Time out at Blackall

On one of the back tracks at Blackall

We had to leave the cattle station a day early as I needed to get to a doctor about my ruptured ear drum and the nearest doctor was in Blackall. It was as slow driving out as it was driving in even though it was a different route. (3 long hours!)

Two of the statues around Balckall

We stopped at Tambo for lunch as well as to have a break from the driving. We were soon back on the road, arriving at Blackall (Camps 6: 686). It is not a free campspot but it is very cheap campsite on a marshy river/creek at just $5 per night and just one block behind the main shopping part of town. There is a toilet on the corner and though there is no shower on site, however there is one within walking distance at the local amenities block. The worst part about Blackall (and a lot of towns in outback Queensland) is the strong sulphur smell from the bore water supply. It seems to be worst first thing in the mornings. We parked under the watchful eyes of a hawk statue.

 

Closeup details where you can see spanners and lots of other tools

We were delighted to meet up with Tom and Bet, a couple we had befriended back in St George.
The next day the doctor confirmed that I had a ruptured ear drum with a small infection and needed medication. We will need to follow up at Longreach. He also reassured me that it was unlikely to be permanent damage but the discharge and the deafness will persist for a good while yet. Boo Hoo!
We walked everywhere and ended up at Tom & Bet’s van and had a cuppa there. We agreed to meet up at the local swimming pool the next afternoon. What a delightful pool this is, there is even a bore fed spa pool there too. I had to take care not to get my ear wet but there was no way I was going to sit and watch the others have fun. For the next 2 months, even in a shower I have to take care not to get anything in my ear – Have you ever tried to wash your hair without getting your ear wet???

The marvellous pool and spa at Blackall

On Saturday Tom & Bet showed us how to go yabbying – a first for both if us. We placed these opera house style netted pots in the river just up a bit from where we were camped, and came back for them several hours later. We caught something like 15 yabbies. We are so ignorant that we also had to learn how to cook and eat them. Gee - you gotta go through a lot of yabbies to make a meal out of them!

Bob checking out the pot

My first yabbies. Yeach! Do I have to touch them too!

The AOG church at Blackall was very welcoming. Being Mother’s Day All the mums including myself were given a little gift, mine was a lovely handmade black & tan flower brooch. They also had a coffee and we were strongly encouraged to stay and enjoy fellowship with them.

Bogarella – cattle muster - Stop now if you don't like a long read

Mustering can only take place in the dry season and this is still relatively early in the dry season. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of us being there during a cattle muster, but to find out that even a small one was going to occur during our stay was thrilling for me. So you can imagine my disappointment when I had a ruptured ear drum the day before and I was in too much pain (and scared of permanent deafness being a real possibility) that I had to say that I couldn’t go. My imagination fired away and images of the wild outback stretched out before me with scenes from the Australia movie flashing before my eyes; thundering hooves, dog whistles and cracking whips and of course all the bulls and bulldust. To see the men & women like Stuart and Kira who carve their lives from the bush in action. Though there are horses on the property, I hadn’t seen anyone on horseback, so I imagined that Stuart and his guys were rounding them up on these 4 wheeled motor bikes that I see Stuart come home on. Maybe that is the way it is done now a days.

Grassy paddock at Bogarella

Bogarella is 60,000 acres and it is one of the larger stations in this area. The area is suffused with lots of long grass though of a pale yellow hue and this is not that long after the wet season has officially finished and already to my inexperienced eyes it looks quite dry. A lot of the native grown trees have been cut out generations ago to make more land suitable for grazing. Bogarella is fortunate enough to have the Warrego River running right through the property. This river floods almost every year to the point that the station is cut off for probably 4-5 weeks each year.

Real Aussie cowboy - Stuart

After lunch I am feeling a little better and I have been told that Rob can drive me over to the sorting yard. My only consolation is that while "mustering" can be fast and furious, rounding cattle into a yard is something I can quietly watch from the sidelines. So off we go. The sorting yards are about 2 kilometres away. Stuart and Kira are already busy at work.

The bulls didn't like to come near - fine by me!

I climb up and stand on one of the galvanized fences wondering if the cattle can smell my excitement touched with a little fear. I'm doing my best look cool, calm and collected and thus to hide it under my hat. I enjoy watching it all going on. Stuart is in amongst the cattle ‘guiding’ the various beasts to get them into the sorting section hopefully just one at a time or a small group of similar beasts. Kira is up on some sort of platform about 10 feet above all the gates. She is the gate controller using long levers that open and close the gates to the various sorting pens underneath her. Sometimes she has to move quite fast. Standing above the gates allows the cattle to move down the alley more easily, the cattle seem to be very reluctant to approach anywhere where there is a human. Sometimes Bob’s or my presence seemed to be enough to stop them from entering the section they had been allocated, so I would drop down and step away a bit until the beast had gone through.

some of the bulls in the pens

I found out later that the beasts were basically being sorted into types and/or sizes. There were a few ‘weird’ ones that were for the slaughterhouse, one poor beast had one of it’s horns curled right round and growing back into his head...he literally had a pain in the head. Others were being culled as they were at the premium size. Apparently once a beast exceeds a certain size then they actually get less money for the beast. Some were kept aside for their own breeding program and yet others were to be castrated.

A bull in the head lock ready for tagging

Towards the end, we also go to see some of the cattle get tagged, which is where the beast is led into a lane where they basically have nowhere to go other than forward into some sort of head locking contraption. The manoeuvring required to get the beast in just the right place and the ‘jaws’ closed on the beast into a head lock takes a fair bit of skill and experience. The tagging is relatively quick and simple using a hand held tool not unlike a one handed hole punch. Many of the beasts are terrified or annoyed at being held thus and it can take several goes to get the head lock done correctly. One time a horn broke off at the skull... I have no idea if it hurt the beast, there was no blood nor any other indicators. Looking at the ground later, I noticed a few more discarded horns, so it must happen from time to time.

 Kira is on the 4 wheeled bike

As we left to go back to the homestead, we see Kira racing around the cattle on the 4 wheeled bike and Stuart walking behind her with this long pole. He says that he does use horses for mustering, it depends on where they are and the condition of the ground.

As I write this I'm reminded of another of the quotes from the Stockman's Hall of Fame which we later visit when we get to Longreach.
"Banjo the poet got a bit of it - 'and he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended' - except he left out the flies and the bulldust and the empty bellies and the rain that can soak your bones to a chill. Apart from that it's pretty good then."
Well thankfully we didn’t get too much of the flies and none of the rain and our bellies were soon amply filled by Kira at dinner time.

Bogarella – our first Outback Links job - Part 1

After a very slow 100km trek on dirt roads, over some 30 odd cattle grids. We finally reached our first 'Outback Links' job, outside of Augathella. Various stock, mostly cattle with a few seemingly wild goat herds watched our slow progress with mixed reactions but mostly with that of disinterest. When we finally sighted the house, some 3 hours after leaving Augathella, 2 dogs raced out to meet us and welcomed us with a noisy greeting as dogs are bound to do, marking their territory on the tyres as soon as we stop moving. The young mistress, Kira and her 3 year old son, Darcy, soon joined the dogs in welcoming us to their property. We took a quick look around and were introduced to a few amenities etc and then we were left to settle the Robbiebago and a have a well deserved rest after all that driving.

You call this a road???

And don't forget the bulldust that gets into everything!

Our jobs here are more of a general/handyman around the house and a guests’ donga. The first morning was spent with the 3 of us (the owner as well as Bob & I), replacing a flyscreen on a sliding door as well as cleaning the donga and getting back into a state of cleanliness ready for upcoming guests. The verandah is to be re-oiled for protection within the next few days. I rescued 5 pretty green frogs out of the toilet bowl. There was another frog that was rather dehydrated and he too was rescued and given a good rinsing and hope for a full recovery.

Watching a storm come in

As with most working families everywhere, there are always jobs that just never seem to get done, probably even more so when it is a huge 60,000 acre cattle station such as Bogarella. This is the case here with a few handyman type jobs thrown in for good measure such as replacing old taps, replacing the flyscreens on some of the doors, a vacuum and clean up of the farm house was also on the agenda as with attacking a pile of ironing. Some of Bob’s jobs included some more cracks that need fixing on the walls, a touch of plumbing and many other such odds and ends.

Just one of the colourful birds at Bogarella

One of the odd aspects of being here is the isolation for us. We have no mobile reception and thus no internet, so we feel kind of cut off from family and friends. I asked Kira if she gets lonely out here and she says not as she gets to see friends regularly and her parents live just down the road. The owners do have a satellite TV, phone and internet but we don’t feel we can keep on asking to use it even though they have always been forthcoming when we have asked for specific reasons.

Bob took this photo of the moon rising through a tree

Next entry will cover my first cattle muster! ... well sort of the end of the cattle muster!

Morven - ' free' powered campsites

We were up nice and early for a change so that we could be packed and ready for church at 8.30, arriving some 10 minutes early.  After all that, we didn’t get to go to church, as it happened not to be on that day. Apparently services were to be held at the Catholic church that day. So we decided to move on to Morven without going to church after all.

We had heard that the 'free' donation requested campsite at Morven (Camps 6: 664) even had some free powered sites. We didn’t expect to get there early enough to be one of the lucky ones, however we were very fortunate. We could have easily camped there without power and could have picked a nicer spot closer to the ‘Saddlier Watering Hole’, which was more like a huge duck pond (only it had geese there instead!). There are 12 powered sites and only a couple were taken at the time of our arrival with lots of open ground for 50 or so unpowered sites without anyone being crowded in. There are even very clean hot showers (one each for gents and ladies) as well as the toilets.
 

Sunrise at Morven

We quickly set up camp so that we could walk into town as we had just found out that they had their annual market day on near the historical museum there on the main highway. It was a very small market and nothing that interested us. I think it is more an excuse for the locals and a few of the outlying properties to come together for a social day out. The display of scaled, miniature historical buildings was very clever and gave an idea of the types of buildings and materials used by our pioneers. It was a lot of work by a few clever crafts people.

Sunrise by the geese at the Saddlier's waterhole at the free campsite in Morven

We stopped outside the local shop after buying some fresh bread etc at the table and chairs outside and watched the local people and traffic for a while. We also go to talk a few people though we found out were campers such as ourselves. We decided to stay in Morven for a few days until we heard more about our first Outback Links placement which we have been told will most likely be somewhere near Augathella!

 I decided to take advantage of a bit of down time to get into some crafts. Here you can see me having a go at teaching myself to crochet - a baby blanket in the making.

Neil Turner Weir, Mitchell

We left Surat and arrived in Roma around noon. We decided on a bit of grocery shopping and lunch in town before driving further to the free camp at the delightful Neil Turner Weir.

One of the many water birds at the weir

This weir is unique in its design of being several levels of concrete with ‘blocks’. First purpose is to create a mini dam and then the use of the different levels to break the force of the resumed river flow downstream. It is an ideal place for birdwatching, with many varieties sighted. (Sorry! I left my bird identification book behind)

The unique casading levels of the Neil Turner Weir

A closeup of the blocks on the weir

It was so nice and quiet here that we decided to stop here for a couple of days and go to a church, which we noticed back in Mitchell, even though their services is at 8.30am before moving on.

Down from the weir

Yet another beuatiful end to a fabulous day

Surat and the Cobb & Co Museum

Just over the Balonne River less than a kilometre from Surat is a free camp spot right on the river and surrounds that is the local fishing and restocking spot for the river. Though there are no showers here, there are showers just in town if you have need of them. We arrived just on lunch time and quickly settle in and made some toasted sandwiches (to use up the days old bread).

 three happy jack birds

After lunch we decided to take the easy walk into town over the river and have a wander around. We walked past some old shop fronts imaging that this was a butcher and that was the baker maybe. It wouldn’t be an Australia town if there weren’t a pub in it somewhere. And then across the road there is a Cobb & Co Museum. What a delightful and very interesting museum it was. Surat was the last place the Cobb & Co ran from and they have a lot of memorabilia including a full size replica of the Cobb and Co wagon of the era and the characters of the town over the early years. It makes for interesting reading and occupies a pleasant hour or so browsing around and looking and all the exhibits.

We stopped by the local general store cum cafe and had a quiet time eating an ice cream and watching the local population and traffic pass by.
We had a fire going by the Robbiebago with another BBQ dinner, this time chicken snitzel was on the menu. Afterwards one of the other caravaners joined us for a fireside cuppa and chat.

St George

There were no free camp grounds near St George and the Pelican Caravan Park was recommended to us a few times, as well as we hoped to find recent made friends, Bet & Tom still in residence at the park (which they were!). So we went unpowered and selected a nice sunny spot to get the maximum charge for our solar panels. It was fortunate that we were just metres away from Tom & Bet and we were soon made welcomed. Green grass was lovely though you still had to take care not to walk on the odd Kahki grass prickles which has been a real curse since as early as Mendooran, in NSW. They are worse than our Bindii! Urrgh!

The flood waters went over the top of this weir at St George

We unhitched and settled in for a little bit and then went into town for some groceries and a quick look around. We found the most delightful little shop tucked in the back of the sport good shop that has a magnificent display of Illuminated Emu Eggs. I have loved carved Emu eggs since my step brother introduced them to me some 30 odd years ago and have never seen any as good as the first few. These are not the same but totally different and just as fascinating. The old Greek fella that does the carving is more than willing to show you his eggs and give you a history to go with it. You truly get a lot for the $3 dollars entry fee and what’s more the old fella will give you your money back if you are not impressed. You can’t fail to be impressed. There are something like 150 eggs there. Nearly all of them are illuminated from within which brings forth the different shades according to the layers carved.

these are just 2 of the amazing illuminated emu eggs

 

We went for a drive, saw the river side park and the war memorial (It is Anzac Day tomorrow) and then moved down to the nearby weir and took photos of the birds as well as the weir. This weir & bridge was totally under water during the floods late last year. It is just amazing to see just how far up the water came.

One of the peregren falcons at Beardmore Dam

We were lazy and it was too cold to make the effort to get up pre dawn for the Anzac Dawn Service. However we went for a drive later on to the Beardmore Dam. It is a nice enough park area and we go to see some lovely birds including a couple of peregrine falcons. However it is a huge disappointment that you can’t actually see the water or the top of the weir from the picnic areas. You couldn’t even walk to the dam itself.

Amazing afterglow after a sunset at St George