About five years ago, AAT wished success to a Maleny family who had decided that they weren’t going to be knocked out of the dairy industry by the D-word.

Deregu-bloody-lation, as many of the farmers called it, cut their incomes in half with the stroke of a bureaucratic pen back in 2000, with the result that where once there were lots of picture-perfect farms with contented four-legged milk factories chomping on the lush green kikuyu pastures of the Maleny plateau, only a handful remain.

Many of the properties pioneered and run by third and fourth-generation families are now growing houses, but not the lovely farm owned by the Hoppers, who decided to take on the big boys and start their own milk processing plant.

Now, the Maleny Dairies range of 14 milk products, from both cows and goats, are selling well in shops all over the Sunshine Coast.

Thanks to the various skills of founders Harold and Dorothy Hopper and their extended family, not to mention the Guernseys that give the creamiest milk I’ve tasted since I milked our Jersey house cow as a kid, the venture has success written all over it.

When I visited on Monday, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer enthusiasm, not only of the Hopper family, but also of their employees.

The good old Aussie “give it a go” attitude is alive and well up on the Range, and it’s good to know it can still pay off for people like the Hoppers, who are so proud of their farm and factory that they are now offering tours.

You can contact them on 5494 2392 or check the website www.malenydairies.com.

Texterity? It’s been around for years

Words on words: A quick response to last week’s piece on my idea for a new word to describe the thumb-testing skill of text messaging.

I thought “texterity” might fill the bill nicely, but Jill Baker, director of marketing for Texterity Inc, tells me that although they love the word, they have nothing to do with texting.

Texterity Inc, founded in Massachusetts in 1991,is a digital publishing company with 800 titles, so I haven’t given our language a new word after all.

Still, it’s good to know that through this blog, AAT has at least one international reader.

And Another Thing:

Who’d be a footy coach … or an opposition party leader? Your team loses a few matches on the trot, or you drop a point in another poll of a tiny sample of the populace, and the skids are quietly placed under you.

Former GP Brendan Nelson may lack a bit of the charisma that the media love, but he comes across, to me at least, as an intelligent, sincere and liberal Liberal who at least deserves a bit of time to establish his public persona.

On second thoughts, maybe he’s too nice a bloke to be a GP (good politician).

rich.29@bigpond.net.au