Community considers the future without 120-year-old diary

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The decision of dairy giant Saputo to shut down its iconic King Island dairy is sinking in for the workers and residents of the wind-swept island in the middle of the Bass Strait.

Transcript

00:00There's a lot of younger ones that work at the factory, you know, they lose their jobs,

00:07we lose population within the island, which is where it becomes devastating.

00:12It won't be just the people who lose their jobs at the dairy factory, it'll be the long

00:19term effect of other people that will lose their employment also.

00:23When I first came here there was probably 40 dairy farms at least and most of them were

00:28soldier settlement schemes and so to me it's just a progression of things changing, land

00:35at 200 acres to run as a dairy has gone by the wayside, you know, even in the beef industry

00:40now there's talk that you nearly need 1,000 acres to be sustainable.

00:44So that shows you something, I mean, you know, at its most there was probably 3,400 people

00:50on the island.

00:51A lot of those people would have been within the soldier settlement scheme.

00:57There has been a reduction also as land has been absorbed by the bigger farmers and that's

01:03just part of progression, which is, when you look back, it's sad.

01:06The people who drink here work at the cheese factory so, you know, it's going to affect

01:11everything, you know, not only us but I can see it affecting the whole island, schools,

01:16like when the abattoirs left the whole island, like the schools lost a lot of kids and things

01:21like that.

01:22You look at the age of the guys out at the cheese factory, they're all in their 20s,

01:26so they leave the island, we're going to be even an older population as it is, we're just

01:31getting old.

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