I know this is
very peripheral but brings to mind a story. When in Philippines last April we did a 2 day trip to northern Luzon. One event:
I found immediately behind a road block some farmer had decided that the main highway was a good surface on which to dry the rice. So about 100 metres of road surface was covered with rice, with many people carefully scraping and turning it with big
wooden “shovels”. I wondered what is this and it was explained as quite normal. As we continued we saw many other variously long (but 100 metres was typical) road patches covered with rice and the same activity, where there was a bit of road that was unavailable
for driving on (and even some that were). Mostly cars and trucks would just use the other (so half of the time the wrong) side of the road, to not drive over the rice or the people turning it. There is not much OHS or road safety concerns there. Nor are there
parrots to worry about.
Philip
From: David Rees [
Sent: Sunday, 27 January, 2019 4:34 PM
To: Philip Veerman
Cc: Martin Butterfield; COG List
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Re: ANU Superbs
Superbs in the area to our north were known to feed on grain which had leaked out of trucks onto the road at harvest, only to put themselves at risk of being collected by passing cars. I recall in the past some community awareness program
to try and prevent this happening in the region> Given some of the old crocks used by farmers on temporary harvest permits this was likely to be a problem. It may be less of an issue now as deliveries to silos these days are more often done by haulage contractors
with modern vehicles which spill much less. The old ones were an OHS risk to staff at recieval points and/or were not very compatible with modern recieval equipment and were discouraged. Mind you what some farmers still do with grain stored/moved on-farm
is anyone's guess.
