Ranching

I don't really intend my online ramblings to be of any consequence to anyone, so I've decided to not fully name the cattle company I have been working for for the last few days, just in case.

I have checked email at the office whenever possible, but have otherwise been mostly out of touch. I'm hoping I still have a few readers.

Larry and I took the train from Brisbane to Emerald, Queensland on Tuesday the 23^rd and arrived the next morning. Linda, the wife of the owner, picked us up and took us out to the closest property, about twenty miles out of town. This property was about 42,000 acres and had about 6000 head on it.

We were set to fixing one of their flood-washed fences and helping them sort about seventy pair the first day. The fence stretchers they use are pretty different from the American variety, and I consider them to be fairly clever. My attempts to describe them, however, would probably confuse just about everybody. After a few hours of getting used to the equipment, I got a bit too hasty and the steel pipe handle of the stretcher slipped loose from under tension and hit me in the jaw. Trust me, it wasn't any gentle love tap either. I was pretty stunned and immediately found myself to be bleeding. After a few concerned moments, I determined that my jaw was not broken and my tongue was still intact, but I did spit out a few bits of broken tooth. This was a less than ideal way to start off a stint in this part of the world, or any part of the world for that matter. It also got me to wondering really hard about how much dangerous work I care to do this far from home. The dentists in Emerald are apparently booked solid, and are difficult to get into. I have yet to get the tooth fixed and I'm a bit worried about how that will work out. Thankfully it doesn't hurt and my jaw didn't bother me much.

I've kept a running list of the more questionable aspects of the station. Larry and I are bunking in a small manufactured house set inside a shed. The tap water in our shack isn't drinkable, but the water from the rain barrel apparently is, which troubles us because the Ihles had advised us not to drink their rainwater. In any case, the rainwater has a distinct, worrying yellow tinge. Neither of us has any idea how we haven't get sick from it. The shack has its own collection of resident bugs and spiders, along with a number of frogs and toads that come and go as they please. We threw out the first few of these we found, but then remembered that frogs eat bugs, so we decided to let them stay. The first one we kept we named Sasquatch. We tried to take pictures of him but they, naturally, all came out blurry. A washing machine that belonged to another employee is outside the shack, but was found to be full of frog crap and was thus unusable, even after several hot rinses with industrial cleaning solution. Most irksome was when we discovered a baby brown snake (one of the more poisonous yet timid types) in the kitchen. We both supposed that he had gotten in by sliding along the extension cord from the washer into the kitchen. After this, our screens and doors remained firmly shut, and luckily, we could use one of the other washers on the place. Working with cattle was another story, and will be accounted for in another post.

We started 2 kilometers of new fence on Monday the 28^th. This involved putting in “strainer” brace posts every 200 meters, wooden posts every thirty meters, and steel posts every ten meters. Holes for wooden posts were dug with an auger on a skid steer, but steel posts were pounded in with the back side of an ax, or a 387 lb sledge with a steel handle if we were so inclined. The ends of the fence are fabricated steel corners, which are cemented in. The project was expected to take about two weeks. As could be guessed by my impression of the place, I had little desire to stick around longer than necessary and planned to stay only long enough to finish the fence.

I had to go to another station to help brand calves Tuesday afternoon. This 52,000 acre station was near Alpha, 100 miles to the west, then another 40 miles down a half-paved, one-lane road. The details of this will also be covered in another post, but to summarize, I got my ass thoroughly kicked and I have never been more drenched in sweat.

On the drive back Friday afternoon I got a message that Bechtel was wondering when I would be back in Brisbane. I can only guess this is for an interview. My plan to stay until the fence was finished now seems a little dangerous because of the threat of rain and the possibility of getting flooded in. It also doesn't seem very courteous to make an opportunity wait like that.

There have been a few upsides, or at least interesting bits, to being this far out from everything. We spend virtually nothing because housing and meals are provided. Both Linda and Mel, the wife of the manager of the station near Alpha, are wonderful cooks, and insist we pack it on. We also don't have a vehicle of our own to go to town in, but they do loan us trucks to go to Emerald to get anything we need on the weekend. Larry and I have both adjusted quite well to driving on the left, I might add.

The owner of the whole outfit insists on calling me “Nat” and, at least for a while, (hilariously) called Larry “Lloyd”. I prefer “Nate”, but “Nat” actually works fine here because “Nate” can get confused with things like “mate” and “hey” too easily. The Irish also tended to do this quite a lot, as “Nate” to them sounded like “net”, hardly a proper handle for anyone. Colin, the top man, usually goes by just “Col”, but I'm unsure whether everyone is saying it like “call”, or “Cole”. I call him “Cole”, and I honestly hope that that's wrong, because it'd only be fair if both of us constantly got the other's name wrong.

Larry is doing fine. He has remained unscathed and doesn't seem to mind some troubles as much as I do; he puts up with an awful lot from me. He will likely stick around longer than I plan to, but will hopefully meet up with me later, depending on how other prospects look in the coming weeks. He has been an ideal travel companion, and I've been very glad to have him with me.

I realize my tone has been a bit on the down side in many of my writings, and I apologize for being a little pessimistic when I am stressed. In my own defense, it really is quite stressful to fly thousands and thousands of miles into a totally new country/hemisphere, begin to worry a bit about what I'm doing, head 700 miles into an even more remote area, very nearly shatter my jaw and encounter many other very real dangers and nuisances, all while living in questionable conditions. Please, bear with me.