Stumbled upon an interesting Whirlpool forum discussion regarding ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’. It beautifully illustrates the increasingly wide chasm between born and bred politically-correct inner suburbanites and Australians who have some connection with the bush. As well as those who have an understanding of operating a business and those who don’t.
‘They both have incredibly annoying accents’ is perhaps the most truly puzzling comment. This must have been written by someone who thinks there’s no accents in Australia, because they’ve never spoken to anyone outside their own suburb (i.e. they’ve lived an incredibly sheltered life, or they’re simply just a snob).
The Whirlpool discussion later became heated, with someone saying it was ‘disgusting’ that the Jones family paid for a wreck to drive around the station; that it was a matter of ‘self respect’ and ‘someone who drives around in a $500 bomb like that when they can obviously afford better, is no better than a pig, in my opinion.’
And a real gem, ‘Look don’t go telling me they’re not flashy people because I saw one of those extra-wide large underbench ovens in the kitchen, the kind that cost many thousands of dollars. The type you usually see in high end / expensive kitchens. So they obviously have the means to buy nicely if they want to.’
Other contributors countered with some good points, but the main ones were largely unaddressed or incompletely discussed:
- The vehicle was mechanically sound it was just the panels that were damaged. $500 is arguably on the steep side for something unregisterable, but if the tyres were good at the time of the purchase, they would probably have been worth more than $500 (depending on the brand); same goes for the engine. An obsession with image rather than substance is very much a city-based trait, particularly in our most American city, Sydney. The writer suggested buying a vehicle that looked better. Why does it matter what the Jones’s paddock basher looks like, if it is mechanically sound and does the job the owner requires it to do? I bet the writer of the comment a) buys new cars and white goods whenever they start looking a bit tired, even if they’re still doing their job perfectly well and b) has a large mortgage that could have shrunk to a tiny amount if they stopped squandering their cash on keeping up appearances. In other words, people salvaging perfectly good but dated whitegoods from the footpath will be doing very well out of them. As will the lending banks and car dealerships.
- It’s a fundamental fact that people who start with nothing and end up with a lot usually do it by spending up big only on the essentials and being frugal on non-essentials. And it’s standard business practice in the bush.
- If you make your living by owning a helicopter mustering business, it is clearly essential to own helicopters in first-class condition (a) for pilot & passenger safety reasons and (b) to give paying customers confidence that you’ll get the job done in a professional & safe manner (i.e. to make more money). Even the cheapest mustering choppers cost $250,000 upwards (new); pilot wages and maintenance are expensive and depreciation is rapid. Most chopper companies that own several or more choppers don’t insure them because the cost is prohibitive. Yes the Jones family can use a choppers occasionally for a personal purposes, but that’s the joys of being a business owner – there’s got to be some compensations for the hard work, extra long hours & stress.
- If you own a big cattle station it is fairly essential to own one or more trucks to quickly & efficiently move cattle around the station. And many cattle stations also own a later model truck or two in good, long-distance roadworthy condition to take stock to feedlots, meatworks or live export loading facilities. People in town, who have never been to the station, will only see the flashy new truck not the old model poking around the dirt roads on the station – this can encourage a misguided view of how the owners live and what their net worth is. A brand new Kenworth, Mack or Western Star roadtrain & trailers is worth a similar amount to a brand new Robinson R22 helicopter (the most common type of mustering helicopter used in Australia).
- There’s a basic principle in the bush: when clothing or gear becomes a bit worn and not quite up to the job it is first used for, it stays in service but is relegated to second-best. It then no longer leaves the farm or cattle station and/or is used just as a back-up. The new clothing or gear (whether it is a car or truck) is the one that does trips to town. This is why, particularly in southern Australia, farmers visiting cities look very dressed up…whereas in reality they may only own a few sets of ‘town’ clothes and they may be many years old. Taste in clothing (and jewellery) is conservative, so the age of what is worn is not obvious. Clothes worn around the farm or station are often way past what Vinnies would ever consider selling and in many instances, way past what the average urban resident would wear, even in the privacy of their own home. Most people in the bush really do wear clothes out.
- Properties too far from town to have staff travelling to and from daily, have employees living on the farm or station. In southern and more closely settled areas it may be just one family living in their own house on the property, but on larger properties where a number of single people are employed and live, they are ‘fully found’ – not just housed, but fed as well. Employees don’t have the time to go trotting off to a distant town to buy up at the supermarket every week or two; providing all single employees with a kitchen of their own would be impractical; and few young staff, straight out of school and home, have the skills to feed themselves properly anyway. All these cattle stations (and to a lesser extent these days, farms) require a sizeable kitchen with large sinks, a big oven, wide stovetop (invariably gas) and refrigeration space plus a coolroom for hanging sides of beef and storing boxes of fruit and veges. On the largest stations the kitchen/dining room for staff is a completely separate building to the house of the owner or manager, whose home includes a standard-sized kitchen for their own use. A ‘big modern kitchen’ on a large property a long way from town is not some sort of ostentatious luxury to be used only when sick of popping down to the local takeaway place or restaurant. It’s a necessity; required to feed a lot more people and bigger eaters than just two office-working adults and several kids. A big ‘under bench’ oven is not a frivolous show of wealth on a cattle station nor is it used to cook the latest ‘celebrity chef’ creation with obscure ingredients – it’s for cooking up enough beef and roast veges to feed one or two dozen people. If there are visiting tradespeople (electricians, mechanics, building trade etc), cattle buyers, DPI staff, vets, etc, they must be fed and housed on the station – they can’t pop down to the nearest motel to sleep or to the nearest takeaway for lunch, dinner or breakfast.
- ‘Money is certainly not an issue for farmers on these large properties most of the time.’ The fact is – almost all of the largest Australian cattle stations, and many of the farms, are owned by companies (publicly and privately owned companies). And they always have been, from the day they were settled. Simply because too much capital is required, way beyond the financial resources of most individuals. And the managers all operate on a stringent budget approved by the head office located in a capital city. The next tier down – very large properties – have traditionally been owned by a mixture of families and companies. Coolibah station fits into this category. These farms and stations have shifted more out of family ownership into company ownership over the last couple of decades. Money IS a constant issue for family owners of these large properties. If property owners don’t pay attention to expenditure large and small they’ll rapidly become homeless. To suggest money isn’t an issue, as if there is some bottomless pit of cash, is ridiculous. The only property owners who would spend cash without thinking carefully first are those doomed to fail – because they inherited the asset without inheriting the skills and self discipline to run it profitably in the long term. (‘Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.’) If you see cash being splashed around by a rural resident, usually it’s someone who’ll die owning assets of a much lower value than they were born into (this behaviour has a finite life and will last only for 2 generations, maximum).
- Yes cattle station buildings and kitchens may appear spacious. However kitchens with granite benchtops and flash coffee makers and loungerooms with the latest furniture are as scarce as hence teeth in remote areas. You’re flat out finding a building in the bush that has a level floor, let alone one that has a flash tiling job.
- You never know what someone’s net worth is unless you have a list of everything they own and everything they owe. It’s not the business of the viewers of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ to know whether or not Milton Jones has large borrowings or not, but it is very surprising that in all the online discussions I’ve read, there has not been a single mention of the fact that most people – not just business owners – buy assets with borrowed money. Instead there seems to commonly be an assumption that the Jones family own absolutely everything outright. There’s quite a few comments along the lines of…’they must be rolling in it, 1,000 cows worth $1,000 each…’ etc. For the record, Brahman and brahman crossbred cattle on northern cattle stations aren’t worth $1,000 a head, and the costs of transporting them to the nearest feedlot, live export facility, meatworks or saleyards are very large (distances travelled can be as much as 3,000km or more) – as are cattle station overhead costs, from labour to essential maintenance. Not to mention capital improvements, such as putting in new fencing, yards and waters. There has been very little comment on online forums mentioning the huge costs of running a cattle station – only comments on the high value of the assets (with the presumption of 100% ownership). There would be very few Australian farms or stations of any size that do not owe banks a sizeable amount of money, often hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If blog comments are an accurate representation of wider community opinion, the majority of viewers of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ haven’t put a lot of thought into what they are viewing and don’t really understand remote area living and basic business principles (as in, spend your money carefully on what will make more money and never waste it on what won’t make a profit or you’ll not only fail to make more, you’ll lose what you already have). WTFN, the producers of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’, have put all the clues into the television programme but perhaps not made them obvious enough for those completely unfamiliar with rural life and business to put two and two together to form the complete picture. There definitely hasn’t been enough on work and far more on play, giving viewers the impression that more time is spent having fun than working hard.
Including the conversation about the paddock-basher in an episode of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ should have got people thinking about the contrast between the helicopters worth thousands of dollars and the $500 wreck to poke around the station in, and how Milton Jones operates. The contrast really sums up how the average rural family operates – careful expenditure, with money spent on what will make more money and where it is essential, and not wasted on ‘keeping up with the joneses’ or appearances.
I guess the failure of the average viewer of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ to join the dots shouldn’t be surprising, given that so many people are now used to watching reality TV shows that thrive on endless repetition and spelling things out completely, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination or for viewers to ponder on; plus the average Australian’s lack of connection with the bush, even amongst those who would love one.
Looking forward to hearing when Channel Ten will be screening the second half of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’, presumably on TV again in the second half of 2011. Will be interesting viewing with 2 new arrivals to come plus the departure of the young chopper pilot (now working in north west Queensland).
In the meantime, anyone who has enjoyed watching ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ will love the best-selling coffee table style books ‘A Million Acre Masterpiece’ and ‘Life as an Australian Horseman’. These unique books contain more than 500 photos taken on Australia’s largest cattle stations and every photo has a short but interesting caption, to help those unfamiliar with these cattle stations understand more about outback life. These books are ideal gifts for birthdays, anniversaries or ‘just because’. Orders for 2 or more books come with a free calico carrybag and a good discount, books can be personally signed and mailed direct to anywhere in the world. The books also come with a money-back guarantee of satisfaction. For more information on these outback books, visit the Book Contents page, or visit the Testimonials page to read comments from other book purchasers.
Tags: Living in the country and remote areas, Image of the bush, Coolibah Station, Keeping up with the Joneses, Australian outback TV and film