Irrigation channel
A one kilometre long irrigator
Soft and fluffy
Cotton plants waiting for the picker
The 100 acre dam
Waiting patiently for morning tea
Siphon irrigation
An old picker - new ones have six pickers
Ging wasn't very keen on being friends
No frost and no fog today, although still rather brisk – very brisk, actually. Today we undertook a tour to a cotton farm in the hope of learning something about the cotton industry. A mini-bus collected us at the caravan park and took us on a tour of Goondiwindi’s main tourist attractions (Gunsynd, the Melbourne Cup winner, featured very heavily) before heading out of town to a 2,500 acre cotton farm. We have often seen the large dams constructed in cotton growing areas, now we know what they are for – irrigation, but gravity feed irrigation. The complete farm has been laser levelled so that, even though the land looks flat, the water used for irrigation will drain into channels which run all around the farm like a maze and end up back in the large dam. Most of the crop has been harvested by now, although we did see a small section that was still waiting for the harvester. Some of the land had a winter crop of wheat growing on it, while the remainder had been prepared ready for cotton planting in September. After visiting the farm, we drove into the grounds of a cotton gin, where the cotton is cleaned and packed for transport overseas. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to actually go into the sheds to see the processing. Of course, we were then taken to the Goondiwindi Cotton shop to, hopefully, make some purchases, but more importantly to have a late morning tea.
This afternoon, after a visit to the local supermarket and service station, we found our bathers so that we could have a soak in the artesian spa. The 38-40 degree pool was very relaxing, but the dash back to the caravan and a shower wasn’t quite so pleasant.
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