The last week or so has been a blur. I am unsure what day I'm on
here, I think it's day 8? Again I feel like I have been here a month.
It is amazing how fast it is going bye. Hard work and enjoyment make
the days feel short. And over the past week or so we have been doing
a lot of hard work, feels great.
Each morning and night we feed the weaners and set out new hay. Tough
job to do by yourself but takes about 45 minutes with a couple of
blokes.
We have done about 3 or 4 musters. Where we gather and drive the
cattle to the yard (fenced in area to keep the cattle in) from the
patics, which are the grazing fields. Sometimes this goes smoothly
sometimes it does not. The largest one we did was around 570 cattle.
It is a lot of fun. Sometimes on might get away and you have to chase
it down on horseback and bring it back. I am pretty shitty at this but
I get it every time and again and feel real cowboy. My riding has
improved, now I am less than pretty awful. The horse I have been
riding is named Naughty and is pretty stubborn and always want to eat
and go home. But when he has to work he does well and we get along.
Tommy rode him and another a couple times and I learning to ride. Mr.
Curly jokes that he's going to bend the horse in half cause he's so
big. Mustering is awesome. But next week we have the bulls, 1500
testosterone filled meaty bulls. We are going to so them probably in
4 but they said that they are the worst cause they don't just walk
along like the cows they go anywhere they want, lots of yelling. That
will be a trip. Natalie and Mr. Curly are amazing riders of course,
and could probably do it by themselves. A neighbor, Luke, has been
over for the week and is amazing just as well. He also competes in
the bucking bronco contests and is hilarious, jokster like most
Australians. My ass feels less sore after each ride.
After we bring in the cattle we draft them. Separate them by calfs,
weaners, older cows/bullacks, etc. Then we brand and clip the new
guys. Pretty intense process burnt hair, skin, and blood. Then we
send them out back with their mothers. Some cattle is sent out on
huge 3 set trucks to other fields or the meat house.
Speaking of meat. They showed us how you go about a kill out here in
the outback. Every so often they will kill a cow or nutless bull and
eat it. They use all the meat of course and save it. They hang some
up, salt a lot of it and cook some right away. The salted meat they
make into corned beef. Which is like a huge chunk of jerky pretty
much and is amazing. Tastes so funking good. It's so salty, salty
beef. We eat it a lot. So Tom, Luke, and I went with Mr. Curly and
Clayton to go make a kill. After they shot it they quickly skinned it
then start cutting the different parts of the cow. I won't go into
detail but it was bloody and awesome. Axes, sharp knifes and
manliness were involved. After everything was done we hung around
the freshly cut beef and had a bunch of beers, dried blood and dirt on
my hands and shirt. We went back home had a big bonfire, cooked some
beef, liver, and this stuff called sweet bread (sort of like a kidney)
along with risotto and other vegetables. Ate so much. I fell asleep
in like 5 seconds.
That's pretty much what's been going on here. We do other jobs that
are not so glamorous like cleaning trofts, moving hay, lifting heavy
things but we always find the fun in it and are always laughing. And
we got real cowboy hats now so we look awesome.
Tom also killed a kangaroo and we BBQed it and made Roo curry. Tom
will have to tell you about that experience.
Hope all is well on the other side of earth.
- F
*Note: I cannot post pictures onto my post because it makes it too
large and crashes. I will post a picture reel when I get back into
Brisbane.
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