Tour Of BEWDY Comes to Premature End

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Well, as most of you are by now aware, the Tour Of BEWDY '06 is over and I'm back in Melbourne town already planning my next adventures. It was a fantastic 6 months - I had a lot of fun and met a lot of great people, but unfortunately it didn't end on the greatest note.

We'll start where we left off in far north Queensland where the fresh faced young city slicker was preparing to venture 'out back' to Mt Surprise to begin the experience of a lifetime - working on a cattle station. The last few days in Cairns were pretty cruisy, just preparing myself for life in the outback buying a few pairs of work jeans, work shirts, a swag, a hat and having one last circuit adventure being sure to talk to as many girls as possible on the assumption that it would be some time utnil I would see another one with a complete set of her own teeth.

So on the Monday I caught the 7 hour tourist bus from Cairns to Mt Surprise. Why they would run a tourist bus towards that part of the country I will never know. Once you get past the tablelands it's flat, dry, red and dusty, and you spend most of your time peaking out from between a crack in your fingers while you cover your face in fear as you're passed by 60m long road trains on 1 lane roads. Further the towns aren't much to speak of. Take Mt Surprise for example: a couple of houses, a General Store, a service station, a school and a pub. Population: Bugger All. So I hung round at the Mount Surprise General Store from midday till 6pm when I was picked up by Aaron, the station owner's son and his girlfriend Laurel. Only 400kms from civilisation could you meet a 20 year old called Laurel.

After dinner at the pub it was about a 2 hour drive to Van Lee Station, my new home and office. We managed to pass the time with a 50:50 combination of awkward conversation and awkward silence.

Upon arrival at the Van Lee Aaron showed me to the sleeping quarters (just across the way from the homestead) where myself, a kiwi worker by the name of Josh, and several species of wildlife were to spend nights. Now, from what I can gather, the Quarters got its name by virtue of the fact that it had been independently rated as 1/4 star accomodation by the RACQ in their last "Outback Residences" catalogue. It was an old wooden building built on stilts atop a 15mx10m (approximately) concrete slab. Down stairs was enough room for the pig shooters and contract workers to roll out a swag when they arrived, as well as a toilet with no light and a shower with no door. The shower was fine as long as there were no cattle in the yards stealing your water and you didn't mind sharing it with the cane toads. Up the rickety stairs was a balcony with a fridge, a table, a chair or two and then three bedrooms. In each bedroom was two beds with no matress or sheets, it was just a matter of throwing your swag on top of the springs and Bob's your Auntie. I was lucky enough to share my room with countless 8 legged roommates as well as other small lizards, bugs, beetles and blowflies. My main issue with the spiders was that their eating times tended to coincide with my sleeping times and I was kept up on several occasions by the sound of struggling flies trying to escape the deadly webs of their hairy little predators. The room wasn't too bad though, it had a lovely easterly aspect which allowed the natural morning light to flow through the small holes and cracks in the wall on that side of the room. Seriously though, it took probably the first night to get used to it. After that I just enjoyed the thought that I was in the middle of nowhere sleeping on a swag in a room full of spiders and lizards.

The next morning I had the pleasure of meeting my boss, Footy Prior. Yep, that was his name. Footy. I never did get the pleasure of meeting his brother Badminton or his sister Lacrosse. Footy was a crusty old cattleman who had been working on stations his whole life. He stood about 6 foot tall and had a black beard. He looked exactly like an artist's impression of Clancy of the Overflow that I once saw. He was a real good bloke old Footy - a good bloke to throw rocks at that is. The one thing you could always guarantee was that you knew where you stood with Footy, generally it was somewhere between his boots and the dusty red Van Lee Station dirt.

Your typical day at Van Lee involved rolling out of bed and over to the homestead around 6am for breakfast, working till around 10:30, Smoko, dinner at around 1pm, knock off between 5 and 6:30pm, have a shower and a couple of beers before wandering over to the homestead for tea around 7pm, back over to the Quarters for a couple more beers and a bit of tv (you could only watch whatever channel they were watching at the homestead) then off to bed to do it all again the next day.

The work I enjoyed. The first couple of days we mustered about 700 head of cattle on horseback, then drafted them in the yards for the next day or so, branding, de-horning (that's nasty), ear tagging and castrating the calves. The yard work was generally ok but there were a few hairy moments when half ton mad feral cows and bullocks decided that they wanted a piece of you. The reason that the cattle tend to be a bit firey up there is because on a 240000 acre property they rarely see people. There are even some that might be missed on their first muster and end up being full grown clean skin beasts before they even get into the yards.

I was lucky enough to be eased into the mad cow dodging game by a smallish heffer with no horns. I was in the forcing yard and the bastard was running around all worked up and wouldn't go down the race despite the fact that in there was a massive gate sitting open with a giant neon sign above it saying "heffers this way" and a flashing arrow pointing the direction we wanted it to go. Still, she couldn't work it out. After a while Footy told me to "sort it out". When I gave him a look which read "more information required" he said "well F#$%en grab it". I dropped my trusty whacking stick and grabbed the heffer by the neck, wrestling her through the gate into a kind of wider section that narrows into the race like a funnel. They closed the gate behind and still the stupid cow couldn't work out where to go so they just told me to head down the race bit. I knew what was about to happen and got ready to move. As I headed down the race the cow looked at me, dropped her head and charged. I grabbed the rails either side, jumped and watched the cow run straight under me and on down the race.

I felt like a bit of a cowboy after that little effort until later in the day when we were trying to hunt a half ton cow out of one of the larger yards. She wasn't real keen to go and decided to take her frustration out on us. The first time she came at me I jumped an 8 foot fence in a single leap making Tim Forsyth look like Justin Madden in the process, much to the amusement of the rest of the boys. Once I got used to it I gained enough confidence in my David Campese-like footwork to just duck around her - I was assured that her bark was worse than her bite and she wasn't actually trying to nail us. There were times however when the cattle did get serious. It could get pretty hairy when the mad ones had a big set of horns and were aiming them at your midriff. It's not uncommon to see blokes getting up the rails pretty quick when they drop their head and start charging.

One job that I didn't enjoy so much at Van Lee was loading lick. Lick is basically a grainy/powdery cattle feed that is used to supplement the dry cattle's natural feed. One afternoon we had to throw 5 tonnes on the back of the truck. 5 tonnes. That's a lot of lick. The lick came in 40kg bags and to get it to the truck we had to first throw it on the ute, drive it to the truck then load it on the truck 1 tonne at a time. When we started off I was handling the bags ok. Just kinda throwing them over the back of the tray into the ute. Meanwhile, Aaron, the 20 year old station owners son who has been doing this kinda stuff his whole life, was picking up bag after bag and hurling them about 2 metres up to the front of the ute as if he was just tossing around my make-up cases for a laugh. He worked at about 3 bags to my 1 as I gradually slowed and slowed, by the end only just managing to lift the bags over the back of the ute. And that was just the first load. It took us hours to complete the job and by the end I had that horrible thing happening where I was boiling hot, had a throbbing headache but was still shivering with exhaustion.

So to cut a long story short, after a week of being sworn at, abused, treated like dirt and looked down upon I decided that after 5 months of being away from home I didn't have the energy to live and work in the middle of nowhere with a bitter and rude son of a b*&%h. I was informed by Josh that I was one of many to have made that decision. The choice was made that much easier by the fact that acting fast meant I could get home for Grand Final Day, and more importantly the Annual GFDBBQ.

To add final insult to injury, due to the innumerateness of a certain travel agent my credit card was denied and i was forced to call "mummy and daddy" for assistance with my airfare home. So humiliating. I felt like an 18 year old private school kid on his gap year in the Canadian snowfields. Worse, in the 4 hours of confusion where I couldn't be contacted to be told my credit card had been denied, all flights to Melbourne for the next 3 days were booked out. I ended up paying twice as much to get home via Brisbane. The one shining light however was that I was able to spend a couple of days and have a night on the Brisvegas circuit with my cousin Geoff who I hadn't seen for 2 years. It was good to spend time with the big fella and meet his misses as well - a hot chick who drives a ute and listens to country AND western music. Geoff reckons she's one in a million which means there's at least 4 and a half of her in Victoria so I'm on the lookout.

And so the Tour Of BEWDY!!! has come to an end. Well, not so much an end as an interval. Next April I head to the UK for the D-Trains wedding and will stay there for the cricket season, playing at a club near Leeds. And some time in the future the big lap will be attempted again. This time I think I'll take a mate and a vehicle and head west, trying to keep clear of the wild, crazy, debaucherous and expensive tourist route.

Before signing off I would like to thank all of you who have kept in touch with me through my blog. Thank you for all the positive comments. Rest assured that the blog is not dead, I will endeavour to jot down the odd random musing between now and April and it will be back in full swing come April next year and my journey's in the Mother Country.

Watch this space,

Simmo.

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Photos

The Quarters
Good from far, far from good.

My room
My bed. It was cosy in it's own way.

Another night at the quarters
Picture me on that white seat with tinny of VB and there you have a typical evening at Van Lee.

The shower
Again, simple yet effective - unless the calves in the yards decided to drink all your water in which case pressure issues were abundant.

Comments

[Munerz]

All good things must come to an end
Mate i think i speak for many when i say it was a pleasure keeping in close contact via blog with you. It was a very gutsy and admirable expedition you set off on and i hope you got as much out of it as u could have. Hopefully i will be back well and trully before u head yonder once again for the ducks wedding! All the best mate and congratulations on a great job!

[loges]

yeah youre ok