Sydney!

So, in spite of the keyboard upgrade, the promised updates just never happened. Sorry about that!
Between then and now an awful lot has changed! I finished my time at Walhallow in mid August. I flew to Brisbane where I met up with my sister Lauren who joined me for a 2 week Brisbane-to-Sydney road trip. It was amazing.
At the end of August Lauren flew back to Florida just in time to start her senior year and I started my new job! I'm working for Macquarie Bank - the company that owns the cattle station I worked on. So now, in an delightfully cyclical chain of events I am still working with Walhallow (and the company's 13 other properties), but this time I look after car insurance, account details, employee records and the like - basically the other end of keeping a station running.
Soon, I will write real updates of all these things (right, like you haven't heard that before...). I will tell you about pig hunting in Brisbane, petting with sharks in Port Stephen, the Opera house, dodgeball, and, best of all, my new apartment! But at the moment, I have to go to work!
For those of you who are interest, my new mailing address is

Jena Clarke
Apt 2 / 311B Edgecliff Rd
Woollahra, Sydney, NSW 2025
Australia

As Gus learned the hard way, you do in fact have to write "Australia" because otherwise your letter might end up in China.

'I' is back!

Literally, 'I', the letter, is back in action! Not to mention u, n, k, j, and all the other letters that had punked out on the old keyboard. Hooray! I want to write sentences brimming with 'i's. So now, after what has felt like a long absence, I will try to be more committed to my blog and give you an Outback update more often.

What Australia Doesn't Have

Suddenly on the 1st of June it got cold! Like 50 degrees cold! I realize that in the global scheme of things, this is still pleasant, and yes, we’re only wearing coats in the mornings, but after 3 months of 100+ degree heat, 50 is FREEZING! And besides. It’s JUNE! June is summer! It’s strawberries and ice cream trucks, sprinklers and bicycles. Instead I find myself craving new school supplies, apple orchards, fried bologna sandwiches, and pumpkin spice coffee. I can barely even fathom the thought that almost everyone I know is going boating and playing baseball while here it feels like September.

Speaking of things that I crave, I have been here for just over ¼ of a year, which I believe entitles me to at least one rant about the things that Australia does not have. Bear in mind that for me, “Australia” means “Northern Territory,” which is kind of like equating America with North Dakota. However, in the version of Australia that I am living, I have found these things to be missing:

Pumpkin pie. Although Australians eat more pumpkin than anyone I’ve ever seen, they don’t have pumpkin pie, or any sweet pumpkin foods, for that matter. To them, pumpkin is a vegetable, and pumpkin pie sounds about as appealing as pickle ice cream. I came to this realization one night at dinner when “it’s like pumpkin pie spice” drew total blank stares as I tried to explain to one of the guys what nutmeg tastes like. Overhearing this conversation, Di, our cook, actually made me a pumpkin pie the next day. It was strange to eat one in May but SO good! None of the Aussies would touch it because they thought it smelled like curry, which meant it was all mine!

Fried bologna sandwiches. Actually, any bologna at all. When I tried explaining bologna to Millie, our govie, she came up with a few potential Aussie replicas, but nothing in its true, delightfully over-processed unique glory. When 10 year old Tom asked me what was in it, it took me a minute, but I finally settled on pig. Sounds plausible enough. But ambiguous content or otherwise, I miss it!

Any spicy food, especially Mexican. The Aussies I work with have an embarrassingly low tolerance for spice. Black pepper can be too much for them. For such tough folks, this strikes me as surprisingly soft. Meanwhile, I would kill for some salsa and tortilla chips.

Saddle horns. The saddles look almost like Western saddles, except… no horn! I’m not sure whether it’s the explanation for or the result of this, but they also don’t use ropes. Instead they tend to tackle stray steers and hog tie them with hobble belts. Also, as a result, rope based rodeo sports – team roping, calf roping, etc, are significantly less popular. Instead (at least in the Territory) they camp draft.

Real coffee. Ok, so this is mostly just a Territory thing. Instead of drip coffee we drink instant. Even at the road houses this is true. I’m not sure why except that I guess it means they can just put on one urn of hot water for coffee, tea (which is more popular) and Milo (similar to hot chocolate but less sweet), and saves them from having to throw out coffee to make a fresh pot. The effect of this is that the Starbucks Via instant coffee that my family sent with me has gone from ‘pretty good’ to ‘phenomenal’ in my estimation.

Hot dogs. This might just be out on the station, but here we don’t have hot dogs. Instead we have a sausage that functions as both breakfast sausage and barbeque food. If you know me, you know that I love hot dogs, and these are just not an adequate substitute.

Ice cream floats. I was overcome by an ice cream float craving one particular hot, dusty day at the yards, so when we got home I fixed myself one and brought it to the Rec Club. Everybody recognized it as an old fashioned drink they call a “spider,” but no one had ever seemed to try one and were astonished that it would occur to me.

Reruns. This is strange, but since they get their TV shows a year late anyway, they don’t seem to bother stretching them out with reruns. As far as I can tell they just run a show all the way through and then quit til next season. One result of this is that individual shows seem to be on for less time during the year and their start dates are staggered so that new ones start as old ones end, unlike at home, where almost everything starts in the fall and end in the spring.

Memorial Day, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, or any other American holidays. This should be a no brainer, but it’s weird to realize that all of these people don’t celebrate out staple holidays, and generally don’t know anything about them except what they’ve seen in the movies. By the same token, they don’t hold in high esteem the related foods and symbols that we treasure – white can be worn year round, grills are meant for steaks and not hamburgers, and turkey is rarely eaten. To their credit, though, the Australians do have their own beloved holidays – Australia Day in January, Anzac Day in April (which I think is the day that Australia and New Zealand joined WWII), and Boxing Day in December, to name a few.

Baseball, football, basketball, or hockey. All of the major American sports, although known, are essentially overlooked here. Instead they play cricket, Aussie Rules, rugby, and field hockey (which is just called hockey). The absence of these sports also means that the Superbowl is meaningless, “baseball caps” are just “caps”, and cheerleaders are essentially nonexistent.

My list seems to be almost entirely food oriented. I guess this makes sense, since I am a fat kid in a skinny kid body and food is my one true love in life. For the record, the point of this post is NOT to get you all to send me these things. As much as I would love a package of hot dogs and a baseball player, I don’t think they would make it through customs, so mostly I just wanted to reminisce with an audience that I know would care as much as I do that there is a whole country of people who can’t sing the Oscar Meyer Weiner song. Because I’m sure you do care.

Photos

Here are some random photos of my life here in Australia. It's hard to take photos while working, and even rarer for me to actually be in them. Oh well.

Some of the folks I work with.

Cattle in the yards.

Mustering.

The station from the air during the wet.

Cattle from the air.

Bulls in the yards.

LOTS of hay.

Me & the Melbourne boys.

Me mustering on Candle.

Lucy on Smokey.

Me & Dingo.

Weaner camp.

Road Trains

Before coming out to Australia, I was talking with my Aunt Dacia about what I knew (or assumed) about the station. Over the course of the conversation she asked how one moves the product of 50,000 cows from the land to market. Unlike America, Australia is not a country whose development was heavily shaped by trains, so how then does one transport that volume of animals? The answer – road trains.

A road train is an 18 wheeler on steroids. More accurately, it is a 62 wheeler. One truck pulls 3 trailers at once. Given the remote nature of life in the Territory and the huge distances between population centers, road trains are the dominant means of transporting goods. On the road you will pass trains with 3 tankers full of petrol, some of standard box cars, and sometimes combinations – a truck pulling a freezer car, a box trailer, and a flatbed, for instance. Livestock is transported in double-decker trailers – 3 cars each with 2 levels of cattle. It’s a LOT of cows.

Walhallow, like almost every station, owns its own road train, which we use to move cattle around the property (usually to bring weaners back to the house yards from a paddock yard). When we sell cattle we use a trucking company like Currlie’s or RTA (Road Trains of Australia) to haul them for us. Our cattle end up in several different places depending on their fate. Older culled cows go straight to the abattoir (slaughter house) in Townsville, all the way toward the coast in the east. Young steers are sent to a fattening station in Davenport, also in Queensland, where they grow a while longer before moving to the feed lot. Last week we filled an order for over 1500 culled heifers to go to the Philippines, where they will live in a feed lot eating pineapple pulp. We loaded 9 road trains that went to Darwin where the cattle would be moved onto a boat and shipped overseas. What a strange life for a cow!

Our road train is a giant black and red serpent of a vehicle with a matching white and red cab named the Georgina Drover. On trucking mornings Cameron sets out early since the truck has to drive fairly slowly over the dirt roads. You can see it for miles by the plume of red dust it throws up in its wake. In spite of his early start, we usually beat Cameron to the yards to get the cattle loaded into the bugle and set the gates for the truck to pull through. All of our yards are designed with the road train in mind, so they allow for exceptionally wide turns and have “trucking gates” that allow the truck to pull up next to the loading chute and then drive straight out. Unlike American stock trailers, road trains load from the side. Obviously backing one of these rigs is a bit tricky.

Each trailer has 2 levels and each level has 2 bays. With cows we usually load 15 to a bay, but with smaller weaners we do 20-23. That’s as many as 276 animals per load. To move the cattle between cars there are “load throughs” – bridges that fold down between trailers and have sides that swing out and are chained into place. As soon as the truck hisses to a stop we all scramble up the sides, first setting the bottom load throughs and then balancing on the gates of the lower ones in order to set the top ones. This is hands down my favorite activity on the whole station. It’s like a jungle gym for adults. And they pay me for it.

Once the gates are all in place, we send the cattle up the race, one bay at a time, starting with the top level, loading from back to front. As each bay is filled, the gates are shut behind them and the load throughs are put up. To reach the top deck, the floor of the first trailer is lowered to form a ramp. Once all the top deck cattle are in place, the ramp is raised and we start with the bottom deck. When the cattle load fluidly everything moves quickly and we can usually load a road train in under half an hour. Unfortunately, when weaners get stubborn and start bailing up in the race it can take much longer. The whole process is VERY loud, with the deafening rumble and clatter of cattle trundling through the cars and ringers whooping and hollering, driving them up the race and to the back of the truck. The noise and the dust gives the process an air of excitement that would not be out of place in the Fort Worth stockyards at the turn of the century, loading trains of cattle bound for the east.

The Beauty to Riding Breakers

Today I rode Wilbur, my 3 year old breaker. It was, shall we say, a bit of an adventure. For the past week or two we have been doing a lot of yard work so I have had very little time in the saddle to split between my 5 horses. As a result, young Wilbur has been out to pasture for a few weeks and today had forgotten much of what we had covered previously – namely focusing on the job and not your friends, and not throwing temper tantrums at work.

We started the day tailing cattle – leading a mob of cows that had been penned in the yards out to graze in the paddock for a few hours before returning them to the yards. This is a fairly low key activity and is usually Wilbur speed, but today he was just not in the mood. He was stubborn and fussy and cried out constantly to the other horses. However, we made it through 4 or 5 hours of calmly herding cows, including riding in the lead, the rear, and as point – all more challenging positions than simply the wing and all new for Wilbur.

Then, at about 1:30, with ominous clouds sweeping in from the south, Cameron drove up and reassigned us. Instead of lazily following cattle, we would be moving 1,500 heifers back to the house yards – a trip that would take several kilometers and several hours. Not only that, but unlike the doughy cows we had been moving all morning, these heifers were feisty and pushy. To top it off, once the motorbikes and chopper had gathered the cattle in from the holding paddock, it started raining, a slow, steady drizzle. Needless to say, these were not optimal conditions for Wilbur on his best day, and, let’s be honest, this was not his best day. Not by a long shot.

With the mob all gathered, Adam, our head stockman, said “Jena, take the lead.” A whole muster riding lead! I haven’t ridden lead for a muster on ANY horse, let alone Wilbur. I was stoked! I gathered my reins, urged my steed full speed ahead and then… disaster. Wilbur lost his mind. He reared and whinnied, he kicked and spun, and then he learned his new favorite trick – he took the bit in his mouth and violently shook his head. With this one moment’s outburst, the whole tone of the day changed. Suddenly I was demoted back to the wing, and instead of riding a charmingly inexperienced breaker, I was seated on a monster.

Although the drive went well, Wilbur’s mood did not improve, and he spent the whole afternoon pitching a fit. Imagine a 2 year old going to pieces in the floor of a grocery store. Most of it was manageable and we were able to get our work done in spite of him. After a few hours of this, with the cattle moving smoothly, we reached the point in the drive where the road passes through thick scrub. After only a few minutes of this, Wilbur thrashed his head so hard that his bridle was thrown forward off his ears and was left with only the bit dangling from his mouth. Suddenly I was riding a half trained, unbridled breaker in the bush. With images of me being run off with helplessly, I leapt off my horse and grabbed the reins around his neck. It seems like I saw it happening even before it did, and, as I pleaded “No, no, no!” Wilbur reared up, broke away from my grasp, and bolted. He didn’t just run off into the bush though. That would have been bad enough. No, my horse burst into the mob of cattle, setting them into a gallop and scattering them into the bush.

There I was, on foot, bridle in hand, alone in the bush, swearing profusely. Within a few minutes Adam rode up, following the stream of profanities. “It happens,” he said. “That’s the beauty to riding breakers.”

I spent a few minutes walking behind the mob, watching the helicopter sweep up the debris and listening to Adam and the other horsemen mending my mistakes. As I watched, Fonzie, the chopper pilot, swooped back around the tail of the recollected mob, and settled in the road in front of me, shaking his head and laughing. He then pulled out a second headset and pushed open the passenger side door. In a few short seconds, my whole day turned around. Suddenly, instead of being the idiot who loses her horse and has to walk home, I'm the idiot who gets to fly!

We spent the next hour watching the progress of the work below, first as the long line of white cattle filed down the red dirt road and pooled at the fence line waiting to be let through the gate, and then the drama as Adam and Jesse, the top hand, tried to catch my renegade mount. Clearly Wilbur was pleased with the freedom he had stolen, and he gave them the run around for at least half an hour - coming just out of reach and then dashing off again. In addition, Fonzie pointed out landmarks that I had only ever seen from ground level and showed off a little with his chopper, zooming down on cattle in an adjacent paddock, hovering just above the swishing treetops, and climbing high into the air so I could get the full view of the landscape.

Later that evening I had to go to the Rec Club and sheepishly apologize and profusely thank everyone who had helped retrieve my horse. In the end they simply added him to the herd of cattle and drove him to the house yards with the rest of them where they were then able to catch and unsaddle him. I am truly and immensely grateful and I do feel terrible that I made so much extra work for everyone. but honestly, it's hard to fully regret the situation when I got a helicopter ride out of the deal! And let's be honest, that's worth a few blows to my pride.

Kent Saddelry

Needless to say, with the nearest town of any size 5 hours away, there are not many chances to go shopping here in the outback. In light of this fact, the travelling salesman is a breed of entrepreneur that is still alive and well and doing a booming business across the Territory and beyond. During the dry season, hawkers travel across the country moving from station to station peddling their wares, catering to the folks who lead this isolated lifestyle.

Last night we got our first hawkers of the season here at Walhallow. The good people from Kent Saddlery, Lyle and Helen Kent rolled into the station just before sundown in their truck full of goodies. The Kents spend four months out of every year driving their RV rig across Australia, starting at their shop in south Queensland and working West. As the name implies, they specialize in horse tack, all handmade in their workshop, although they carry everything a stationhand could need- work shirts, pocket knives, candy (“lollies”), beautiful handmade belts, and more. When they arrive at a station, they open up the sides of their truck and set out several folding tables of merchandise. Most of their wares hang fixed to the inside of the trucks fold-out walls and everything they sell is packed efficiently and conveniently in pull-out bins.

Now, before I continue, let me remind you that a. I don’t get out much, b. I’m a girl. So yes, I did a little shopping. I bought a saddle bag, ferrier’s roll, fly veil, and a stock whip – all very Australian purchases (and useful! – or so I am telling myself). American saddlebags are two bags that are connected and tied onto the back of the saddle using the saddle strings. Australian saddlebags come separately and clip onto D rings, since Australian saddles don’t have strings. I only bought one, large enough for some food and my camera, which I plan to balance out with a water bottle on the other side. Now I have no excuses for not taking photos! A ferrier’s roll is a piece of leather with pockets for all of the basic horse shoeing tools. It rolls up into a tidy bundle and buckles closed. It’s far more portable than a shoeing box and way more accessible than stuffing everything into a bag. Now my floating tools will all have a convenient home. A fly veil is a leather band with leather strings that you strap to the brow band of your horse’s bridle. The strings hang down its face so that when it shakes its head they swat at the flies. My poor fly crazed Candid will love it. And finally, the stock whip. The one I bought is about 8 feet long, made of kangaroo leather with a handle that is wood and leather. Fonzy, the chopper pilot, is adamant that every good ringer should know how to handle a whip and should always ride with one. At the moment, I am worthless with a whip. I tried cracking one earlier this week and succeeded only in wrapping it around my head. I’m not quite a natural.

In the course of making these purchases I got to talking with Lyle and Helen about the differences between American and Australian saddelry and work wear. Lyle asked to see some of my gear, so the next morning I brought over some of my embroidered pearl snap shirts, my wildrag scarf, the classic Western hat, and of course, of course, my gigantic, blinged out belt buckle. They do not wear belt buckles like mine in Australia. At some point, the conversation turned into dress up, which turned into a photo shoot, followed by an interview. So suddenly I guess I’m going to be in the 2011 Kent Saddlery catalogue as the Walhallow Yank and proud owner of a Kent Saddlery stock whip. Oh boy.

Ladies' Day

Last Saturday was Ladies’ Day. Officially called “The Barkly Women’s Day at the Barkly Homestead,” Ladies’ Day is a chance for the women of the Barkly Tablelands to get together for a morning of lectures followed by lunch. This year’s speakers included 2 cooks, a homeopath, a chiropractor, and a personal image consultant. All of them related their talks to the lifestyles of women in the outback- far from services, with few resources at their disposal, and surrounded by a male-dominated world. Some speakers were better than others, but overall it was a good morning. The lunch that followed was especially nice because it wasn’t beef. We had lamb and chicken ceasar salad – both rare treats on stations where anything that isn’t beef has to be trucked in great distances in a refrigerated truck. There was also pumpkin salad with avocado (another rarity), spanikopita, asparagus quiche, and other tasty varieties of “chick food” that no self respecting jackaroo would be caught dead eating. Naturally, I loved it. For desert there were several types of pie and cheesecakes, and an ample supply of champagne.

Once the legitimate purpose of the day had been concluded, the drinking began. The women had come from all over the region, some from as much as 4 hours away, and ranged in age from 18 to 60+. The younger girls, there were maybe 20 of us, were mostly governesses and jillaroos, while the older women, about 80 of them, tended to be the wives of station managers and employees. Following lunch, the women rounded up their children and either headed home or went outside for a wine and cheese picnic. The Barkly Homestead (affectionately called “the Bark Hut,” or just “the Hut”) is a road house, and like any Australian road house, is mostly popular for its bar, which we younger girls made sure received ample business through the afternoon. At about 6:00, once they had finished work for the day, some of the boys from the closer stations, mostly Brunette Downs and Walhallow, drove out to show their appreciation for the ladies of the Barkly.

It was wonderful to escape the Walhallow bubble for a day and it was especially great to meet the jillaroos from the other stations. Some of them have been at this work for a while and are really awesome tough cookies, with lots of war stories about crazy horses, psycho bosses, and nightmare musters. It was such a relief to sit around and laugh about all the things that can, and often do, go wrong in the bush, regardless of where you work. The governesses (called “govies”) were fun too – mostly 18 year old girls on a gap year before university. We all enjoyed the company of other females for a change and a break from the constantly male-dominated conversation.

That night Lucy (the other Walhallow jillaroo) and I rolled out our swags in the back of the Toyota and slept under the stars. A “swag” is a bedroll complete with sleeping pad, sheets, comforter and pillow, which rolls up in a big canvas envelope. It’s huge but everybody here has one and they are surprisingly comfortable and warm. In the morning we rolled them back up, ate a quick breakfast, and made the 2 hour drive back to the station where we promptly went back to sleep for the rest of the day.

Letters

Thank you SO much to everyone eho has sent me letters! It truly makes my ent1re week to get someth1ng on the Fr1day ma1l plane. 1f you want to mail me someth1ng, my address 1s...

Jena Clarke
Walhallow Stat1on
PMB 12
Tennant Creek, NT 0862

Please don't spend heaps of money send1ng me packages though, and as thoughtful as 1t sounds, 1 can't brew coffee, so just hang onto 1t and we'll dr1nk 1t when 1'm states1de aga1n.

Thanks,
Jena

Pop 1t 'Cause 1t's Hot

The dress here 1s, above all else, extremely funct1onal. Every aspect of l1fe 1s centered on work1ng hard and be1ng out of doors, wh1ch 1s reflected 1n the cloth1ng. Not to ment1on, the nearest shopp1ng mall 1s over 12 hours away 1n Darw1n or Al1ce Spr1ngs, so wardrobes are not often updated.

The bore runners who dr1ve around the stat1on check1ng on the 50+ water pumps dress 1n shorts and collared work sh1rt w1th the sleeves cut off. Those of us who work w1th the cattle and horses every dayhave to cover up a bt more as protect1on from the sun and tall grass. We wear sturdy jeans and long sleeve work sh1rts. 1 try to keep my sleeves down as much as 1 can stand to h1de from the sun, but the guys all wear them rolled up to the1r elbows, g1v1ng them dark brown forearms. Com1ng as 1 do from the Amer1can trad1t1on of ranch1ng, all of my sh1rts are pearl snaps. Here, however, the guys wear sh1rts that only unbutton half way. Several of the boys don't bother w1th the buttons at all and wear the1r sh1rts open to the sternum, w1th the1r collars popped to guard aga1nst the relentless sun, lend1ng them an amus1ngly '80s look. Add to that the fact that none of them have had a ha1r cut 1n 2 months and you have a rec1pe for an Outback vers1on of New K1ds on the Block.

Aga1n, as the stubborn Amer1can, 1 wear cowboy boots, wh1ch the Auss1es refer to as "h1gh tops," nearly every day, regardless of the act1v1ty. Somet1mes 1f we're r1d1ng the Austral1ans w1ll wear h1gh tops, but the typ1cal Austral1an footwear 1s e1ther elast1c-s1ded anhle boots for r1d1ng, or lace up work boots for yard work. For my b1rthday, Dad got me a beaut1ful par of elast1c-s1ded R. M. W1ll1ams boots, wh1ch the boys call my "town boots" because they are so n2ce. Everyone 1s moderately appalled that 1 would even cons1der work1ng 1n such n1ce boots, but 1 f1gure that th1s 1s the1r 1ntended purpose 1n l1fe, so they m1ght as well be used.

W1th the blaz1ng sun, a w1de br1mmed hat 1s absolutely 1nd1spensable. M1ne 1s a grey Seretell1, g1ven to me by the wonderful Lance Ra1nwater last fall. 1n true western style, 1ts s1des are turned up, creat1ng what the Auss1es laugh1ngly call "gutters." 1 th1nk 1t 1s a beaut1ful hat wh1ch, unfortunately, makes 1t a constant target because the boys feel 1t needs more "character." Dodg1e, one of my fellow r1ngers, dec1ded that 1t wouldn't be truly broken 1n unt1l 1t had a good smear of cow's , wh1ch he attended to. So Lance, your hat 1s be1ng well used and has plenty of character. Sorry.

The Austral1ans wear a brand of hat called Charl1e One Horse, wh1ch are g1ant off-wh1te numbers w1th a small horse show branded on the crown. They wear them almost flat except for the very edge of the r1ms, whech are turned up, offer1ng the max1mum amount of shade poss1ble. Although the color 1s funct1onal 1n the sun, 1t's not very pract1cal for the d1rty work we do and each hat 1s un1quely spotted w1th dust, fly dew, cow's and motor o1l. Lots of character.

There are a few women here who work 1ndoors. They usually wear polo sh1rts, shorts, and fl1p flops, wh1le st1ll manag1ng to keep the1r fa1r sk1n. 1, on the other hand, am baked brown and burst1ng w1th freckles, but only on my forearms and face. What's more, 1 spend so much t1mes be1ng d1rty and dressed l1ke a boy that when 1 show up at Rec Club w1th clean ha1r and a t sh1rt, people ask me why 1'm all dressed up. i'll adm1t that 1 m1ss feel1ng l1ke a g1rl at t1mes.

Heat, Dust & Fl1es

Beng the b1bl1oph1les that they are, my fam1ly saw to 1t that 1 left for Austral1a w1th a whole stack of Austral1an-themed books. A good th1ng, too, s1nce read1ng 1s almost the only th1ng to do on a Sunday afternoon and already my stockp1le 1s dw1ndl1ng. The l1st 1ncludes "The Thorn Brds" by Colleen McCullough, about a fam1ly l1v1ng on a stat1on 1n the early 1900's. One of the characters from the book says, "Th1s 1s the Outback, and there are three th1ngs you'll never defeat - the heat, the dust and the fles. No matter what you do, they'll always be w1th you." How true!

A few weeks ago, after spend1ng the morn1ng work1ng yearl1ngs 1n the shade of the round pen, 1 thought to myself "Wow! 1t doesn't feel nearly so hot today." At lunch 1 checked the thermometer and 1t was 114. 1 don't thnk 1 had ever actually exper1enced 114 degree temperatures before, much less often enough that a breeze and a b1t of shade felt l1ke s1gn1f1cant rel1ef. Not only 1s 1t absurdly hot, but we wear long sleeves, jeans, hats and boots. Wh1le th1s seems unbearable, s1nce we work 1n the d1rect sun almost all the t1me, 1t 1s essent1al. 1 put on sunscreen 4 t1mes a day and st1ll my hands are brown. At lunch out 1n the yards we all crouch 1n the shade of the brand1ng tra1ler, h1d1ng from the relentless sun, grateful for even th1s fragment of rel1ef. The sun seems to love Austral1a more than 1t does the rest of the world. We start work each day by 5 am because even by 9 the heat 1s already overwhelm1ng.

The dust 1s also unl1ke anyth1ng 1 had prevously exper1enced. Th1s part of the country 1s called the Red Centre for 1ts 1ntensely red clay so1l. 1t makes for some extraord1nary colors, but 1t 1s so f1ne that the sl1ghtest breeze k1cks up a dust storm. Add to that the hooves of 2,000 cows. Wh1le we're out muster1ng we eat a fa1r b1t of dust, but 1t's noth1ng compared to yard work. W1th so many cows 1ns such a small place, what l1ttle grass there was to start w1th 1s qu1ckly demol1shed. We all end up w1th dust tans and d1rt mustaches. The sleeves and collars of all of my shrts are now permanently t1nted red.

The fl1es here are noth1ng l1ke the lazy fru1t fl1es we know 1n Amer1ca. Austral1an fl1es, called buffalo fl1es, are small, b1t1ng n1ghtmares that are totally capable of dr1v1ng a person mad. They don't just land on you - they settle on you 1n th1ck clouds, cover1ng your jeans, shoulders, and hat - anythng you are not act1vely defend1ng. What's more 1s you let them, because as long as they're not on your face, 1t's better just to let them be. But are they sat1sf1ed w1th that arrangement? No! They want to be everywhere. They try to snuggle 1n your ears, crawl up your nose, wr1ggle up your cuffs, and rest on your l1ps. They are aston1sh1ngly pers1stent. Amus1ngly, 1 put my ponyta1l to 1ts 1ntended use, swsh1ng constantly to keep the buggers at bay.

Fortunately, my quarters prov1de a resp1te. My trusty l1ttle a1r con chugs away all day so that 1 can come home and collapse on my bed 1n cool rel1ef. Lev1, the gardener, keeps the lawn around the house watered and tr1mmed, wh1ch saves us from much dust, so although 1 have to sweep a few t1mes a week, 1t's manageable. At n1ght when 1 keep my l1ght on to read, my room f1lls w1th all manner of nsect - fly1ng ants, t1ny black speck bugs, and, most recently, droves of st1nk bugs (called g1dgey bugs). But at least there are no fl1es and my screens keep out most of the mozz1es (a charm1ng Austral1an1sm for 'mosqu1toes,' wh1ch makes them sl1ghtly more endear1ng and not s1mply wretched).

Chopper

1'm not sure that 1 have thuroughly conveyed just how cool 1t 1s to muster w1th a hel1copter. Muster1ng w1th a HEL1COPTER!! had heard of such a th1ng, but 1 never, NEVER dreamt of see1ng 1t for myself.

Our chopper p1lot 1s named Cameron, but everyone calls h1m Fonzy. He 1s an am1able guy w1th a spectacular handlebar mustache, wh1ch he takes great care to ma1nta1n. Rather than a plot who sw1tched to acttle work, he was a stockman who took up fly1ng. As a result he 1s very knowledgeable about all th1ngs cow and has a great sense for the an1mals.

Last week we mustered the Number 1 Hold1ng Paddock, wh1ch 1s essent1ally a ret1rement home for old or m1sf1t bulls. There were l1terally hundreds of them, plus 1,000 some odd cows. Bulls at home are stocky, 1nt1m1dat1ng creatures, but they have noth1ng on the bulls here. We have 2 types of bulls - crossbreds and Brahmans. The crossbreds are stout beasts wth broad chests and wde backs. They are the embod1ment of pure muscle. The Brahmans, theogh, are the really daunt1ng ones. They are taller than a man and have great fatty humps lke a camel's on the1r necks. They look l1ke steam locomot1ves and move w1th the power of one, too. G1ven he raw strength of these creatures comb1ned w1th the1r 1nnate aggress1on, muster1ng them on horseback 1s a terr1ble 1dea. 1f one turns on you, and they 1nev1tably do, you are pretty much up a creek. Thus the hel1copter.

Watch1ng Fonzy work was absolutely 1ncred1ble. Cattle generally have a tremendous d1sl1ke for the chopper, and 1t takes l1ttle more than the sound of the rotor to set them mov1ng away from 1t. Although most of the bulls follow su1t, somet1mes they w1ll confront the1r aggressor. Whenever a bull would make a break for 1t, Fonzy would swoop around and cut 1t off, hover1ng nearly at eye level, challeng1ng the bull head on. The an1mal would stomp ts hooves and throw 1ts head wh1le the chopper jabbed 1n closer, f1nally forc1ng 1t to back down and turn back to the mob.

The cattle 1n the hold1ng paddock were an espec1ally w1ld mob, and a few t1mes they would run 1nto the yards, sp1ral around the fence, and burst out aga1n 1n a churn1ng mass. Then Fonzy would be off l1ke a shot. He would let them run off some steam and then c1rcle them back around, d1rect1ng them back 1nto the yards. 1t was amaz1ng watch1ng th1s flu1d mass of cattle ebb1ng and flow1ng l1ke water 1n, out, and around the yards. (Granted, the 'out' and 'around' were not the desred outcomes, but st1ll cool to watch.) Wth the last l1ght of duck the chopper chased the fnal cows 1nto the wards and then z1pped home. 1 got some amaz1ng photos wh1ch hopefully 1'll be able to post someday.

Although the chopper somet1mes works alone, more often he works as part of the team for the b1g musters. We, the horseback rders, move the cattle along, wh1le Fonzy tracks down stray from the far corners of the paddock. So far the country we have been muster1ng has been mostly downs country - flat, grassy pla1ns dotted w1th only a handful of trees. However, on out f1rst muster we had to pass through a short stretch of bush country just before reachng the yards. As the name 1mpl1es, bush country 1s th1ck scrub, 1n wh1ch you can only see 20 cows ahead or beh1nd you and 1t 1s absurdly easy to lose a whole mob (not to ment1on yourself!) w1thout even real1z1ng 1t. That 1s exactly what happened to me on my f1rst foray 1nto the bush. The mob broke ahead of me and 1 was the only r1der for ages. 1 couldn't maneuver through the trees and the cattle were scatter1ng 1n every d1rect1on. Enter Deus Mach1na. L1ke an angel from heaven, the hel1copter suddenly appeared, sweepng up my cattle and pushng them back to the fence. He then ponted me 1n the r1ght d1rect1on and w1th a wave was off aga1n to hunt down more. Needless to say, at that moment Fonzy was my hero.

Brand1ng Calves

The second half of yard work 1s brand1ng the calves. On days when we have the whole team out at the yards we might start with only 3 people wh1le the draft1ng 1s st1ll go1ng, but usually we wa1t unt1l we have everyth1ng sorted 1nto the1r respect1ve pens. With 7 of us working, 1t 1s an extremely fast process and you have to move qu1ckly and keep every one of your movements flu1d and organ1zed so that you can get 1n and out to make room for the next person to work.

"Brand1ng" actually refers to a whole flurry of act1v1ty done to the calves to prepare them for l1fe as respectable Walhallow cattle. Dur1ng draft1ng the calves, wh1ch range 1n age from a week to a few months and accordingly vary 1n s1ze from about 40-150 k1los, are put 1nto a ser1es of pens s1m1lar to a m1n1ature bugle. At the end of the l1ne of pens there 1s a contrapt1on called a "calf cradle." 1t's l1ke a large steel sandw1ch board that squashes the calf 1n place and then fl1ps s1deways so that the calf 1s ly1ng on 1ts s1de.

Once the calf 1s 1n pos1t1on, everything happens l1ke clockwork. 1t gets ear tags 1n both ears. The one on the left 1s the Walhallow tag (orange th1s year) wh1ch s1mply says "Paraway" (the company that owns the stat1on). They don't bother g1v1ng the cattle numbers because they don't keep records on 1nd1v1dual an1mals. W1th 50,000 of them 1t would be both 1mposs1ble and po1ntless. The tag 1n the r1ght ear conta1ns an 1D ch1p wh1ch 1s used to 1dent1fy the an1mal's or1g1n and track 1t's movements as 1t goes from the stat1on to the feedlot to the pack1ng house. Th1s 1s a relat1vely new government requ1rement that 1 bel1eve arose 1n response to mad cow, although 1'm pretty sure Austral1a has never had a case of mad cow (correct me 1f 1'm wrong). 1 th1nk that's probably an example of the1r Br1t1sh her1tage and European-1nfluenced precautonary principle at work.

1n case they should lose the1r ear tag, the calves are also ear notched to s1gn1fy that they are Walhallow cattle, and then branded on the h1p w1th the station's "ATE" brand. Apparently the "A" and "E" are the 1n1t1als of the f1rst company to own the stat1on, and every cattle stat1on 1n the Northern Terr1tory 1ncludes a "T" 1n 1ts brand. 1n add1t1on, they get branded w1th the1r b1rth year, so th1s year's batch all gets "0"s. All of the calves are also dehorned to make them safer to handle and sh1p later 1n l1fe.

As 1s usually the case for l1vestock, the females (he1fers) get the better end of the deal. Once they are all marked up, they get turned out w1th the1r mommas for a restorat1ve dose of m1lk and TLC. Unfortunately for the bull calves, Walhallow buys ts breed1ng males (they bought over 300 new bulls last year!), so before they're released they have to go from "hes" to "1ts." Th1s 1s done as qu1ckly as poss1ble w1th a blade that 1s met1culously sharpened. Nevertheless, 1t's not a good day for the l1ttle guys.

Once all of the calves are worked and turned out 1nto the ma1n yard, we hop on our horses and let the cattle back 1nto the paddock. The f1rst thought of a cow that has spent a day 1n a dirt yard 1s to get out of Dodge 1n a hurry, wh1ch makes them rather forgetful mothers. 1nstead of simply lett1ng them bolt, we r1de around the herd, keep1ng them close to allow the cows and calves to "mother up." Once the head stockman 1s sat1sf1ed that all the l1ttle ones are accounted for, we head back to the yards and let the cattle amble 1nto the abyss.

The last task at the yards 1s truck1ng the weaners back to the house yards. Th1s usually happends the day after yard work and, s1nce 1t takes several loads to move them all, 1t 1s typ1cally an all day project. Once back home, the Weaner Camp takes over. 1 have not yet worked 1n the Weaner Camp, so 1 do not yet have much to say on that subject. You'll just have to wa1t.

Yard Work

So just as a d1scla1mer, the letter between 'h' and 'j' has mostly broken on th1s keyboard, so 1 w1ll be replac1ng 1t w1th '1.' 1 know, 1t's w1erd.


Explaining yard work is something of a vocab lesson. Sorry, just bear with me. "Yard work," rather than trimming hedges and weeding flower beds, refers to any cattle work done in the yards.

After mustering, we leave the cattle in 2 "water yards" overnight, where they have access to water and are able to chill out before we start handling them. In the "Hitchhker's Guide to the Galaxy," the spaceshp makes a sound l1ke 1,000 people say1ng "wop" at the same t1me when 1t appears, wh1ch 1s almost exactly what the cattle yards sound l1ke - a cacophony of wop. 1t makes you wonder whether there s a Somebody Else's Problem h1d1ng 1n pla1n s1ght...

The next day, bright and early, we hitch up the branding trailer and head out to the yards. A branding trailer is an ingenious little rig that hauls everything a person could need for cattle work- branding forge and propane tanks, several bins or ear tags and tools, 2 coolers (called "Eskies"); one for our lunches and the other for vaccines. There are even racks for are saddles. We pretty much never leave home without it.

At the yards, we lay out all of our tools, set the gates to the bugle, and begin shuffling the cattle into place. A bugle is a curved set of pens that start large and work down to small ones. At the end of the bugle 1s the race - an alley only w1de enough for a s1ngle f1le l1ne of cows. The race leads to the crush. The crush 1s a stall b1g enough for only one cow, so that she can't move around wh1le we work on her. 1t has a head catch on the front and back ends to trap her 1n. Somet1mes the cattle need some k1nd of work done, l1ke vacc1nat1ons, new ear tags, or brand1ng, wh1ch 1s accompl1shed wh1le the an1mal 1s stat1onary 1n the crush. On the ex1t end of the crush there are sw1ng1ng gates wh1ch can be moved to draft the an1mal 1nto one of 4 yards.

Usually draft1ng 1s the pr1mary act1v1ty of yard work. The cattle get sorted by type. "Wet cows," wh1ch are cows w1th calves, go 1nto one pen, "fat cows" - cows w1thout calves and thus destned for sale, go 1nto another, calves go 1nto a small pen, and "weaners" (older calves that have been weaned from ther mothers) go 1nto the yard where we stand to work. Usually the bulls get sorted 1n w1th the wet cows, but once 1n a wh1le when we need to separate them they get drafted 1n w1th the weaners, wh1ch means 1n wth us! 1t's not a b1g deal 1n the morn1ng when there are only a few an1mals h1d1ng 1n the corners. But by the end of the afternoon the yard 1s crammed w1th cr1tters and hundred of bulls the s1ze of small cars dr1ft around your work space. You have to puff up your chest, tell that bull to scram or you'll show h1m, and then hope to God he doesn't th1nk to call your bluff. You also have to constantly keep an eye out and be ready to scurry up the ra1ls and out of the road 1n a heartbeat. 1t takes some gett1ng used to.

Yard work runs best w1th about 7 people. 2 folks work the "back yards" - mov1ng cattle forward through the bugle 1n progress1vely smaller chunks, unt1l there are only about a dozen 1n the last pen. From here, one person works the race, mak1ng sure the cattle walk 1n one after the other and cont1nue all the way down to the crush. Th1s 1s what 1 usually do. Weaners are the most d1ff1cult to move because they are new to the process and they're small enough to turn around 1n the race, so they often ball up and head the wrong way. When th1s happens, someone has to jump 1n the race and push them all the way through. The boys all seem to l1ke that part because 1t means they get to manhandle someth1ng b1gger than themselves (although 1 must confess that 1 l1ke 1t too for the same reason!). 4 or 5 people usually work at the crush; one person operates the head gate to catch the cows, 1 or 2 others work on the cattle, brand1ng or ear tagg1ng as necessary, and someone opperates the gates to let the an1mal 1nto the correct pen. The last person keeps a tally of everyth1ng that goes through - no small task cons1der1ng the volume of cattle we work.

Mustering

There are 3 main divisions to the cattle work here; mustering and yard work,both of which are Stock Camp tasks, and tailing weaners, which is the Weaner Camp's job.

Mustering is the process of bringing the cattle in from the paddocks to the yards (pens). At home this is called "rounding up" or "gathering." Paddocks vary in size; small ones are 60-80 km2, but most are 150-200 km2. Bush Paddock, in the furthest northeastern corner of the station, is a whopping 1,825 km2. It takes 4 days to muster. Each paddock usually has between 1,000 and 5,000 cows. Tat's just cows. There are also this year's calves and last year's weaners, not to mention all the bulls that made the calves. It's a lot of cattle.

On the morning of a muster, we saddle our horses at dawn and get them loaded onto the horse float (truck) at first light. So far the paddocks we have mustered have been less than an hour away, but as we start working the further ones I'm sure our days will get earlier. The mustering crew usually consists of 5 horseback riders, 2 guys on motorbikes and, get this, a helicopter. The bikes and chopper are already at work by the time the cavalry arrives. Because of the sheer size of the paddocks, it would be impossible to ride around collecting all of the cattle with horses. Instead, the motrbikes and helicopter flush out the cows and push them to the horse crew, which holds them in a corner. Once we have a large enough mob (herd) assembled, the folks on horses start driving them toward the yards. As the mob moves along, the vehicles continue to pick up strays, which are added to the larger group.

Last Friday we mustered a paddock that was about 160 km2 and contained about 2,000 cattle. We were in the saddle at 7:30 and didn't get down until 10 hours and 25 km later. It was a very long day, but, as mustering days go, it was par for the course. The hardest parts of mustering are the very beginning, when you're trying to convince 1,000 stubborn cows to get moving, and at the very end, "yarding up," which is when you push all 2,000+ tired, ornery cows into 2 large holding pens in the yards. There were also several obstacles along the way, including 2 bores that we had to pass. Bores are wells that supply water for the cattle. As we pass them, we can't let the cattle stop to drink because once they do, they won't start walking again. So each bore becomes an epic battle to circumvent the mob around the troughs, while the thirsty cattle fight just as hard to get to them. At each bore the helicopter had to help us move the mob on.

When moving the mob, we generally push them along a fence line, which funstions as a barrier on one side. One person rides lead. His job is to set the course, provide something for the cattle to follow, and keep everything behind him. Then there is the point rider, who rides at the front corner of the mob, keeping all of the would-be runaways in line. The crazies tend to congregate at the front, so the pont rider is constantly chasing after breakaways. Along the side of the mob, wing riders keep the edges tucked in and keep the whole group moving. Finally, the tail rider brings up the rear. He has to keep the slow pokes moving along, fight the quitters who want to turn back, and urge everything forward at a reasonable speed. All of this can be accomplished with 4 horsemen, but it gets easier with more. Each positon has ts own skll sets and challenges to be mastered; setting the rght pace in the front, findng a balance of pressure in the back, and on the sides, "pushng in"- moving the cattle forward by riding into the herd. So far I have mostly been riding the wing and have not qute figured out the key to pushng in. Oh well. It's early yet.

I Have Horses!

I have horses! On Thursday (a weekish ago) we collected all of the work horses that we had mustered so far - about 45 of them, and 'drafted' them. Drafting entails moving portions of the mob (herd) at a time through a series of pens that become smaller as they progress, until finally 1 horse at a time is allowed into the round pen. Once there Cameron, The Boss, decided who would ride each horse. "Lucy, grab Hot Lips here." "I think Tommy Gun would be a good horse for Mat." "Jesse, give this wild hoorang a try." Each jack and jillaroo was assigned at least 3 horses, and a handful of them, the camp draft horses, were kept as spares. (Camp drafting is the rodeo sport of choice in the NT and seems to be unique to Australia. More on that later.) When all was said and done, I had been assigned Wilbur, End Over, and Dingo. (Yes, after all the jokes, I actually ended up with a Dingo of my own.)

Wilbur is only about 3 and was one of last year's breakers, which means he has only been ridden maybe half a dozen times. As befits his age, he is small framed, but he should fill out this season as he gets into shape. He is a nondescript brown, not bay, with only a tiny white crescent on his forehead. I'm not sure whether it was by design or coincidence that he ended up with the name of a pig, but it suits him. He has a stubborn streak a mile wide. His coping mechanism for stress is simply to shut down. You want forward, he gives you backwards. The more you urge him on, the more he locks up. This mostly seems to be because of his age and inexperience, though. You can feel him getting confused and frustrated and over thinking things. Honestly, I know the feeling. Today, though, I took him out to work cattle for the first time. Once he was faced with a concrete task, he was able to concentrate and loosen up. After a few long days tailing cows I'm sure he will start to really understand what is expected of him and relax. I'm looking forward to the learning process and excited to see how he develops.

Quite the opposite of Wilbur (in looks, at least), End Over is a sway backed old man. He is a buckskin with a blaze face, black points, and unusual blue flecked eyes. Unfortunately, these promising features do not come together to form an attractive whole- he's not a good looking fellow. Even more unfortunately, he shares Wilbur's stubbornness, although he lacks Wilbur's good excuse. Really, he's just flat lazy. I rode hm for our first muster last Friday - 10 hours of bonding time in the saddle, and it was agony. I had to flog him just to make him move, much less walk out. Should a cow break out, he can occasionally rally a bit of enthusiasm, but it is always too little, too late. Not only that, but he's afraid of everything- motorbikes, food wrappers, even sometimes other riders, and he has the bad habit of bolting and running me into thinks when spooked. End Over's greatest virtue is that he makes every other horse a pleasure to ride.

The last horse of the day on Thursday was Dingo. Yay Dingo! What a rock star! He is a big red sorrel with a huge, wide blazed head, giant muley ears, and a blond mane that stands up like a mow hawk. He looks like a doofus, which actually he is - at slow moments on a muster he likes to turn his head back to have me scratch his nose. But oooooh buddy can he move! Just let one cow break away and he is on it, big ears pinned back, running wide open until she turns. Then he skids to a stop, wheels around, and drives her back into the mob. Little in life compares to the rush of wrapping up a cow- flying across the flats, dodging bushes, leaping ditches, and then pulling up hard as you get her back. Those moments on that horse, fleeting seconds of adrenaline and speed, are why I love this job.

On Friday of this past week we went out to another part of the Station called Creswell to work cattle. Half of the work horses were still out in that area, so we rode ones that were already there. I ended up with an older mare named Candid. She's an ugly beast - she has no forelock, barely any mane, and the flies adore her. She's got some good moves- pivot turns that could knock you socks off, but she stresses out and over thinks everything. Actually, that makes us a perfect pair because I do, too!

Sport

There are certain stereotypes about Australians that are simply accurate. They do say "G'day" and "No worries." They have phenomenal barbeques. And they are fanatics about sport ("Sport," not "sports").

In high school, in addition to P.E., it is compulsory for boys to play both a summer and a winter sport. I'm not sure whether this is the cause or they result of their love of sports. Although Australia mostly lacks the tradition American sports- baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, more attention is paid to what we typically view as periphery sports- soccre (called "soccer" here), volleyball, swimming, water polo, field hockey (called simply "hockey"), cyclingm and "athletics" (track and field). Not only that, but there are all sorts of sports that essentially don't exist in the US, including cricket, lawn bowling, two kinds of rugby, and, strangest of all, Australian Rules Football.

Within Australia there is a heated debate over the proper use of the word "footy" (short for "football"). Depending on where you're from and what you play, it can refer to rugby union, rugby league, or Aussie Rules. Rugby union is what the rest of the world knows simply as "rugby". The Australian national rugby team, the Wallabies, for instance, play rugby union. It also seems to be the most commonly played version in high school. Rugby league is a strictly Australian creation because, it seems, union simply wasn't aggressive enough. In union, for example, I don't believe you can should check, but in league you can. Also in league there are more pauses than in union. I don't actually know much about rugby in the first place, so anyone out there (cough, Gus) is welcome to correct me. It mostly seems like men jumping on one another to me.

On Thursday night I watched my first game of Australian Rules Football. We have 2 boys here from Melbourne and they are crazy about Aussie Rules, as most Victorians seem to be. The other fellows, from Queensland, New South Whales, and the Northern Territory are rugby fans and therefore totally dismissive of Aussie Rules, which they call "aerial ping pong." Truly, it is a very strange game. It is played on a HUGE oval field measuring about 200 x 100 m. At either end there are 4 posts forming 3 goals. Putting the ball through the center goal is worth 6 points and either side goal is worth 1. You can't run more than 15 steps (do people really count?) without either bouncing the ball to yourself or passing it. To pass the ball you have to either kick it or punt it like a volleyball- you can't throw it. The most absurd aspect of the game, though, it that each team has 21 players, with 18 of them on the field at once. 18! It looked like they let the spectators onto the field there were so many people thrashing about! Becase of the sheer number of players, lots of goals are scored in spite of the size of the field. When I left after the 3rd quarter the score was 33 to 36. There also seemed to be a dozen neon-clad refs to follow the chaotic movement on the field, although they didn't seem to do anything except announce goals. There don't seem to be any fouls, and why should there be? If one player gets dropped, the play simply moves to one of the other 17. At one point one of the players actually got pants and the play continued. Like I said, it's a very strange game.

The Melbourne boys, Mat and Sam, were eager to convert me to Aussie Rules, but I'm afraid I simply find it too ridiculous to take seriously. One thing that Mat pointed out, though, was that Aussie Rules yields excellent kickers, some of whom have gone on to play professional American football. Apparently the punters for both the Patriots and the Eagles began their careers playing Australian Rules Football. Who knew? (Certainly not me- a fact which the Australian boys were appauled that I didn't know.) How ignorantly American of me to find a sport's 1 redeeming quality to be its ability to produce quality American athletes. Oh well, sorry Australia. Perhaps I should start watching lawn bowling instead.

Holidays and Birthdays

Hello world! It's so nice to be reconnected! The internet/computer was down for a few weeks, thus the extended silence. In my head I sort of assume that my grandparents are the only people who actually read this, so it was surprising to hear that other people had noticed my lack of posts.

This weekend is Easter. Australians don't seem to be much for religion, especially out here in the bush where there simply aren't churches (or anything for that matter) nearby, so Easter has more of a social than spiritual significance. This weekend marks the last moment of calm before the official work season hits, with long days and few breaks. Some of the employees who have been here since January have cashed in on some long overdue holiday time, going fishing or making the long journey home to see family. The rest of us have three whole days off- quite a change from our usual one! The younger guys piled into a truck (sorry, "ute") to make the 2 hour pilgrimage to the pub, where they will hole up til Sunday afternoon. Personally a 3 day binge exceeds my commitment level, so I stayed back to finish my book, catch up on my blog, and hone my nonexistant pool skills. If anyone has any advice on the latter, please let me know- I am truly terrible. I think on Sunday there are plans to decorate Easter eggs and eat hot crossed buns, but there aren't many of us here, so we'll see.

This past week was April Fool's Day. Although no pranks were pulled, the Australians have several other charming traditions to mark th first day of each month. Millie, the governess, came to lunch with crosses (X's) on her hands. She said this was to prevent the kids from giving her "a pinch and a punch for the first of the month." Apparently calling "white rabbit" also achieves immunity. Nobody had ever heard of "rabbit, rabbit," but then I'm not sure many Americans have either. I, however, did remember to "rabbit, rabbit" for once.

The week before was my birthday. 25. Yikes! Although it was a fairly subdued affair, it last a REALLY long time! The Friday prior we had Friday Night Drinks at the Red Club with champagne to mark the occasion. Lucy, the 8 year old, made me a birthday cake in the shape of a horse and everyone sang Happy Birthday. It turns out that when slicing the cake, it you touch the plate with the knife you have to kiss the nearest boy. Also, if any cake sticks to the knife, you also have to kiss someone or scream under the table. Australians seem fond of kissing. Nobody told me about this until too late, so I pleaded ignorance.

Wednesday was my actual birthday and although I didn't really do anything special (apart from calling home), it was a wonderful day. We spent the morning on horseback, moving first horses and then calves. I was surprised to discover that the herd of horses moved at a slow, collected walk, whereas the calves exploded all over at a wild trot. This is pretty much the opposite of New Mexico, which usually had wild horse chases but slow, ambling cattle drives.

In the afternoon we trimmed feet (one of my favorite activities- shocking, I know) and worked with the yearlings. The next day was my birthday in America, so I technically got a 37.5 hour birthday. And THEN the mail plane came on Friday, so I got a third day full of presents and cards, making it possibly the longest birthday on record. Awesome!

Yearlings

Although I have not gotten much time in the saddle yet, I have spent a great deal of time this week working with the yearlings. I have never before worked with young horses and it is wonderful! There are 13 of them, all ranch bred, 9 of which are about one and the other 4 are two. The one year olds especially are very cute and very, very soft.

The first step to working with a yearling is actually catching it. This is much harder than it might seem since it is essentially feral and, though small, it is fast and hard-hoofed. We start by cutting a few out from the herd and herding them into a smaller pen. From there it is easier to separate one out and draft it into the round pen. Once in the round pen, the poor little guy usually panics and starts running around and around, scared to be alone and so close to a two legged carnivore who obviously intends to eat him. The first few times catching him is a battle, but it quickly gets easier once it has been handled a few times. They will often stop running, their eyes huge in their heads and their whole body shaking, as their brain battles their natural flight instincts. Once they face you, you can usually ease up to them and get a hand on them to get them caught.

The first moment of contact is transformative. Each time is like an epiphany in which the terrified creature suddenly realizes that they are NOT being devoured. After a few gentle strokes on the neck, they stop shaking, their breathing slows, and their eyes return to their sockets as they begin to relax. We rub them all over- on the face, neck, back, belly, and down the legs, until they stop flinching. We pull on their tails, fuss with their ears, and desensitize them to all manner of contact and stimuli. After a while they start to actually enjoy the experience. They will lean their heads into you searching for a scratch on the forehead, sniff at your hat, and sometimes their eyelids will flutter as they fight the urge to doze off. Once they understand what is being asked of them, they eventually allow you to lift their feet and to lead them around the arena.

This early process of desensitization is training not only for the horses but also for me and the other ringers. These young horses react to every movement you make. They are tuned into your energy and alert to your tone of voice. With older, well-trained horses, you can be fairly casual, even sloppy, but with these little guys you always have to be aware of yourself. Inevitably the horse you are working on will at some point bolt in surprise, so you have to be careful where you stand and how you hold them, both to be safe and to quickly regain control of the learning experience. If you are intimidated, you will teach your horse to be intimidated, but if you are too aggressive you will scare him. This activity forces you to be calm, assertive but gentle, and alert, all of which trains a good horseman as much as it does a good horse.

Horsing Around (at last!)

This week we started working with the horses. HOORAY! I cannot effectively convey just how happy this makes me. The first time we went out to the “yards,” it was like handing an alcoholic a drink. I was practically shaking, I was so excited.
On Monday, Cameron came out with us. Most days I work with four 18 year old guys; Jesse, Jack, Matt, and Sam. Jesse is a second year hand and grew up training horses, but the other 3, for the most part, have not ridden before. So our first day was spent going over the basics- tacking, riding, safety, etc. Although remedial, it was nice to have everything demonstrated because, as with every other aspect of life here, almost everything is just a little different.

The preferred breed of horse in Australia is called the Stock horse. It is similar to the American Quarter horse, except that it is generally taller and stouter. Walhallow raises its own horses and these tend to be Stock horses bred to a Thoroughbred stallion. They are good, solid looking horses, but I must admit, I am a lifelong sucker for the Quarter horse.

Unlike on American ranches where horses are ridden in Western saddles and trained Western style, both Australian tack and training is something of a hybrid between functional Western and classic English. The saddles used here are called Australian Stock saddles. They are very similar to the American Western saddle except they conspicuously lack a horn. They also tend to be lighter and have smaller fenders, or sometimes only stirrup leathers, which allows for better contact between the leg and the horse, more like in English. The obvious question raised by the missing horn is how do they rope? Well, they don’t. Apparently Australian cowboying is centered around calf wrestling and brute force rather than roping, although I have not yet seen this first hand. The rest of the tack is all a little different too- no breast collar, no flank cinch, and a plastic-y, English-style bridle, usually with a simple snaffle bit.

Because the station horses are still all turned out, we got to ride some of Cameron’s nice horses this week. I rode a beautifully trained, if slightly ornery mare named Arcadia. She was amazing. Although fat and out of shape, she responded both to neck reigning (Western) and leg yielding (English). She collected and extended like an English arena pony, but would instantly bear down and cut after a calf. I’m told that this is not the level of horse that I should expect, but boy was she fun to ride!

All told, I spent maybe 30 minutes in the saddle this week, and all of in the arena. But even that was enough to relight my enthusiasm for the work. After a morning spent with the horses, I can happily pick up my shovel and go back to stump digging, knowing that the next day would bring more horse time. Thank goodness!

Spinifax and Cattle Grids

It occurs to me that I have been entirely remiss is posting anything about what I’m actually DOING here. In truth, this was a somewhat intentional oversight because until this past week, the work so far has been a far cry from cattle work. As I have mentioned, it is still the Wet here, and although it only rained once last week, that was more than enough to keep the fields and many of the roads impassably soggy. So what does one do on a cattle station when you can’t get to the cattle? The answer? Manual labor. That’s right. Ditch digging, grass raking, truck fixing blue collar work. In particular there have been 2 tasks worth mentioning.

The first was harvesting spinifax. Spinifax is a sharp-edged bunch grass that grows in a manner similar to the tumbleweed (“rolly polly”) - big at the top, small and brittle at the roots, except that it doesn’t tumble. Because it grows in thick clumps, has a water repellent waxy cuticle, and grows like gangbusters all over the place, it is ideal for thatching roofs. Unlike in the US, where even the meanest structures are built with tin roofs, here they thatch the roofs at the cattle yards and round pens. This provides ample shade at lower cost and I’m told is actually much cooler. When it’s really hot out they will even set up a sprinkler on top of the spinifax roofs to provide a pleasant mist. All of this sounds lovely and comfortable, except that first you have to acquire the stuff. This entails sending 3 or 4 able bodied workers such as myself out to the side of the road to dig up truckloads full of the plants. It usually takes about 3 truckloads to thatch an old roof (double that if you’re starting from scratch), and the process of digging, loading, and thatching takes at least 3 hours per roof. Add to that the blazing heat, and the sharp, cutting blades of grass that make long sleeves, think jeans, and gloves essential, and you have the fixings for a very long day. It took us a whole week to thatch the roofs at the cattle yards, and I’ve heard talk of some new ones being built, but for now that’s done.

Last week the big project was digging out cattle guards (here called “grids”). For those of you who don’t know, a cattle guard is a grid made of railroad ties set over a ditch in the road. This allows trucks to pass over but keeps cattle out. However, on dirt roads like ours, the ditches underneath eventually fill with dirt, and that means that people like me get to go re dig them. That involves digging UNDER the grid- no easy task, and again, doing it in the blazing summer heat and full humidity. We dug out cattle grids all day long, all week long, and I thought I was going to boil alive it was so hot. Add to that foot-long centipedes and an assortment of snakes, toads, and lizards. “Experience Australia! Dig ditches in the Outback!” Right. Shockingly enough, this was not how they pitched the job to me 2 months ago. On the plus side though, I am in excellent shape.

Fortunately it has now (almost) officially stopped raining, so the the main event can begin. Soon enough I'm sure I will be up to my ears in cattle, working horseback or in the yards from before sunup to after sundown, 6 or seven days a week. As hard as that sounds, I can’t wait. I’ll tell you one thing though. I will not miss my shovel even for a minute.

Speaking the Lingo

When I decided to take this job on the other side of the world, I breathed a sigh of relief because, obviously, Australians speak English. In the face of countless foreign experiences and situations, at least communication would not be a challenge the way it had been living in Belgium and France. Or so I thought.

In truth, Australian English and American English are related the way rock and roll and country music are related- both use the same basic components, but do so in a way that achieves entirely different results. My first week here I could only stare dumbly at people when they talked, barely able to extract even the vaguest meaning from their talk. Even now, conversations with me are strangled by “Sorry?”s and “What was that?”s and “I don’t know what that means”s. Thankfully the people here are, for the most part, very patient with me and have thus far been willing to repeat themselves ad nauseum until I understand. I keep telling myself that I just need time for my ear to adjust to this new version of my native tongue, but it’s slow going.

My trouble with Australian is threefold- the accent, the vocabulary, and the idioms. Combine these with some background noise and several people talking at once, and they may as well be speaking Dutch. The Australian accent that I have heard before is sort of a British southern lilt, exemplified by Heath Ledger, Nicole Kidman, and the like. However, the accent deep in the heart of the Outback is more like Australia’s version of an Alabaman accent- consonants and sometimes whole syllables go missing from words, parts of speech are dropped or mashed together, and sometimes it seems whole conversations can be had without any movement of the lips or tongue. One Sunday afternoon one of the women here asked “ch’bin kitchen’sm zeds?” I stared at her in astonished incomprehension and the poor woman had to repeat herself three times before I could decipher “have you been catching some zeds?” (ie- sleeping). Yes. Good talk.

The different accent is understandable- oceans tend to do that to the evolution of language. But the whole different set of words I find puzzling. For example, which linguistic evolution could have led to something being a “bell pepper” in the US but a “capsicum” over here? Why is a “wrench” a “spanner,” a “truck bed” a “tray,” and “ground beef” “mince”? Almost daily I pick up some object and say “What is this?” like some kind of very old kindergartener. Half the time the answer is “extension cord” and I am given a look that implies “What kind of idiot doesn’t know what an extension cord is?” The other half, the answer is some mysterious new term, like “conserve” (jelly) or “bonnet” (truck hood). Just to make things even more confusing, many of the words I do know don’t mean the same thing here. For example, cookies are “biscuits,” but biscuits are “scones” (pronounces Skohn, NOT skOne). Also, chips are chips or sometimes crisps, while fries are chips as well. Confusing.

To top it all off, almost everything Australians say is some form of colloquialism. For example, “hello” is “how ye goin’?,” "thanks" is "cheers," “you’re welcome” is ALWAYS “no worries,” and “OK” is “righteeo.” There are frequent references to “guts,” which means anything from "innards" to "middle" (of ANYTHING) or even "all of it." For example,you could say "The road runs through the guts of the paddock 9," but “you just add water and then stir the guts out of ‘er” is equally acceptable. Lovely. My favorite expression by far, though is “flash.” This means “cool” or “great.” In can be used as in “Oh, it’s nothing too flash” (here meaning “fancy”), or “That’s some flash new Ute you got there.” (“Ute” means any type of "utility vehicle," but most commonly refers to a car similar to the El Camino, popular among Australian males age 10-100. Of the 10 personal vehicles at the station, 7 of them are Utes.)

Given the amount of trouble I have had understanding them, the Australians say they can almost always understand me (almost). I probably have Hollywood to thank for that. There is a British fellow here, our full-time pilot, and while I can understand him easily, the Australians often don’t at all. Curious to see just how far this country has strayed from the Mother Land.

Vehicles

For those of you who don’t know, in Australia they drive on the right side of the road. This is fairly nerve shaking at first as you watch the bus you’re in deliberately hurtle itself down the wrong side of the highway. But there’s more to it than that. In the airport in Darwin I felt like I was constantly pushing against the flow of pedestrian traffic, only to realize that of course I was, since we tend to walk on the same side that we drive. When your boss says “climb in, I’ll drive you over,” if you instinctively move to the right side of the vehicle, you seem a little presumptuous. Also, even after several years of driving a standard vehicle, it’s disorienting to try to shift with your left hand. At first I worried that even the pedals would be switched, but thankfully they are not. Even more disorienting is trying to gauge the spatial relationship between the vehicle you are driving and the gate you are attempting to pass through when you are sitting on the wrong side. Fortunately the only main road out here has only one lane and almost no traffic, and beyond that, it’s a whole world of red dirt roads, so hopefully this will be less of an issue than it would be in a more densely populated area.

Like ranchers the whole world over, Australians love their trucks. However, unlike in the US, where the Ford/Chevy/Dodge debate is a heated one, here there is only one kind of pickup – the Toyota. In fact, they don’t even call trucks “trucks,” they just call them “Toyotas” the way we call tissues “Kleenex.” They are smaller than their American counterparts and have a rugged look about them that would only ever be appropriate in the Outback or on the Savannah. They make you want to go on Safari. Toyotas have two gigantic spotlight-type headlights in the front attached to the brush guard (here call a “bull bar,” pronounced “boo bah”). My FAVORITE part of Australian vehicles, however, is the snorkel. It is exactly what it sounds like. It looks like a tiny smoke stack sticking out of the hood at the right corner of the “windscreen.” It’s function? To ventilate the engine when driving through water over 3 feet deep. Which begs the question- Can you even drive through water that’s over 3 feet deep, snorkel or otherwise? Given that that much water is typically accompanied by an equal amount of thick, slippery red mud, I remain skeptical.

However, if it’s possible to drive through, the Australians will try it. They drive as if they were born with the skill, and in fact that’s very near to the truth. On my first afternoon here, Felicity, the ranch matriarch, came to pick me up in a tiny, prehistoric Land Rover with her 2 children. The catch? Tom, age 10, was driving. He’s so short that they had to strap a block to the clutch so that he could reach it, but apparently he’s considered qualified. I was astonished. When I voiced this surprise I was informed by Lucy, age 8, that she could also drive but wasn’t quite strong enough to shift by herself yet. Wow. Makes me feel like I got a late start.

Food

The food here is amazing! It’s not fancy, it’s relatively familiar, and boy is it good! There are 5 eating times (not quite meals) every day, making the kitchen an important hub of activity. It is a small building consisting mainly of a cooking area and an eating area, separated by a counter of sorts. There are other rooms, but I don’t know what they’re for, so they clearly don’t matter. The building is almost always hot and always smells incredible. It is presided over a 60-something woman named Kay, whose husband is the mechanic and whose son works cattle. Although she is nominally temporary until they get someone permanent, she works magic in that place.

Breakfast is at 6:00. While this seems unreasonably early, predawn is the only time of day when it’s not oppressively hot and humid, so early morning is actually the most productive time around here. Until we get a full time cook, breakfast is being handled by one of the Station hands, a large, strong man, aptly called Bull. The meal is a condensed version of the English fry, meaning fried eggs, grilled tomatoes, Canadian-ish bacon, and toast. Every once in a while spaghetti-on-toast makes an appearance. (It’s basically spaghetti-O’s on toast. Yuck.) There are other strange Australian breakfast habits, like baked beans on toast, or pancakes with ice cream and syrup. (I had this particular delicacy at the HiWay Inn. What a GREAT idea!) All of this is accompanied by hot tea, coffee or milo (“energy food drink” something like tasteless hot chocolate, if you can bear to drink anything hot.

The next meal of the day is called “Smoko,” which I believe is a derivative of the smoking break. It is every morning at 9:30 and is recognized as being every bit as legitimate a meal as any other. It usually involves a cup of tea or coffee and whatever baked good Kay came up with the day before. America, I think there is something to be learned here.

Lunch is from 12:30-1:30; a difficult adjustment when you expect it at noon on the dot. Kay puts out sandwich fixings, salad (no dressing, only mayo – very Belg), leftovers from last night, and something new each day.

Work generally wraps up around 5 (thus far) and then at 6:00 the Recreational Club opens. The Rec Club is a little concrete structure with a pool table, a flat screen, a bar and a back patio. Drinks can only be bought from 6-7 and no alcohol leaves the building. There are 2 well-stocked fridges full of sodas (which all seem to be referred to as “Cokes”), beer, and canned mixed drinks (which are only available on Fri & Sat). Only 1 brand of beer is carried; XXXX Gold and XXXX Bitter, a Queensland company, both varieties of which are terrible concoctions that the guys swear by. There is also an unusual assortment of chips and candy bars, including “Twisties,” “Freddo Frog Twins,” “Crunchies,” and “Raspberry Gummies.” My favorite aspect of Australian food is that instead of listing “calories” on the nutritional label, it informs you of the “energy” content – a far more positive spin on junk food.

Last but certainly never least, dinner starts at 7:00. Wow. We have had roast chicken, curry beef with rice, roast with squash, onions and potatoes, and best of all, meat pies, to name just a few. Everything is something very familiar, yet somehow executed in a decidedly non-American way. Good food for working hard. Most of the young guys manage to inhale enough food to feed a small village in less than 15 minutes and then split. I have not yet developed this skill.

Critters

Australia during the Wet is so much more beautiful than I had expected. It is a world of bright blue skies with puffy white cloudy and green grass standing knee high literally as far as the eye can see. I have experienced a fair bit of America’s “big sky country,” but this takes it to a whole new scale. The landscape alternates between gum tree brush and wide open pasture, flat and green forever.

With the rain all the flowers are in bloom on bushes, in trees, and tucked into the grass. I haven’t learned many of the plants yet. Even the grass is different here.

The critters, however, are absolutely my favorite part of this fairly absurd place, and I am working to learn them all. There are birds EVERYWHERE. Outside the kitchen there are crows that sound like baby sheep and something else that sounds like a child practicing the recorder. I’m not sure what those are yet. Driving down the highway or checking water holes (called “turkey nests”) are the best places to find fowl. There are bush turkeys, which look like large, fat roadrunners, and magpie geese, which look like geese dressed in magpie outfits. A few days ago I got to see a fledgling wedge tailed hawk, which I’m told is the largest predatory bird in Australia. This one was average eagle size, but apparently they get much bigger. There are also gallahs which look like small parrots with like grey backs and magenta pink bellies. When they fly they sort of hunch forward and hurl themselves around. It’s a wonder to me that they get airborne at all.

There are also reptiles; snakes and skinks and lime green frogs and big warty cane toads. The first time I saw a cane toad I could have sworn it was the size of a cat, but now that I’ve seen more I suppose surprise was exaggerating my perception. They are huge though, by toad standards. They come out at dusk and like to sit in the puddles of light thrown by the street lights and the kitchen windows. They sit very still and with very straight backs, looking like little sentries or something out of a Miasaki film. You can walk straight up to them and they don’t budge an inch, they just stare right through you. It’s a little creepy.

Of course Australia wouldn’t be Australia is there weren’t kangaroos. And boy are there! They seem to exist here the way we have rabbits at home. They don’t do much except for eat and hop around. They’re REALLY cool when they move though. They lean awkwardly forward when they move but still manage grace and agility. Contrary to American popular belief, folks here don’t hate kangaroos. They mostly seem indifferent to them until one hops in front of their Toyota. They do shoot them, but you need tags, so it’s more like deer hunting in the US.

One critter I haven’t yet seen is a Brumby. Brumbies are the Australian equivalent to the mustang and apparently there are hundreds (thousands?) of them on the station. Unlike those in ‘Man from Snowy River’, they seem to keep to themselves and don’t cause much trouble. Even the most hardened old timer will admit that they are beautiful horses and really cool to see out in the paddocks.

Also, while there are crocodiles in Australia, there aren’t any (many?) in the Northern Territory. So no crocodile Dundee-ing for me.

Daily life in the Back of Beyond

There are many facets to normal life the one doesn't usually consider that here, cut off from 'civilization', suddenly become a challenge rather than a nuance to everyday life. As my boss Cameron put it, "When you live out in the bush, no one's going to come help you, so you have to do it all yourself." Already I have played the roll of plumber, electrician, gardener, and more, because we are simply too far to pay for such services.

Other aspects of life require creative solutions as well. Since the nearest town is over 5 hours away, grocery shopping is fairly impractical. Thus once a week on Tuesdays, a gigantic refrigerated truck comes to the station to deliver food and supplies that the station manager has ordered in advance. This same truck stops at every station along the road making deliveries before returning to Mount Isa, some 8ish hours away. On Fridays the mail plane comes, swooping down to swap incoming mail for outgoing, and taking off again for the next station. While this is a vast improvement from the mail wagons of the early 20th century, which would come something like once every 6 weeks or, in some places, once every 6 months, it is still vastly different for someone who is accustomed to the option of overnight delivery.

Garbage is another issue. What do you do with your rubbish when you are too far away to have it picked up? The answer - you burn it. The first time I burned my trash, my urbanized, modernized, liberalized conscience revolted. But given the circumstances, what else are you going to do?

Electricity and water are also not standard order out here the way they are at home. There is a shed, about the size of a 2 car garage that house the generator. It rumbles along all day and all night powering the station. That means that there is never silence around the homestead, but also that my wonderful air conditioner ("air con") is kept cranking at all times. God bless air cons.

Water is supplied through 2 sources- rain water and ground water. Surprisingly enough, the rain water is for drinking, while the ground water is for washing and watering the livestock. The rain water is collected from roof runoff in gigantic cisterns during the Wet. Since no one has said anything, I imagine this lasts through the Dry. Heaven forbid it should run out. The ground water is piped up from artesian wells using what is called a "bore"- once wind operated, now diesel. It is laden with minerals and is terrible to drink, although I've heard that after a few days out mustering, you learn to be less picky.