Bush needs women and water
A funny thing happened when I went to the country last weekend. It rained.
Apart from a slight sprinkle before Christmas, there hadn’tbeen a decent fall at Booroowa in several years.
Yet here it was: 66mm of beautiful, teeming rain to coincide with the annual picnic races.
It wasn’t quite enough to break the drought, the farmers say. But it was enough to raise their hopes and leave them grinning from ear to ear, whether their horses came in or not.
For if the drought breaks, so may that other crippling drought: the chronic dearth of women around these parts.
Blokes in the bush have the opposite problem to those in the city, where legend has it there are three girls to every guy and they can take their pick.
The dry spell hasn’t helped matters, with country girls moving to the big smoke as soon as they can, leaving the menfolk to bemoan the shortage.
So keen are they to snare a wife, normally demure country boys aren’t ashamed to spruik their wares in Women’s Weekly or even online.
On www.ruralromeos.com, they can suss out the scene without leaving the farm.
The girls posted on ruralromeos want a man just like them. Such as FarmerFred, Reliable75, or BornCountry.
The site has spawned three weddings and a baby in three years.
For city girls, the bush is a veritable goldmine.
“Seven to three,” one fella inan Akubra estimated as he browsed trackside at the Booroowa picnics.
That’s three sheilas for every seven ofhim _ disappointing odds when you don’t have tickets on yourself.
And that’s counting the throngs of intermittent city chicks in town just forthe weekend. How desolate it must be when the women all head home.
Not only are there more of them, but rural Romeos are a different breed.
Salt-of-the-earth, honest, hard-working, decent stock. Working with nature keeps them grounded, they tell me, giving them time to think.
They’re close to their mums, they cankill a sheep, and _ most important_ they want to get married and continue the bloodline.
There are farmers, stockmen, horse breeders and butchers.
Agronomists, shearers, and a horse chiropractor whocan set your gelding straight byadjusting its lumbar spine.
They drink rum, favour ’80s rock and worship their mates. They also know how to treat women.
As one man in a tweed blazer put it, it’s chivalry born of necessity: “When there’s not many sheilas to go around, the bloke who puts the best effort in gets the results.”
Like any vulnerable minority, they’re preyed upon. An ad in the Booroowa News offers to match up “lonely country gentlemen” … the old-fashioned way’, which clearly no longer means meeting at the church hall.
The Land newspaper brandishes Russian wives for men “tired of being alone” and hosts a “Bush Hunks & Spunks” section in the classifieds.
And women come from far and wide insearch of blokes with acreage. Hectare Hunters, they’re called.
Just as when it rains buckets in the city and we wish there was a way to shift it where it’s needed most, could we not do the same with women?