A tourist barrelling along the highways of the central west might not notice anything wrong with the trees, but grazier Bruce Maynard, who has lived his whole life on the same farm between Trangie and Narromine, believes the land is sick.
The canaries in the coalmine are the bare peppercorn trees at the local golf course. Maynard says they were so dense with foliage in his youth that you couldn’t see through them.