Submitted: Sunday, Aug 03, 2008 at 19:43

4 weeks already on Hillside Station and it really seems like 3 months!! We have been having a ball with the crew here, and both of us have learnt many many new skills. Jodie has been very busy keeping all of us fed in the kitchen department, while I have tried my hand at Heli mustering now and learnt a lot about how to handle wild bulls when out in the field bringing them in by chopper and 4wd buggies.
A couple of weeks ago we had a muster 65k from the homestead, basically in the middle of nowhere,and by 4pm had nearly 250 wild cattle in the temporary holding yards that we had set up a few days prior. They are then loaded onto the cattle trucks and brought back to the yards where they are then unloaded and fed and watered until they are ready to be trucked to the yards in Perth or if live export, they head up to Port Headland or Broome. Both jodie and myself have learned so much about the beef export market in such a short time, and the owners here Cynthia & Greg have been very helpful explaining it all to us along with making us feel like one of the family.
Jodie had a birthday in July and they gave her a beautiful Brahman calf we have now named Lizzy. She is still currently being bottle fed but will be out on her own soon in the nearby paddock. She has plenty of friends here to play with being a young calf, 2 horses, one of which “mothers” her all the time,4 dogs a goat and 2 beautiful cats, cyclone and licorice. Just after arriving at the station, we headed into the Marble Bar race day, which was a huge event. I think the day saw 1500 punters having a ball under terrific blue skies and a slight breeze. At the end of the days racing there was some commotion near the winning post, and after running down to see what was happening, there was 2 young ringers from another station, running nude past the winning post!! The atmosphere at the race day was just great, and everyone enjoyed themselves that went.
My days have been busy with all sorts of jobs being done when we aren’t mustering. 500k round trips to do grocery shopping, we went into Nullagine one night also for a beer and feed 260k round trip, but terrific scenery along the way. All up though we are both really glad that we took up the offer of some work for a while, and have now made some new friends that we will stay in touch with forever. Some of the laughs around the dinner table at night, and exciting events that happen when mustering, are also things we will remember about this trip for some time. I think the day we leave to head home from here will be a very sad one, and will probably result in a few tears for us both as the whole team here have just been fantastic to us. Anyway, we will stay in touch, and sorry about our delay with an update but it took Jodie a while to get the sattelite internet working properly, but she finally had a win, god bless her! Take care all, we have a surprise here to report on at next update, so you’ll have to wait till then. Uncle & Jodie.

Tags: Travel Journal
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