Winton and Waltzing Matilda

We stopped overnight at the Matilda Caravan Park in Winton. It used to win awards apparently, but that must have been some time ago. The only thing to recommend Matilda Caravan Park is that every tourist season (winter) there is a nightly free show put on by 2 very talented bush poets: Mel and Susie. They travel and do shows around the country during Summer and I can highly recommend these 2 ladies to you. The poetry is very clever and enacted and easy to understand. Some singing is incorporated along with good fun clean jokes. I am not a poetry lover and neither Bob nor I feel that it was the slightest bit boring!

Catching the Sheep

Cops

Winton also has the distinction of being the place where Waltzing Matilda was written. There is a local history museum attached to the Information Centre which we declined to go. However outside there is a marvellous and clever concrete sculpture interpretation of Waltzing Matilda.

Horse

Squatter

Before leaving Winton we decided to play string & percussion music on the Musical Fence.

The little drummer boy!

Longreach

We opted to stay just on the western outskirts of town at a popular free camp (Camps 6: 355). The camp is alongside a river but basically you only get to see the river when you walk (or drive to it).  The area floods in the heavy wet season.

Longreach is going to be the largest town we will see before we reach Mt Isa and there were a few things we needed to do here including another visit to the doctor re my ruptured ear drum, purchase an additional battery for camping and a few miscellaneous things. We decided to stay here until Monday to allow us to attend church here.  It was not unusual to have 35-50 caravans and motor homes here each night, Maybe the fact that this was the weekend of the Longreach Show might have swelled the numbers a bit.

On the first day here we went to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. It is a huge museum of the pastoral industry of this area. We also took in a horse show that we paid for in addition to the entry fee. 

This was cleverly done with the cowboy showing the various tricks that one or another of his horses can do. There was also a lot of story telling and a few jokes interspersed as part of the show. All in all we spent 4 hours here including a light lunch. 

On our 2^nd day here we did have a quieter day. Bob and Noel worked on their cars. Sandi and I catching up on the internet, reading or craft and such. Sandi even cooked us all some pofferjes for afternoon tea. (These are Dutch mini pancakes)

Noel and Sandi

Felt shapes for "In the garden theme"

Basically the Longreach Show is a local rural show, with a few markets, rides etc as well as cattle sales, baking and craft show competitions and horse competitions etc. Sandi and I went in early on Saturday morning and thoroughly enjoyed a few hours wandering around whilst the guys congratulated themselves that they did not have to come with us. Bob and I went for a drive up some rough river tracks after lunch, but it is nothing exciting to write about.

On Sunday, Bob & I as well as Sandi, went to the local Baptist church, which is a good size for all ages. Afterwards Bob & I went to the Qantas Museum which we thoroughly enjoyed, much more than the Hall of Fame.  The big 747 was unavailable as they had made a huge mistake of putting it on uncompacted ground and the 747 was sinking into the ground and thus deemed unsafe and therefore closed to the public. Someone made a big boo boo.

Bob is wondering if it is worth replacing the Landcruiser motor

Michelle is thinking she'll stay on the land

Lloyd Jones Weir & Barcaldine

We camped at yet another waterside campsite, this time at Lloyd Jones Weir (Camps 6: 346) for 2 nights.  We saw the evidence of the successful fishing efforts of others here, mainly from those on the down side of the weir. It is not a particularly beautiful spot but obviously being a true waterside spot with the added benefit of fishing, it is a popular spot, with tales of some people staying here for months at a time.  We camped maybe 15m from the waterside. There are lots of picnic tables here and camp side fires are acceptable. We enjoyed this quiet campsite and the bird watching here. I think I would have liked to stay here for a few more days even though there is not much to do here, but sometimes that has its own attraction.

A word of warning to the unwary: Beware of those that take their vengeance out on toilet paper thieves. Here is what happened to one luckless soul.

We met some nice people here especially Sandi and Noel from Victoria who are permanently on the road now.  We end up camping together with them and their 2 dogs for the next 2 weeks until we both leave Mt Isa to head in different directions.  Sandi and I got along famously as we both make cards and crochet and had no shortage of something to talk about!

We enjoyed short walks gathering firewood and cooking all our meals on Nifty. The corned beef was fabulous, finished off with toasted marshmallows for a most unhealthy but yummy dessert! (For an explanation or photos of Nifty click the Warrumbungles entry).

Upon leaving, we called into Barcaldine and looked around. This is basically where the Labour Party started after a terrible Shearer’s strike back in the 1880’s. There is a memorial made of the tree under which the strike was held. The tree was vandalised and consequently killed but the town has made a fascinating gigantic wooden chime sort of contraption above the tree and named it “The Tree of Knowledge”

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 Blackall

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 camp spot 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

Continuing on with our volunteering stint with Outback Links at Bogarella, we get the wonderful opportunity to see a cattle muster. 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 ruptured my 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 largest 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!