It's 5.45am in Casino, just over an hour's drive inland from Byron Bay in northern NSW, and the smoke from weeks of bushfires lingers, casting a gloomy haze over the sunrise.
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| While regional Australia once famously rode on the sheep's back it is now living on the edge. |
The early shift at the town's meat works has filed in and the piercing noise of an electric hand saw cutting its way through carcass after carcass drowns out the Monday morning chatter.
The Northern Co-operative Meat Company is the town's biggest private employer with 1000 people - 10 per cent of Casino's population - relying on a constant flow of cattle to make ends meet.
The company has turned around a torrid previous year where it posted a $7 million loss following a fall in the international hide market and a temporary loss of access to the lucrative Chinese market.
Read the story from The Age by Rob Harris - “Staring into oblivion: People of the drought lands watch their world disappear.”
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