Tall Poppies

Well, I have finally figured out what part of Oz Dorothy was in when she stumbled upon the poppy field. And it becomes Reason #8 why we are keen to move to Tasmania.

There was a report in the Hobart Mercury newspaper this week and I will bet you dollars to donuts that your local newspaper will never carry a report like this about your community.

It seems that Tasmania is the world's largest legal grower of poppies for opium for the pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately, there has been a slightly unanticipated consequence having all these poppy fields around. But rather than paraphrase, let me quote the state Attorney General, Lara Giddings, who was speaking at a budget hearing:

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles. Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

I met Lara Giddings at a dinner a few years ago, and she was intelligent, down-to-earth and very interesting. So you can imagine my surprise to see that she has solved the mystery of crop circles - at least in poppy fields.

Maybe they can set the next XFiles movie in Tasmania. Of course, it might make for a fairly uneventful movie when David Duchovny learns that the crop circles are not coded messages from visitors from outer space but are in fact made by animals that are so stoned they can only walk around in circles.

I must add that I thought it odd that the state's Attorney General was getting briefed on this, but perhaps she is planning a crackdown on illegal drug use among marsupials. But then, as I said, it all gives us one more good reason to look forward to moving there.