walking into a fruit packing house to ask the guy why he had not got a Farm Produce License, to have him pull a shotgun from under the desk… I just walked slowly back to the car. Retreat was the better part of valour!

But there have been many more bright moments, due to the friendliness, helpfulness and honesty of all you who are getting this – as well as others who are now off doing other things. But also due to a lot of great farmers, particularly fruit growers, who have welcomed me at meetings, and phoned me to ask advice or give advice! And although abused heavily in Anglo-Italian at some meetings, being regaled heartily in the bar afterwards by the same disgruntled! The MIA and the lower Murray are etched into my soul.

I have never had patience for disgruntled long serving employees here who moaned about “not the place it used to be” and I have vowed to keep my spirit with the times which are a’changing. But recent re-structures have transformed my work place so radically, process tasking over from content, that I have now to admit that it is time to move on.