100 Excerpt. For young people who would focus on wealth building rather than cash accumulation

This is an excerpt from episode 100 (part 2) featuring the last 15 minutes or so of my conversation with pioneering regenerative pastoralist, Chris Henggeler, on-location at Kachana Station.

In some senses, our entire visit to Kachana is distilled into this excerpt. We pick up our conversation where I ask Chris what he needs. A nice initial exchange gives way to some profoundly moving reflections on the value of a life. And that sets up the last minutes of our time together, talking about the temporary stay-of-execution on the donkeys, and how excited he remains about the opportunities for the next generations of land doctors.

Title slide: the incredible before and after photographs of the homestead and surrounds at Kachana Station (pic: from a booklet compiled by the family when Allan Savory visited).

Music:
Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.

Find more:
You can hear the rest of our conversation starting with the main episode, ‘Wanted Land Doctors: Rehydrating landscapes, reversing desertification and rebuilding the wealth of country’.

You can follow the rest of our time together on this visit with the special Extra out to where the donkeys do their work.

And with the rest of the second and final part of episode 100.

Transcript

AJ 0:00

Chris, what do you need most right now?

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Um can you just rephrase that? Are you talking about me emotionally?

AJ 0:12

Yeah, good question. Or what I would like to see happen. Well, it's part of why I threw it out openly to see what was most gripping. Can we do both? I think they're probably really mutually reinforcing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Let's get the ego out of the way.

AJ 0:26

Yeah, good one. All right.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Um I guess for any male ego to believe that you've won and that you're on top of things, you know, is it's it's it's obviously an illusion, but but that's a it's a very pleasant illusion to have. And and and to have the notion that you've spent 35 years doing something that people will say, hang on, this is great. It's not necessarily the way I do things, but I can pick this and this and this out of it, and I can pick up the ball and run with it, maybe play a different game. But you know, those 35 years out here were not in vain. That would definitely stroke my ego. However, I'm also a grandparent. And only a young grandparent, so I don't know my grandchildren. I I wouldn't know my grandchildren any more than I would know some other young person on the street. So I don't know, certainly not yet, I don't know what floats their boat or will float their boat. I don't know what their wants are, but I do understand their needs. And let's go back to the basics. Nature dictates those needs. They need fresh air, they need appropriate hydration, they need energy, and they need exercise.

AJ 1:49

Livable climate. Livable climate.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

It's all those things which they need. So by focusing on providing the needs of my grandchildren, I'm also focusing on providing the needs of other people's grandchildren. So I guess what I want most is, or hope for most is probably the better word, is for recognition of the importance of working together as humans, as a human family, to address these challenges that we've brought upon ourselves so that we can offer opportunity to the next generation to pick up the ball and run with it. And to me, that means having the solutions out here on Kachana that work for Kachana, that's not good enough. Having a regulator down in Perth who's got some computer simulation and knows what would need to happen, that's not good enough. We need from the regulator to the enforcers to the to the people on the ground to the people in the market, empowering, pushing the market to the supporters like we've had. We need to be working together in this and everybody bringing to the table what they can bring to the table. So yeah, I think communication and trust building as a basis for collaboration, focusing primarily on what we all need, and by extension, thanks to what we know about nature, then generating the abundance that would allow us to then in a civilized manner discuss the dividing up of this or the sharing of the spoils. And perhaps putting some aside for a rainy day as well. We don't necessarily need to eat it all up. And that's to me, that's that's wealth at at every level. It's it's it's it's wealth when you when you actually can sit down and share and you know give each other your time. And everybody walks away with more ideas. It's it's wealth having a plan that you realize this is worth committing to. And it's wealth if you can end up seeing the fruits of your labour, and it's wealth when you can enjoy the fruits of your labour. And when you see those go to seed, well, that's wealth too. So that's that's that's the natural wealth I'm talking about. And if it was there in the past, it's still out there wanting to do happen, you know. We just need to just expand our vision of wealth, you know, from beyond being rich to actually being wealthy again.

AJ 4:29

Well, I was gonna say, those are the measures of wealth. You're a very rich man and well bloody done. To go to the immediate context of Kachana as well. We've had an update in the last 24 hours that there's been a stay of execution on the donkeys, and there'll be uh another mediation hearing on the 9th of November. In the interim, you'd really love to see public dialogue on this flourish, the conversation pick up a notch.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Alright, there's there's there's two things there. We have a the donkey issue is now being discussed at a state administration tribunal level. So I'd like to keep that as is. That's that's a process which has its own rules and integrity. It's not for me to discuss that. Uh we can just do our best to go ahead with that. However, while this discussion goes on over the airwaves in boardrooms, hopefully some of the discussion will take place out here. While this discussion goes on, nature hasn't just turned off the tower, it hasn't just pressed the pause button. In fact, uh just these you've seen it yourself, these last three days, humidity's increased, temperatures have increased. Local nature will be coming out of sleep any minute. Then you know they might start kicking off a few blankets, and you know, we have no idea of storms, lightning. So so life goes on. The challenges that were here 20 years ago that face the chat, nothing's changed. So so let's let's regardless of uh the debate that I'm having there with the donkeys, I think it's just still important to inform people that we're all part of this. We can all be players in making a better future by the way we conduct our purchases of food. And so we have a direct influence as in anybody who purchases food has a direct influence on production systems. But the the challenge that I also said is is we have as communities, we have collective influence on our water story. And if we look at the news headlines in the last few years in Australia, Northern Australia, especially certain times of the year, you've got floods up here, you've got fires down there, you've got snow somewhere else and dust storms. It's it's nature's showing us the different phases of dehydration. So there's nothing wrong with just keeping on explaining and tackling and addressing the rehydration issues of Northern Australia, because they're not going to go away. I I'll I'll be gone long before they are solved. And um, you know, if I succeed as a messenger to table that argument, well that's probably another one I'd be very happy about because but mainly for the sake of my my grandchildren, because I would, you know, we came here hoping that this would be a multi-generational project. And it would be, yeah, it it I would like to see, whether it's my children or other children, I would like to see people live ahead here in the north. And you know, the all these ideas of of exporting water and and bread baskets for Asia and whatever, they they're just illusions unless we rehydrate these landscapes. Yeah so there's no reason why the discussion can't go on. Educating and looking for solutions and encouraging the sort of innovation that we need to find out what will work locally.

AJ 8:14

Yeah, when I think about the size of some of the stations out here, and even this one at the couple of hundred thousand acres, to think that that multi-generational effort could continue to do what's been shown in these model areas across that entire space and then you know, potentially the region and then potentially beyond it, it's extremely exciting, and it still obviously stokes your fire.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Oh, absolutely, and and I guess what makes it a little bit easier for me now is the science that came out through Fred Prevenza because you know, when I took all this on, I just had a hunch and I had gut feelings. Whereas the science actually is out there, absolutely supporting those gut feelings that I had. Everything that I've seen in these last 35 years supports, you know, this is possible. We're just scraping the, you know, we're just seeing the tickle of the iceberg and scratching the surface, you know. We're just so that it's it's um for young people who would decide to focus on wealth building rather than um cash accumulation. I think there's some incredible opportunities.

AJ 9:24

Yeah, I wonder if we should go on with that a bit. We could end on that, and it's a it's a good statement. But do you want to elaborate?

SPEAKER_01 9:35

So in my in my um in my testimony, testimony uh done in Albury earlier in the year, I was saying, you know, we we wanted land doctors, people who would invest in their own skill set, knowing that it would be worthwhile to commit to focus on the building of wealth and wealth generation rather than focus on increasing cash flow. And uh to me that is something that it's hard to judge from where I'm sitting out here, but but just looking at at stuff that's already happening worldwide, looking at some of these websites, looking at the regeneration websites where you know the regeneration work that's happening, there are a lot of young people there. People come from city backgrounds. So so I think the the the reassessment of values is happening. Another great example is Fred Braven's first book, or I don't know his first book, but it's a book that he put together about tapping into the wisdom of the French Shepherds, which is highly relevant to what we're doing. And I hope to have a shepherd or a herding school how do you one day or actually work in with these herding schools, but that's aside. Is you tap into these uh to the wisdom of these uh French shepherds where the where the French government is supporting people to take the flocks back out into landscapes and rehydrate them and and and revitalize them. So you've got all that knowledge that has been accumulated by these people who are working, who've built these relationships with the herds and built relationships with the landscapes. And when you look, take a closer look, there's not a single one of them that was born on a farm. A lot of them had sort of careers somewhere on the stock market, IT, whatever. So it's it's they they intellectually embraced the whole thing, reassessed their whole value system, and realized, well, hang on, I'm all cashed up, I've got nowhere to go. Now they're out there building places to go. And um, to me, yeah, that is sh it's a good indicator that there are people beginning to ask new questions and re-evaluating existing or dominating value systems. I'm not saying replace value systems, I'm saying is just reassess, realign, you know, yeah, adapt, keep in touch with the change that's happening all around all around us.

AJ 12:02

Yeah, beautiful. Well, Chris, three years ago you had a few pieces of music actually, you logged on me. What's one that's in your mind these days? We haven't beat the devil. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

I think I need that more than ever. Alright.

AJ 12:21

There we have it.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Chris Christopher. The devil's knocking on my door at the moment. But no.

AJ 12:29

That's brilliant. Say no more. Chris, it's been absolutely magnificent being out here again. Power to you. Thanks for having us and thanks for speaking with me.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Well, thank you, and then and probably what I forgot to mention in in the collaboration is not only the part of the collaboration and building of the trust, is people like you and in the media who can actually, you're the you're the cement, you're the conduits, you build the bridges. So, you know, while we've got fantastic stuff happening all over the world, dotted all around the place, as I pointed out, what what we're not doing is probably the uh, you know, our sins of omission are probably worse than our sins of commission. And this is with the bridges that are being built by podcasters, by having um conversations that last longer than 20 minutes, allowing people to digest even during the conversation. You know, that is just such important, uh, so important. So thank you, Anthony, and and your people out there on the on the airwaves who are cooperating or in that ministry.

AJ 13:32

My great of education.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Thank you so much.

AJ 13:36

That was pioneering regenerative pastoralist Chris Hengler from Kachana Station in the East Kimberley. Thanks very much, Chris, for having us, for our conversations on air and off, for the cold homebrewed beers and kombuchas, and for the depth and generosity of your work and how you share it. And thanks to all patrons and supporters of the podcast for making this series from Kachana possible. If you too value what you hear, please consider becoming a podcast patron too, for as little as a few dollars a month. Just head to the website via the show notes, regeneration.com forward slash support. Thanks as always. You can hear more of Chris and I in conversation in the main episode Wanted Land Doctors. Rehydrating landscapes, reversing desertification, and rebuilding wealth. You'll find a series of links in the show notes there too, and an extensive selection of photos. For now, the donkeys continue their work as a mediation process is underway. I'll continue to follow the story and update you, of course, as news comes to hand. It's time for another listen to Chris Christofferson's To Beat the Devil, an epitaph for Chris, if ever there was one. The music you're hearing right now is Stones and Bones by Owls of the Swamp. This episode's for you, Ava. My name's Anthony James. Thanks again for listening.