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Published: March 4th 2008
So after 4 1/2 months of bumming around the world, the time had finally arrived for us to get down to some hard work. Back in October/November we were thinking that we would love to work on an Australian outback farm for 2 reasons; 1. Primarily to save some dosh and; 2. to experience the "real" Australia. Mark mentioned this plan to his brother, Simon, who lives in Sydney and in no time at all it had been arranged for us to volunteer on a farm near the small township of Condobolin, 463km west of Sydney, in return for free meals and digs. There was a huge amount of work to be done due to the December flash floods which came after seven years of drought. As a result of this, there were hundreds of kilometers of fences to be rebuilt at the hefty price of 3,000 Euro per km!
The Stewart family, Denis, Susie and their son, Cameron collected us on Sunday afternoon from the Burke's house in Parkes. We felt like we heading off to boarding school and were feeling a bit lonely and apprehensive after Simon left us behind to head back to the city. But we
Traquair
Sunset on our first nightneed not have felt in any way nervous... The Stewarts were extremely warm and welcoming people and confirmed our opinions that the lovely folk of Australia are indeed the most congenial people on the earth! They loaded up our stuff in the car and off we headed towards no man's land. As Susie put it, "the Burkes live in the country, but we live in the outback". And we thought the Burkes lived in the middle of nowhere! Two hours later we arrived at the Stewart's front gate. 11km later on a dirt track we arrived at their front door! Mark and I were literally speechless at this point, as Denis described the size of their farm. Not only did all land that stretched as far as the eye could see belonged to the Stewarts, their property extended beyond this and behind the hills. All 22,000 acres (88 squared kms) of it! (and this is small compared to the farms up in Queensland and the Northern Territory which can cover over 1 million acres). We just couldn't grasp the sheer vastness of it all. We were shown to our lovely room in the shearer's quarters across the garden from the
Traquair
Huge bug main homestead. Denis then brought us out for a drive in the UTE, with Rolly the dog in the back, to check on the cattle. I felt like I was back in South Africa on safari as we watched the kangaroos and emus skip and run around with a flaming orange sunset as a backdrop. Even the cattle were beautiful, oozing tastiness- perfect pure angus beef. Mark was salivating at the thought of one of those juicy looking cows on his plate. We had a lovely dinner that evening and got to know each other over a few glasses of wine. The Stewarts warned us of the omni present threat of the lethal brown snake in this neck of the woods. One bite and you're dead. At this time of year they like to hang out in the garden and even inside the house. But as Denis put it, there's no point in panicking too much if you get bitten as you have no chance of getting to a hospital in time to be saved anyway as the nearest doctor is an hour's drive away! Needless to say, this did not ease our fear as we hopped across the garden
every night on our way back from dinner.
We spent the two weeks helping out where we could. The typical outback day goes as follows...
6.30am Wake up call from Denis
7.00am Breakfast
7.20am Out in the Ute with Denis and Rolly the dog to check on the cattle/or muster the cattle/check on leaks in the troughs and fix said leaks if necessary/start some fencing
11.00am Drive back to the main house for morning tea (a nice cup of tea and raisin toast) - Denis and Cam lived for their morning tea, and no matter how far away we were on the farm we would always drive back, even if it took 45 minutes!
12.00pm Back to work- stick picking in the fields, or fencing or building sheds, laying pipelines.
1.00pm Drive back to the house for lunch (yummy homemade mini pizzas- Susie's speciality!)
1.30pm Afternoon nap/or if feeling up to it, Mark and I sometimes did some gardening
3.30pm Back to work on the farm/or a river/lake boat trip with a picnic if we were lucky!
7.00pm Shower time
7.30pm Dinner time (Susie was a great cook!)
10.00pm Bed
It was such a fantastic experience to
be up early and to watch the sunset and sunrise out on the farm every day. The landscape is so beautiful and the best part is the feeling that you are so isolated and that its just you out there in this incredible place. It certainly wasn't all work and no play. Susie and Cam brought us out on a little boat on their lake with a tasty picnic and drinks. Due to the floods, the lake is now about 100 times bigger that normal and we were floating through gates which had been drowned by the floods. We also had sunset drinks on a hill overlooking a huge part of the farm and had another boating trip on a river that flows through their property. Every day we saw kangaroos, emus, giant lizards and an abundance of other wildlife. Mark played a few games of tennis with Denis, Cam and their friend Dave who lives in Condo. Dave is a lovely guy and we had some very entertaining evenings when he joined us for dinner (Dave also very kindly drove us to Parkes airport on his way to Sydney when we were flying back). Mark had a great time
driving the motor bikes around the farm and the ute (when Rolly the dog would let him!) and he had a go on the harvesting tractor. I even got a driving lesson from Cam and Mark and spent an afternoon driving around a paddock, following the boys on the tractor.
One evening we found ourselves having a few drinks by the river with some other local farmers, as the sun went down after a long day's work. In particular, the Stewart's next door neighbour, Terry, was an interesting character- he often gets local hooligans coming onto his land in the middle of the night and causing havoc- one night they stole 200litres of fuel and killed a sheep in the process. Terry, who has spent some time in prison in the past, has now made a deal with the local policeman to the effect that if he is out shooting 'roos one night and a bullet happens to "accidentally" hit a person, no criminal charges would follow. Talk about a real outback experience!
We had the weekend off work and Cam decided it would be fun to head off to the Bedgerabong Picnic Races on Saturday. Picnic races
are a big deal in rural Aussie and crowds come from hundreds of miles away to party for the weekend. Relatively speaking, we didn't have to travel too far. A two hour drive along a dirt track is considered a pretty wimpy journey! So off the three of us headed in Dennis' huge jeep with tent, swags and alcohol in tow. Cam who was driving enjoyed a beer along the way (not many police checkpoints in these parts I can tell you!) and spirits were high. A few beers got Cam telling us all the local gossip, including how women in Condobolin are always telling him to "stay away from their daughters". From the sounds of it, poor ol' Cam has a pretty bad rep with the ladies! He's a great guy and we had so much fun with him. He's a bit of a character and had lots of stories from his own round the world trip which he did a few years back. Not only did he get into San Pedro Prison in La Paz (remember how much I wanted to go in there!), he also wandered into Iraq after the invasion! Madman! We arrived too late to
see any of the horse races but we drank the night away with the local cowboys in their jeans, boots, and checked shirts. The ladies were dressed up to the nines in their finery and there was a brilliant atmosphere around. Everyone arrived there in their souped up Utes complete with intimidating bull bars and about 20 aerials sticking up in the air. Everyone was really friendly and we met so many lovely people. We were too tired to bother pitching the tent so Mark and I just slept in the jeep and Cam headed off with his chosen lady. We woke up the next morning to the sound of revving engines or people "barking their Utes" as the locals describe it! Very entertaining, although a tad too loud for my tender head. What a fun weekend!
On second last night, Cam brought us out shooting with a spotlight. He drove us around at top speed and Mark had the spotlight out looking for eyes. Rolly was on foot patrol and we found him circling a ferrel pig. Cam was blood thirsty as he hates ferrel pigs and promptly loaded up the rifle, waited for Rolly to move out
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Rolly on the back on the Ute of the way and pulled the trigger. After the squealing subsided we walked over (with club in hand, just in case it wasn't dead yet), to check him out. He was a pretty decent size and an ugly looking thing, so even I wasn't too perturbed by the shooting. When it came to shooting 'roos though, I had to plead with Mark to put the rifle down! He wasn't too keen on killing a cute kangaroo anyway, but he was willing to give it a go. Luckily for me, all the kangaroos were feeling a bit flighty that night so it was difficult to line up a clear target. He did however have a few shots at an extremely offensive looking spider about the size of his hand! Bearing in mind, Dad's unfortunate history with guns (he shot himself accidentally in the hand with a captive bolt while attempting to cull a cow) I sensibly declined Mark and Cam's persistent invitations to pull the trigger!
We were very sad to leave Traquair, having spent an amazing 2 weeks with the Stewarts. They couldn't have looked after us better and they were so much fun. We hope to keep in
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Goana on a tree touch with them in the future and we will always remember their kindness and great sense of humour. Susie even got up at 5.30am on the morning of our departure to pack us a picnic for our journey back to Sydney! These two weeks were definately one of the highlights of our trip. Thank you Stewarts! x
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kevo
non-member comment
For the love of god cut your hair man, you remind of javier bardems character in no country for old men