Decidedly different beliefs, but strikingly similar ideals

The fellow considered to be “Mr Shepparton”, Bill Hunter, died recently and was buried on Thursday (May 31). More than 1000 people attended his funeral and being one of those, I later that day reflected on knowing him through my former role at Editor of the Shepparton News.

"Mr Shepparton" - William
Birchall Hunter.

Bill Hunter and I had decidedly different beliefs, but in the chaos that is life, we had strikingly similar ideals.

He was ardently attached to some values that I saw as frivolous, but even though my position was obvious, and different, he was always a truly nice bloke whose friendship never fluctuated despite those dissimilarities in our relationship.

His obsession with the “bigger picture” and the importance of getting things done, seemed to relegate those lesser personality issues that people often focus on to near the bottom of his hierarchy of concerns.

That, however, does not suggest Bill didn’t care about those around him: he did, and that was unquestionably one of his true strengths – he cared deeply, about everybody and everything.

Listening to W.B. Hunter Group managing director, Michael Moroney, and the Shepparton based MLC, Wendy Lovell, talk about his dynamism and his long and tireless contribution to the Goulburn Valley, and Shepparton in particular, it feels rather bold of me to call him a friend.

However, it was obvious to all at yesterday’s funeral, that Bill was everyone’s friend, even in the rough and tumble of business and politics at the local, State and Federal levels.

Bill had the rare skill to identify something for what it was, do it without undue offence, move on and again focus on the greater good for the greater number.

The lessons of history were not wasted on Bill for he understood scarcity and the use of finite resources.

No matter where he was and should he need to remind himself of something, he could produce a used envelope and quickly note the message. Bill never wasted anything, not even used envelopes.

Every community needs a champion and the one we fare welled yesterday was the essence of the energy that saw Shepparton become Greater Shepparton.

Shepparton idea contradicts what is proposed for Melbourne

Stuart Brand's "The Clock
of the Long Now".

The idea that urban Shepparton should be contained within a clearly proscribed boundary contradicts a present State Government proposal for Melbourne.

According to a recent story in the Melbourne Age, the State Government intends to “realign” Melbourne’s growth boundaries allowing housing developments in areas traditionally prolific producers of vegetables.

A similar scenario is evident in Shepparton.

Driven by the expansionist ambitions of developers, Shepparton’s urban area constantly expands, robbing the area of rich and valuable food producing farmlands.

It should be noted, however, that the idea of seeing urban Shepparton contained within a clearly delineated boundary is not official, rather it is mine.

Shepparton, like Melbourne, is becoming obese in that rather than trim up and make innovative use of space that already exists within the city, it adds weight around the edges and in doing so uses vital, and ultimately irreplaceable productive agricultural land.

Contemporary times have seen a raucous conversation about water, but the more important conversation, that must be had, is about the protection and within that the preservation of Goulburn Valley soils.

Our seeming careless and irresponsible use of productive rural land for the creation of a housing development measures only short-term profit and ignores what Shepparton will look like, or need, in a century.

Recently, Kialla’s Roy Roberts asked the question: “What will Shepparton look like in 100-years?” The implication of his question was that, whatever direction we choose for the city today, the essence of those decisions will still be intact in a century.

Food supply will unquestionably weigh heavily on our minds in decades to come and so rather than devour valuable food producing land close to the city for what in a food-deprived future will be a frivolous and wasteful idea, we should be creating an innovative and intense living structure within what exists.

Stuatrt Brand.

To some, considering 100-years in the future is impossible, but a century is insignificant compared to the 10 000 years Stuart Brand urges us to think about in his book, “The Clock of the Long Now”.

Like Roberts, Brand argues that what we do now will shape how we live in the centuries, and millennia, to come.

Man, the thinking animal, is burdened with intelligence, but lives, sadly, with a scarcity of wisdom.

Just last week a friend pondered aloud whether or not man had the intelligence to survive and in answering himself, he seriously doubted that.

When we pursue for short-term profit such things as sprawl that eats away at precious productive rural land, in defiance of facts that it is precisely the wrong thing to do, that becomes another of those equations that puts intelligence ahead of wisdom.

Proposals for Melbourne are nonsensical and what is happening in Shepparton is equally so.