Sheepshit on the Brain

The shearing quarters turn quickly from an abandoned shed and empty yards to an area with massive commotion full of noise and activity. The sheds lie dormant for 11 ½ months and are only revived for a couple weeks of the year when shearing starts not long after mustering.  Here, it lasts just over a week based on a very strict timetable. It begins at exactly 7.30am and end the day exactly on 5.30pm; during their day there is morning and afternoon tea breaks and lunch which again start and end on the dot. According to many shearers, the most tyring part of the day is not dealing with the sheep but dealing with the next sheepshit on the brain shearer beside them. Constantly racing and working harder –“the irresistible compulsion to shear more sheep in the day than someone shearing alongside, or ultimately, to be a ‘gun’, and ‘ring the shed.” (Prato, 2004, p. 55)The shearers sheep count ranges anywhere from 230- 270 sheep per day which is a definite sight to see especially if a quite petite woman is keeping up with the loud mouth strongmen.

We yard up the sheep drafting them into 3 separate pens based on sex and age. Ewe’s (female) and young lambs go in one, weathers (males-de-sexed) in another, and last year’s lambs in another. Last year’s lambs are usually smaller which makes shearing easier, shearers are paid more per lamb, and their wool is worth double of a normal Merino so they are treated as motivators raising productivity tenfold. Yarding can be very difficult especially when Dave is standing in the wrong spot or I’m not yelling enough to push them up. Dave and I did test out rousabouting for a day and successfully mastered the art of throwing a fleece ...which at times didn’t look so ‘art’ like. Dave also learned the art of classing wool, although Dave agreed that he would make a rough wool classer. Basically involving looking at the wool and deciding how good the wool is and where it should be put. To most people all wool looks the same, but as we’ve learnt it is far from it.

(Dave) Another exciting chapter in our jackarooing on the station was being involved from start to finish of lamb marking. As I’m guessing at home all the girls are thinking of heaps of cute looking lambs with their mums, but us blokes looking at these fat lambs thinking which one is best to eat. What an adventure this is, how hard can it be to muster up a big group of lambs and yews at a water tank and walk them 2km to a shed using our bikes? Painful is the answer. When they first here a bike they run as fast as Usain Bolt from the water trough to nearest scrubbiest, sandiest bushland possible and make us chase through on our bikes at speeds between 50 to 80km/hr hoping we don’t hit stumps or end up picking out half the mulga bushes we’ve gone past from the cuts in our shins. Once rounded up you simply walk them to nearest fence down to shed, but there’s more, whoever thought sheep were dumb they aren’t. The minute these older Yews get to the last scrub before the gate they speed off in 5 different directions with only two people on bikes chasing (figure that one out?) Finally when you get them back together as there finally going through the gate there’s one more surprise –Lambs go stupid, the mums go through the gates and lambs turn around and run straight back past you back into the paddock, ahhh. Time for back up grab Jack the farm dog on the back of bike and hoon after the lambs, then when your 20m away let him jump off and pounce on its tail or wool and carry it back in your jacket to shed. That all just happened in 30mins!

After a few days of buggerising around the MOST exciting day was upon me.

After mums passing L, the crazy planning, and frantic phone calls almost every night, my dad met us at the farm! The moment I saw his car in the driveway I started crying! All those calls saying ‘I miss him’ and ‘not long soon’ had finally come to an end. I ran out to him as quick as I could and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 65 year old man jump out a car so quick either. It was truly the best feeling I’ve had this entire trip.

The last week on the station included many random slow and boring jobs but the last night was a complete ball. It was the farmer’s, son’s, girlfriends 21^st and seriously do these people know how to drink and have a good time. For anyone who knows the show The Farmer wants a Husband, Beck was there and still looking for a husband. She is a loose cannon that one.  There were bomb fires everywhere, drinks at every corner, and racks of lamb roasting on at least 4 barbeque's.

Waking up at 10 o’clock with a massive hangover suggested something.  Few hours later we said our goodbyes to the whole family which was quite emotional. Megan and I had a few thankful words and shared a few tears as over the 3 months I did consider her my second mother. Dave and Dave had their manly words; ‘don’t work too hard’, and ‘Adelaide Crows sucks’.

Dave and I cannot thank the family enough for their time and damn right persistence with us.

We have surely learnt a lot from this and will be great stories to share later down the track.

Thanks again farm family. You have been a real highlight in our trip!

Nice photo to end...

MUSTERED AND CONQURED + we're not kiwi's yet

Landscape full of nondescript bushes, endless congregated jagged roads, ranges of impassable granite, the distant view of white sheets of salt lakes, and the vivid colour of earthy browns and greens contrasting with the surrounding clear blue sky make this country 'Kukuta'.

We are finally back to semi-civilisation after 2 weeks. We (me especially) would like to thank all our friends and family for being patient with my blog. I know I don’t write one everyday or even one every second day but I do enjoy seeing people viewing our blog and our work. It really puts a smile to my face.
 
So to put everything in brief we accomplished:

• 350km of bike riding
• Falling off the bike x3 (JW+DB)
• Endless stalling; insane terrain
• One sprained left wrist (JW)
• Countless number of bruises
• Millions of insanely prickly things
• one bike tyre puncture (DB)
•  2 cartons of beer sweetly consumed
• 3 visits to the local 48km away Kingoonya Pub
• Zero sunny days
• Given 20 lambs a lift on the bike
• 4 lambs died :(
• Dave attempting sheep rodeo x 20
• 1000 sheep yarded and trucked
• 5895 sheep shorn plus back lined
• 172 bales of wool in one over flowing double semi
• AND one Queensland Origin success!

MUSTERED AND CONQURED

 

NOW THATS AN OUTBACK PUB!

The house we were staying in was built in the 1920’s with 8 rooms each having 2 entrances which made things confusing for a while, massive dining area that could entertain for 30 people, and old school kitchen comprising of wood stoves and hot water supplied by a donkey. For those who don’t know the term ‘donkey’, it basically involves starting a fire under a 44 gallon drum of water and waiting until it’s hot. Old and out dated but its bloody brilliant; best hot water system ever! It’s a house that you would call a farmers home.

Firstly, the terrain out here is something else. If the sheep lived off eating rocks then the farmer would certainly be a millionaire tenfold as most of this country is covered. Most of this country is passable while standing up on the bike but always needing to be weary of sudden dry river ditches, deep light sand patches, and every single salt bush avoiding the hard solid mound of dirt at the base. Bike riding out here is difficult for young Jackaroo’s like us; ending up with sore bums and stiff backs from all the bouncing hence the falls and my wrist. When travelling behind a mob of 300 sheep it’s quite easy riding but having only 3 to look after is a different issue as yesterday proved. Each wanted to go their own way but shit hits the fan when they piss bolt off and you have to re-control their direction. Going over this sort of terrain at 40-50km with rocks, tree branches, every bush with prickly things, and ditches galore all I could think of is not falling off and being really pissed off with these sheep. Knowing how much trouble you’re going through just because they don’t want to be with the mob. You come out battered and bruised but bloody satisfied when you’ve won!

Mustering out here usually starts early in the morning. Sunrise is a beautiful time of day but its the fresh icy breeze that nulls the beauty; going straight through the 17 layers of clothes and making fingers stiff as ice. There was one classic moment when Dave overtook me at 70km screaming at the top of his lungs “ITS F#%KIN’ FREEZING!” while tears streamed down his face. Couldn’t help but just laugh. Paddocks out hear average 10sqkm which is a large area to muster usually requiring 5 riders scouting to find a mob of sheep each and heading towards one point. Along the way we join mobs freeing up a rider which then scouts again for another mob. Things do become easy when a hill overlooks the whole paddock and radios are used for communication. Having someone in a vehicle on the hill delegating directions to the riders joining 2000 sheep in one hit is a certain luxury. Once we have a massive mob it only takes 2 riders to control the mob; one behind pushing and one on the side steering the direction. Sheep are simple herding animals knowing only to follow the one in front which keeps them well in line and even better if there are older sheep who know where they are going. The only time sheep get aggravated is when they come to a gate; channelling 2000 sheep through one 5 metre gap can be difficult. They create an extremely tight circle as all riders creep closer and closer to the mob which scare the nearest sheep to run around the outside of the mob eventually leading to ONE going through the gate. Once one finds the gap they all follow making a classic bottleneck example. If anything is to go wrong, it’ll happen at a gate. Usually sheep in the outer circle take up an opportunity to pass in between two riders and make a run for it which requires immediate full throttle. This means either you’re been pushing too hard/too close, been in the wrong place at the wrong time or probably in most cases, their just being sheep.  One instance it wasn’t sheep being sheep. I was at the back of the mob in the cruiser when I noticed the mob heading in a different direction after kilometres of calm straight walking. I look ahead trying to figure out what was happening and all I see is Dave quickly jumping off his bike in a panic. The bike falls to ground and he is what I describe as ‘river dancing’; frantically hopping on one leg swearing and carrying on. I zoom up to find a massive bull ant nest under his bike and thousand of ants all over his legs. I could help but to point and laugh, he’s yelling “don’t laugh! Don’t laugh, arh arhhhh”. Finally after running around in circles for a while there may have been quite a few bites on his leg. Dave the farmer and his son are over in the distance rolling and crunching their stomachs in laugher while the sheep secretively wonder away.

During mustering you either get extremely frustrated or learn to be patient. When pushing sheep over long distances the tail ends up with ewe’s with their lambs and sick sheep suffering from flystrike which typically take their sweet time to walk. Flystrike is a horrible condition mostly common on sheep that haven’t been mules where Blow flies lay their eggs in the sheep’s wool near its tail. Over time maggots grow and feed inside the sheep and destroy the wool making it very uncomfortable and without treatment of shearing/mulesing they usually die. There is a massive debate in the wool industry whether or not to mules. To mules seems like an awful experience of cutting off the tail and removing the skin which endlessly makes them immune for life but if the tail is left on flystrike can effect up to half of the stock. PETA in America is now boycotting all Australian mulesed wool which, in my option is ridiculous when they don’t suggest any viable alternative. All sheep recover in a few days from mulesing which is more humane then allowing a sheep to be eaten alive from the inside by maggots. Luckily for the wool industry in Australia, 90% of all wool is exported into China. So “Made In China” isn’t that bad as long its wool.

This is only part one. We have had the best week of our lives out in this country with our second family. The amount of amazing things we’ve learnt and seen will be something I can’t wait to tell my kids.

I’ll post a second blog about the shearing and yard work.