CTF Nov 29 - Austalia Day One

We arrived after about 17 hours of flying to sunny warm and humid weather. Tim Neale of Precision Agriculture met us and drove us west to Toowoomba. We will start visiting farms tomorrow morning.

Some interesting things we learned already:

• The area west of Brisbane is mostly alluvial soils - black loams which are non cracking. Therefore Tim says they have poor self repair. Once compacted they do not easily recover. This area was a major vegetable growing area until the drought hit.
• Near Toowoomba the soils are volcanic, deep red soils with good structure and well drained.
• We stopped briefly at the University of Queensland Gottan Campus where most of the original controlled traffic research was done by Dr. Jeff Tullberg. Unfortunately there has not been any funding for CTF research for at least 10 years.

Tim, Alan, Craig and myself were interviewed by the Australian Broadcast Corporation (radio) about why we were visiting and about surface rights and markets. They have a fifteen minute agriculture program each day as well as other ag shows.

Hopefully tomorrow we will have some CTF info and pictures to share.