NEVILLE SIMPSON IS not your typical cotton farmer. He doesn’t hold a university degree, nor does he command tens of thousands of hectares. He doesn’t have time for cotton-industry PR, and he doesn’t talk fast. He’s not American or British, and neither is his business.

He lives where he farms, on the Darling River near Bourke, and this alone tends to set him apart. He’s elderly, softly spoken, with a slight western drawl, and takes any opportunity to make a self-deprecating aside about his farming expertise. He’s reflective, not reactionary, and this is probably why the good journalists often find their way to him when they report from a town that has long represented the quintessential ‘rural’ locale in the Australian popular imagination.