At home on the ranch

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I caught the Oz bus from airlie beach and was pleased to find that we had another cool bus driver called Stringer. We played dead bug bingo on they way to Kroombit, which is done by drawing up a grid on the windscreen of the bus, everybody putting in one dollar and picking a square in which their initals are written and whoever has the most splattered bugs in their square by the end of the journey wins all the cash. Needless to say by the end of the jorney i had never seen a cleaner windscreen in the section where my was, despite being surrounded by squished insects.
We passed through Rockhampton on the way, which is a very strange place. Its main export is beef and so it's very into its cows, which is why there are about a hundred statues of the things. It felt a little like a redneck wickerman.

Kroombit is probably my favourite place so far. It's a real ranch full of cowboys. On my first night there i learnt how to crack a whip, which after lashing myself on the wrist and back many many times, i could do like a pro. We also had a mechanical bull competition which i did ok on, most people stayed on for one or two seconds but i stayed on for four (i could have stayed on for longer but you've no idea how much it hurts the family jewls).
The next day we went on a cattle muster. I got given this huge horse name Chrissie (who i was told later was the biggest bastard they have), and we had to herd these goats across the plains and into a pen by cutting them off with our horses and shouting 'hup up up' at them. However my horse decided to make things a little difficult my repeatedly stopping and not doing anything. We were told to kick them in the sides to get them going and i swear i was kicking it so hard i couold've been braking its ribs but it would just not move. I suppose i didn't look quite the sergio leone cowboy sat on this stationary horse in the middle of a field wacking my legs against it and shouting 'move you fat bastard!' at the top of my voice. But when i did eventuall get it going, it was really good fun.
Afterwards we did a goat rodeo, which consists of getting into a group of three in this round pen/arena. they stick a goat in there with you, one of you has to catch it and drag it over to the other two, the second person has to flip it over and the third has to brand it (it was a fake brand that wasn't hot). I was the catcher in our group. All the other groups had had these little billy kids, but the ranchers seeing that i was going to be the catcher pulled out this huge ram like thing with horns the size of your forearm. Anyway, after a heroic batle i caught the goat and went on to win the rodeo with a time of 28 seconds.
Just before we left i got the chance to do some clay pigeon shooting with a proper 12 guage shotgun. I managed to get 2 out of 5 (it's a lot harder than time crisis). I also tried my hand at lassooing, which i can safely say i suck at.

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Comments

[Josh LL-Smith]

Christ alive sheila, ur trying ur hand at eveything man! And we're all still in the same dull routine! We're all missing u man! We hope u've got urself a sexy beard!