Monday 22nd July – day 70
Drafted the weaners today separating the little/slightly wobbly on their feet ones from the bigger healthier weaners who will be making the 25+km walk over to Nulgra in a few days. We then drafted the larger ones again checking through to make sure they were all branded, ear marked, had been dehornedand for the boys … cut (sorry fellas!) There were a fair few that needed this treatment, so got a chance to practice branding, also did the ear marking and had a few goes at dehorning … I still think it seems pretty brutal, and depending on the size of the existing horns you either have to use a double edged knife to cut the horn and skin around it out, or for larger horns you have to use ‘super scoops’. These are like large sharp nut crackers, I found them easier to use than the knife and got a cleaner cut out of the horn… only thing is that the larger the horns are when you cut them out the more bloody it all is – I felt like I was in the middle of some Quentin Tatantino film with blood squirting all over the place :S , despite this the weaners soon hop up and are back running about like nothing happened, I think I end up more traumatised than they do!
Tuesday 23rd July – day 71
James and I headed out this morning to do the water run. I love getting out and doing the water run, I had been enjoying doing it on my own since Nena left - was a great way to relax and have some thinking time whilst driving through the paddocks …. However having another person along again has been great – not just because I no longer have to struggle lifting the 40kg lick bags, but also because it means I get to play Monopoly deal again (whilst we sit and wait for one of the tanks to fill up). Sadly I seem to have taught James how to play too well, and he has taken to smashing me at it L … Next time I introduce someone to the game I will ensure that I only give them the basic tips and tricks!! After lunch, and getting over my Monopoly defeats, we started to walk the big weaners over towards Nulgra. Luke made the decision that it would be best to walk them in two stages so we only took them over the road and left them overnight at a holding paddock. This is about 1/3rd of the total journey they will be making, but was still a fair old walk and took about 3 hours. I do often wish that cows would all just walk in a straight line and stop trying to eat the bloody grass, but I guess they can’t really help it – after all it is part of their nature!! By the end of this I was pretty shattered, and a little bit fed up of being on my bike, although that may have been due to the fact that I had a few falls off – they were all super slow and it was mostly because I hit a rut at an awkward angle, which normally wouldn’t result in falling off, but I was so tired that I just couldn’t hold the bike up when this happened so I ended up dropping my bike a few times. Ooops…
Wednesday 24th July – day 72
Early start today as we needed to get the weaners all the way to Nulgra by the end of the day. What little troopers they were too, all but one managed the rest of the walk. For the one that couldn’t walk all the way, I had to grab and tie its legs up so that Luke could go back to pick him up in the truck and drop him off at the final destination. Apart from that we only had one iffy moment where the weaners decided to take the hardest route across one of the creeks. It was like watching Lemmings dropping over a cliff!! We had to drag a couple of the weaker ones up the banks which was hard work; it was then even more challenging working out how to safely get ourselves and our motorbikes up and out of the sandy, steep sided creek, but I made it, and I didn’t fall off!! (this time anyway!) I will admit to getting very fed up at several other points during the day; the ground was very difficult to ride on (sandy with lots of bumpy mitchell grass and hidden holes) and I got stuck a fair few times. Luke witnessed one of my little paddys when I fell off (again at super slow speed) – I came very close to kicking the damn bike, but resorted to sitting on my ass with the bike in front of me and pounding the ground with my very angry fists! Apparently Luke found this sight rather amusing… Finally we got them to their new paddock, and it only took us from 7am unti?!) is actually broken from being sat on a motorbike for all that time!! Never mind once we were home it was time to hit the shower and get over the aches and pains in order to head to McKinlay and the Walkabout Pub for farewell drinks for Jonny. You would have thought that after all this time spent travelling I am better at saying goodbye to people … unfortunately not L I still hate saying goodbye (even when I know people are headed off to have more adventures and fun). McKinlay will be losing a fabulous chef and I’m losing my doubles partner. It’s going to be weird not having Jonny around, but here’s to wishing him an awesome time in Thailand and all the best for the future.
Thursday 25th July – day 73
Early start this morning as we had to leave at 7am to drop Luke off at Cannington Mine for his flight to Townsville. He will now be away for at least two weeks whilst he attends his sisters wedding and then has an op on his shoulder (to stop it popping out all the time – yuck). Whilst he is away it will just be myself and James looking after things and so I can now officially add Station Manager to my CV – how cool is that?!
Our first task was supposed to be simple … moving the bulls into Ram paddock (just one paddock over from where they are currently staying). As I’ve mentioned before the bulls are really well behaved, they’re just a bit slow and lazy when it comes to being mustered up. Hahahahahaha famous last words!! Today one bull had clearly got up on the wrong side of the prickle bush and was doing everything in its power to misbehave. Started off by putting his head down and puffing a bit, which is normal behaviour for bulls that just can’t be arsed to move. The best thing to do in this instance is to drive head onto them with the quadbike and push them back until they give up and walk in the right direction. I started doing that with this bull (now named Nicholas…. Aka Nasty Nick… aka Dick(head) ) and all seemed to go to plan, but then he got a little bit peppy and decided to run in the opposite direction to where we wanted him to go, and where all the other bulls were slowly but compliantly walking to. James and I took persuit to get him in the right direction but he was having none of it. He started putting his head down and running a little bit at us, I persevered with the quadbike but when he turned and landed a hefty hoof on the front of my bike I took the executive decision to lay off him and let him run the way he wanted. After all he was running towards a holding paddock that had a gate into the paddock we wanted him to go in. So once Nick had helpfully run himself into the holding area, we tried again, leaving the gate to the correct paddock wide open for him. He was still having none of it, and started to actually charge at James who was on a motorbike. All I can say is thank god I was on the 4 wheeler, not being a super confident motorbike rider I would have most probably wet myself if I had been in that situation!! Thankfully James being a bit of a pro on the bike seemed to take it in his stride and even commented that he thought the bull would be faster – from where I was sat it looked more than fast enough!! So after dodging a very narky Nick we tried once more to get him toward the correct gate. Sadly the wind must have changed and he must have got a whiff of the ladies who had just come into the next door paddock for a morning drink. Next thing we know Nick has kamikaze rolled through the fence and is now in with the ladies. At which point I just thought, maybe I won’t be putting “Station Manager” on my CV after all!! The area that Nick had rolled into had a gate open which would allow him out into one of the larger paddocks giving him access to a number of poor cows who, having only just gotten rid of their greedy weaners, would be very unhappy to receive him and his habits! I then whizzed over to the said open gate, jumped off and shut it as fast as humanly possible… all the while Nick was pacing and staring at me and was not that far away. Thankfully he didn’t have the foresight to run at the gate (otherwise I would have been well and truly flattened, with Nick shaped hoof prints). Contained… again…we then tried to separate Nick from the ladies who were unfortunately trapped in the paddock with him … the wuss just kept hiding behind the ladies and randomly charging at James when he got too close. Not wanting to push him too much (and cause him to jump through another fence) we decided to leave him in with the ladies and headed home for a bit to let him cool off. After all Nick has been in a paddock with only other bulls for the last couple of weeks, you can’t blame him for getting a bit of Prison Fever.
Anyways the whole point of moving the fellas was so that we could put some lick out for them and help them put some weight on. (Some were starting to look a bit skinny and I was getting particularly concerned about Phill, the lovely bull from Irrigation Paddock who seems to have lost a lot of weight). Anyways James and I set to cutting and cleaning up a new pod to put their feed in and after lunch drove the feed and tubs out for the bulls. With regards to Nasty Nick we had to separate him from the cows, if that wasn;t possible then we were going to have to walk them all up the laneway into the yards and then separate them that way…. Not a prospect I favoured, as that would have involved getting up close and personal with Nick, on foot and in a confined space!! Fortunately when we got there the ladies had snuck away from him and we were able roar in and push them out of the gate away from him. He started to realise what we were doing, but fortunately but that point it was too late as I had blocked the gate with the Toyota. I still had to jump out and shut the gate, which was a little bit scary, even with the Nissan between me and pissy Nick. We then tried to coax him into the correct paddock, hoping that he would be better behaved without the women there to show off to. Nope, he was still having none of it. He even had a go at the Nissan – I wish I had taken a video as he actually put his head down and was pawing at the ground ready to charge. Again not wanting to wind him up and cause him to jump fences we decided to leave him in the paddock with the gate to his new paddock left open. We then dropped of the feed tubs and lick – feeling a little uneasy and checking over our shoulders (fearing Nick had decided to follow us in and eat us!). Once the food was out we headed out around 4mile to check the dam and said a little prayer to the cattle god, hoping that in the time we were away Nick would have smelt the lick, seen reason, and moved over to the new paddock. Halleluiah!! By the time we got back he had seen the error of his ways and moved off into the new paddock, and I could breathe a huge sigh of relief…. Station Manager back on CV … maybe?!
All I can say is what a day that turned out to be!!
Friday 26th July – day 74
Spent the morning out on a water run. Managed to not get a total ass whooping in Monopoly Deal – think it ended up 2 games a piece. As part of the run we did an extra bit of a loop around North Paddock to check on the Weaners that we walked over on Wednesday. It’s great seeing them out and about and not just stuck in the yards. They all looked happy and suitably round so that was a relief. After lunch James and I started to fix up a Nissan tyre (which had blown earlier that week during the water run). The tyres on the trucks have inner tubes and unfortunately the tube that blew was pretty much in pieces so we weren't able to just simply patch it up. The rust guard had also completely fallen apart and we couldn't find a replacement one, so thus ended the attempt to fix the tyre as we will need to get some extra parts in town before we can put it all back together. Feeling a little deflated (haha get it!) we headed out for a drive around 4 mile paddock fixing up holes. Found a fair few bits of fence backing onto neighbouring properties that needed some TLC. Hopefully now those bits are fixed up we won’t get any more of the neighbor's cows in our area.
Guess what … it’s Friday so off to tennis we went. Yup it was definitely weird without Jonny. Turns out myself and Amy make a reasonable partnership, comfortably beating Jasper and James. Sadly the same cannot be said about myself and James … I may need to pay for him to get some lessons, as I don’t think I can stand losing to Jasper every week!!
p.s. Again, sorry James !! :P
Saturday 27th July – day 75
Lie in, James checked on the weaners, who were all ok. We then drove into Cloncurry to do the weekly food shopping and also to pick up a new inner tube and rust belt for the tyre. Picked up two extras on the way (Cameron and Amy), so it ended up being a fun roadtrip into town. Jonny had left behind a fair few clothes so Amy bought them with her to drop off at Vinnies (charity shop). On route however there are a number of large ant hills, some of which have been dressed up/painted …. I think we may have created a new tradition- anyone that leaves must supply an outfit to be used to dress up an ant hill and immortalise their time in McKinlay!! As it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision we didn't have anything to make a face with, so ant Jonny is still a work in progress. Hopefully he will appreciate the thought! Didn't get up to much in Cloncurry town other than getting in the weekly food shop. Dropped Amy off on the way past McKinlay and Cameron came back to ours for the night, I cooked spaghetti and we showed him around some of the station (whilst checking in on 4 mile dam) .. spent the rest of the night watching a film and having a few beverages.
Sunday 28th July – day 76
Got up and the three of us checked in on the weaners and then we headed out on the motorbikes to show Cameron around (in daylight). Popped in to check on 4 mile dam and had a look in over at the bulls. Cameron was having a great time on the bike so decided to take him through the big open in House Dam (which is pretty rough stuff). Usually we ride on the cattle pads to try and make it a bit of a smoother road – Cam apparently likes it rough as he decided to just zoom across the rough, with the biggest smile on his face ever!! Once we’d waved Cameron off we headed over to the workshop to fix up one of the car tyres.
Drafted the weaners today separating the little/slightly wobbly on their feet ones from the bigger healthier weaners who will be making the 25+km walk over to Nulgra in a few days. We then drafted the larger ones again checking through to make sure they were all branded, ear marked, had been dehornedand for the boys … cut (sorry fellas!) There were a fair few that needed this treatment, so got a chance to practice branding, also did the ear marking and had a few goes at dehorning … I still think it seems pretty brutal, and depending on the size of the existing horns you either have to use a double edged knife to cut the horn and skin around it out, or for larger horns you have to use ‘super scoops’. These are like large sharp nut crackers, I found them easier to use than the knife and got a cleaner cut out of the horn… only thing is that the larger the horns are when you cut them out the more bloody it all is – I felt like I was in the middle of some Quentin Tatantino film with blood squirting all over the place :S , despite this the weaners soon hop up and are back running about like nothing happened, I think I end up more traumatised than they do!
Tuesday 23rd July – day 71
James and I headed out this morning to do the water run. I love getting out and doing the water run, I had been enjoying doing it on my own since Nena left - was a great way to relax and have some thinking time whilst driving through the paddocks …. However having another person along again has been great – not just because I no longer have to struggle lifting the 40kg lick bags, but also because it means I get to play Monopoly deal again (whilst we sit and wait for one of the tanks to fill up). Sadly I seem to have taught James how to play too well, and he has taken to smashing me at it L … Next time I introduce someone to the game I will ensure that I only give them the basic tips and tricks!! After lunch, and getting over my Monopoly defeats, we started to walk the big weaners over towards Nulgra. Luke made the decision that it would be best to walk them in two stages so we only took them over the road and left them overnight at a holding paddock. This is about 1/3rd of the total journey they will be making, but was still a fair old walk and took about 3 hours. I do often wish that cows would all just walk in a straight line and stop trying to eat the bloody grass, but I guess they can’t really help it – after all it is part of their nature!! By the end of this I was pretty shattered, and a little bit fed up of being on my bike, although that may have been due to the fact that I had a few falls off – they were all super slow and it was mostly because I hit a rut at an awkward angle, which normally wouldn’t result in falling off, but I was so tired that I just couldn’t hold the bike up when this happened so I ended up dropping my bike a few times. Ooops…
Wednesday 24th July – day 72
Early start today as we needed to get the weaners all the way to Nulgra by the end of the day. What little troopers they were too, all but one managed the rest of the walk. For the one that couldn’t walk all the way, I had to grab and tie its legs up so that Luke could go back to pick him up in the truck and drop him off at the final destination. Apart from that we only had one iffy moment where the weaners decided to take the hardest route across one of the creeks. It was like watching Lemmings dropping over a cliff!! We had to drag a couple of the weaker ones up the banks which was hard work; it was then even more challenging working out how to safely get ourselves and our motorbikes up and out of the sandy, steep sided creek, but I made it, and I didn’t fall off!! (this time anyway!) I will admit to getting very fed up at several other points during the day; the ground was very difficult to ride on (sandy with lots of bumpy mitchell grass and hidden holes) and I got stuck a fair few times. Luke witnessed one of my little paddys when I fell off (again at super slow speed) – I came very close to kicking the damn bike, but resorted to sitting on my ass with the bike in front of me and pounding the ground with my very angry fists! Apparently Luke found this sight rather amusing… Finally we got them to their new paddock, and it only took us from 7am unti?!) is actually broken from being sat on a motorbike for all that time!! Never mind once we were home it was time to hit the shower and get over the aches and pains in order to head to McKinlay and the Walkabout Pub for farewell drinks for Jonny. You would have thought that after all this time spent travelling I am better at saying goodbye to people … unfortunately not L I still hate saying goodbye (even when I know people are headed off to have more adventures and fun). McKinlay will be losing a fabulous chef and I’m losing my doubles partner. It’s going to be weird not having Jonny around, but here’s to wishing him an awesome time in Thailand and all the best for the future.
Thursday 25th July – day 73
Early start this morning as we had to leave at 7am to drop Luke off at Cannington Mine for his flight to Townsville. He will now be away for at least two weeks whilst he attends his sisters wedding and then has an op on his shoulder (to stop it popping out all the time – yuck). Whilst he is away it will just be myself and James looking after things and so I can now officially add Station Manager to my CV – how cool is that?!
Our first task was supposed to be simple … moving the bulls into Ram paddock (just one paddock over from where they are currently staying). As I’ve mentioned before the bulls are really well behaved, they’re just a bit slow and lazy when it comes to being mustered up. Hahahahahaha famous last words!! Today one bull had clearly got up on the wrong side of the prickle bush and was doing everything in its power to misbehave. Started off by putting his head down and puffing a bit, which is normal behaviour for bulls that just can’t be arsed to move. The best thing to do in this instance is to drive head onto them with the quadbike and push them back until they give up and walk in the right direction. I started doing that with this bull (now named Nicholas…. Aka Nasty Nick… aka Dick(head) ) and all seemed to go to plan, but then he got a little bit peppy and decided to run in the opposite direction to where we wanted him to go, and where all the other bulls were slowly but compliantly walking to. James and I took persuit to get him in the right direction but he was having none of it. He started putting his head down and running a little bit at us, I persevered with the quadbike but when he turned and landed a hefty hoof on the front of my bike I took the executive decision to lay off him and let him run the way he wanted. After all he was running towards a holding paddock that had a gate into the paddock we wanted him to go in. So once Nick had helpfully run himself into the holding area, we tried again, leaving the gate to the correct paddock wide open for him. He was still having none of it, and started to actually charge at James who was on a motorbike. All I can say is thank god I was on the 4 wheeler, not being a super confident motorbike rider I would have most probably wet myself if I had been in that situation!! Thankfully James being a bit of a pro on the bike seemed to take it in his stride and even commented that he thought the bull would be faster – from where I was sat it looked more than fast enough!! So after dodging a very narky Nick we tried once more to get him toward the correct gate. Sadly the wind must have changed and he must have got a whiff of the ladies who had just come into the next door paddock for a morning drink. Next thing we know Nick has kamikaze rolled through the fence and is now in with the ladies. At which point I just thought, maybe I won’t be putting “Station Manager” on my CV after all!! The area that Nick had rolled into had a gate open which would allow him out into one of the larger paddocks giving him access to a number of poor cows who, having only just gotten rid of their greedy weaners, would be very unhappy to receive him and his habits! I then whizzed over to the said open gate, jumped off and shut it as fast as humanly possible… all the while Nick was pacing and staring at me and was not that far away. Thankfully he didn’t have the foresight to run at the gate (otherwise I would have been well and truly flattened, with Nick shaped hoof prints). Contained… again…we then tried to separate Nick from the ladies who were unfortunately trapped in the paddock with him … the wuss just kept hiding behind the ladies and randomly charging at James when he got too close. Not wanting to push him too much (and cause him to jump through another fence) we decided to leave him in with the ladies and headed home for a bit to let him cool off. After all Nick has been in a paddock with only other bulls for the last couple of weeks, you can’t blame him for getting a bit of Prison Fever.
Anyways the whole point of moving the fellas was so that we could put some lick out for them and help them put some weight on. (Some were starting to look a bit skinny and I was getting particularly concerned about Phill, the lovely bull from Irrigation Paddock who seems to have lost a lot of weight). Anyways James and I set to cutting and cleaning up a new pod to put their feed in and after lunch drove the feed and tubs out for the bulls. With regards to Nasty Nick we had to separate him from the cows, if that wasn;t possible then we were going to have to walk them all up the laneway into the yards and then separate them that way…. Not a prospect I favoured, as that would have involved getting up close and personal with Nick, on foot and in a confined space!! Fortunately when we got there the ladies had snuck away from him and we were able roar in and push them out of the gate away from him. He started to realise what we were doing, but fortunately but that point it was too late as I had blocked the gate with the Toyota. I still had to jump out and shut the gate, which was a little bit scary, even with the Nissan between me and pissy Nick. We then tried to coax him into the correct paddock, hoping that he would be better behaved without the women there to show off to. Nope, he was still having none of it. He even had a go at the Nissan – I wish I had taken a video as he actually put his head down and was pawing at the ground ready to charge. Again not wanting to wind him up and cause him to jump fences we decided to leave him in the paddock with the gate to his new paddock left open. We then dropped of the feed tubs and lick – feeling a little uneasy and checking over our shoulders (fearing Nick had decided to follow us in and eat us!). Once the food was out we headed out around 4mile to check the dam and said a little prayer to the cattle god, hoping that in the time we were away Nick would have smelt the lick, seen reason, and moved over to the new paddock. Halleluiah!! By the time we got back he had seen the error of his ways and moved off into the new paddock, and I could breathe a huge sigh of relief…. Station Manager back on CV … maybe?!
All I can say is what a day that turned out to be!!
Friday 26th July – day 74
Spent the morning out on a water run. Managed to not get a total ass whooping in Monopoly Deal – think it ended up 2 games a piece. As part of the run we did an extra bit of a loop around North Paddock to check on the Weaners that we walked over on Wednesday. It’s great seeing them out and about and not just stuck in the yards. They all looked happy and suitably round so that was a relief. After lunch James and I started to fix up a Nissan tyre (which had blown earlier that week during the water run). The tyres on the trucks have inner tubes and unfortunately the tube that blew was pretty much in pieces so we weren't able to just simply patch it up. The rust guard had also completely fallen apart and we couldn't find a replacement one, so thus ended the attempt to fix the tyre as we will need to get some extra parts in town before we can put it all back together. Feeling a little deflated (haha get it!) we headed out for a drive around 4 mile paddock fixing up holes. Found a fair few bits of fence backing onto neighbouring properties that needed some TLC. Hopefully now those bits are fixed up we won’t get any more of the neighbor's cows in our area.
Guess what … it’s Friday so off to tennis we went. Yup it was definitely weird without Jonny. Turns out myself and Amy make a reasonable partnership, comfortably beating Jasper and James. Sadly the same cannot be said about myself and James … I may need to pay for him to get some lessons, as I don’t think I can stand losing to Jasper every week!!
p.s. Again, sorry James !! :P
Saturday 27th July – day 75
Lie in, James checked on the weaners, who were all ok. We then drove into Cloncurry to do the weekly food shopping and also to pick up a new inner tube and rust belt for the tyre. Picked up two extras on the way (Cameron and Amy), so it ended up being a fun roadtrip into town. Jonny had left behind a fair few clothes so Amy bought them with her to drop off at Vinnies (charity shop). On route however there are a number of large ant hills, some of which have been dressed up/painted …. I think we may have created a new tradition- anyone that leaves must supply an outfit to be used to dress up an ant hill and immortalise their time in McKinlay!! As it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision we didn't have anything to make a face with, so ant Jonny is still a work in progress. Hopefully he will appreciate the thought! Didn't get up to much in Cloncurry town other than getting in the weekly food shop. Dropped Amy off on the way past McKinlay and Cameron came back to ours for the night, I cooked spaghetti and we showed him around some of the station (whilst checking in on 4 mile dam) .. spent the rest of the night watching a film and having a few beverages.
Sunday 28th July – day 76
Got up and the three of us checked in on the weaners and then we headed out on the motorbikes to show Cameron around (in daylight). Popped in to check on 4 mile dam and had a look in over at the bulls. Cameron was having a great time on the bike so decided to take him through the big open in House Dam (which is pretty rough stuff). Usually we ride on the cattle pads to try and make it a bit of a smoother road – Cam apparently likes it rough as he decided to just zoom across the rough, with the biggest smile on his face ever!! Once we’d waved Cameron off we headed over to the workshop to fix up one of the car tyres.
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