Ms RATTRAY (McIntyre) – Mr President, I also wish the member for Rosevears were here, because he would still have his grandson in your gallery to hear the rest of our contributions. I think he has gone for a look around the Parliament.
In August this year I informed the House that the Ringarooma community had become the Legendairy capital of Tasmania. Guess what, we won – Ringarooma is now the Legendairy capital of the nation.
Mr Dean – What have they done?
Ms RATTRAY – We won the Legendairy Capital of the nation, more recently. I am not sure how the member for Windermere missed that, but I inform the House that very recently Ringarooma won the national award. There is much excitement in the Ringarooma area and in the north-east more generally. It is a wonderful acknowledgement of a very small community that really supports the dairy industry. There are about 20 dairy farms just in the immediate Ringarooma area and they produce around 52 megalitres of milk each year – think about the employment and opportunities there.
The community has always been supported by the Ringarooma School. On Saturday, the Ringarooma School had its annual show. Because of Ringarooma winning the national award, Dairy Australia came forth with some strong support. We had a free jumping castle, free face painting and free events for the children, and it was the best-attended show of all the Ringarooma shows I have seen in probably the last 20 years. I have been to them all except one.
Ms Forrest – Does that mean the jumping castle was for the adults and the other things were for the children?
Ms RATTRAY – Do you know the most popular event was temporary tattoos? I was almost tempted to line up and get one but the line was so long I decided I would not. It was a fantastic day, the weather was fantastic and we had free milkshakes for everyone. There was a big B-Bouble Fonterra tanker at the front of the gate.
Mr Farrell – All you need up there is a butter factory.
Ms RATTRAY – All we need is a processing factory. Did you know that butter is making a resurgence? Anyone who watches the prices at the supermarket will notice that the price of a pound of butter – a pound of butter, 500 grams: I am showing my age and I am not ashamed of that – has just about doubled in the last two months. If you watch prices at the supermarket – there are people nodding their head because butter is better –
Mr Farrell – The real Ringarooma butter was much better than the Duck River rubbish.
Ms RATTRAY – Absolutely. I again extend my congratulations to Marcus and Simone Haywood, the sharefarmers in the Ringarooma community who put forward the nomination. It was also supported strongly by the Ringarooma School and the community – the whole north-east community for that matter. Again, on Saturday the show to celebrate – not only the annual show – the winning of this national award was just fantastic. You just had to be there to really appreciate how well received it was.
A significant amount of cash goes with that award, which will go to improving some infrastructure on the school grounds – another plus for a great little community. I thought that you would all be very pleased. In August I offered my best wishes along with this House, the Parliament and the whole of Tasmania. I think those best wishes made it right through to the topknot. There were six other areas competing for that national award, so Ringarooma scooped the pool. I congratulate them on that fantastic effort.
The award runs for two years so we are going to celebrate again next year. We are going to do it all again at Ringarooma next early November to re-celebrate. We will have free milkshakes and all those things, the free tatts and whatever else you would like to do.
Mr PRESIDENT – That will go well with your motorbike too – free tattoos.
Ms RATTRAY – Yes. I have actually let the motorbike go. That is all right. I have another project on the go.
There is such a lot going on in the electorate at the moment that I cannot – I need to do two different items in special interest. I just want to draw to the attention of members the book that I recently had the pleasure of launching at St Helens.
It is a new book and I do not have a copy with me. I seem to have given most of them away. It is called Up Country. The author is Garry Richardson from St Helens, and this is the fourth book in the series looking at the history of around the Portland municipality. This particular book is on Pyengana, West Pyengana, Priory and the Pyengana general area. I know the member for Derwent has a copy and is enjoying it. The member for Hobart is enjoying his copy as well. It is very well researched.
I also had the pleasure of writing the foreword for it. I had never been asked to do that before, so I had to pretty much read the manuscript before it went to print. When I was reading through and looking at some of the beautiful old photos, I found a picture of my grandfather, Bert Rattray when he was aged about 18. I had never seen that photo and it almost brought me to tears. It probably will today. He passed away before I was born. We have had a couple of wedding photos and those sorts of things in the family, but never a photo of him as a young person. To see this photo on page 286 of the book was really heartwarming. There is some history there that even immediate family probably do not have a full understanding of.
I want to place on the record my sincere thanks to Garry Richardson not for only producing another beautiful book on the history of that area in the north-east, but also for the research and work that goes into compiling something like that and sourcing photographs from people and scanning them, then sending them back to their homes. It is an enormous workload in itself.
I congratulate him and wish him all the best. I know the sales are going well. I have had quite a few demands for sales, and I have one waiting at the front desk to be collected today by somebody from Hobart, just from a little Facebook post I put up. That is encouraging.