Kununurra to El Questro.........and back!

---

The coach journey from Darwin to Kununurra took about 10 hours, including rest stops, which was a bit of a drag but i did get to see more of the amazing scenery. Australia is so varied, much like New Zealand, but wherever I go what really strikes me is the vastness. Not of the country as a whole, but simply in each place, no matter the climate or terrain, you can always see so far, its just endless. Travelling to Kununurra to finally start my job as a stationhand/jillaroo i got excited every time i saw a cow on the side of the road! mostly they have Brahmans here, or Brahman crosses (with red Angus = Brangus, with Shorthorn = Droughtmaster , etc) which are African-looking things, tall and slender with a hump on the point of the shoulders, which is massive in the bulls, which also have big overlayed eyebrows. The vary from white to silver and black and then all sorts of blonde to brown shades in the cross breeds. The station i was to work for, El Questro, covers about 850,000 hectares (3,282 sq miles) and holds about 9,000 head of cattle (thats just the cows, doesnt count calves, heifers or bulls) plus a few 'ferals' i.e. cattle born on the property but gone a bit wild and not ever been mustered. They are also known as 'cleanskins' because they dont have an eartag or a brand. El Questro is quite a well known property as it holds a resort, part of which is accessible to the general public for hiking, fishing, boat trips, horse riding etc and the rest is a very expensive and exclusive resort, with the average room costing $4500 per night! This is where Nicole Kidman and co stayed while they filmed the new movie Australia, which also features the El Questro cattle, so i have worked with famous cows!!

After a couple of days in Kununurra - very nice, very pretty but not a lot to do (daily highlight was going to the supermarket!) - i was picked up by the boss' wife Pam and driven out the the camp. Lindsay, the boss, had said the camp was fairly 'rough' and he wasn't exagerating. There were 4 of us, Lindsay and me, Dallas - about 35 and an ex-extortionist for the Darwin Hells Angels (now relatively reformed after anger management training in prison) and Callum - 20, son of one of the Hells Angels' head honchos. We slept in swags (like a sleeping bag cross tent), the kitchen consisted of a tarpaulin strung between some yard rails and a tree, with a table, freezer (for 4 hours per day) and store box, and dinner and everything else was cooked over the fire. We used old spaghetti tins for a billy can to boil water (slightly cloudy from the dam) for tea and drank out of tin pannikins. There was no bathroom so you picked the nearest tree or bush and bathed in the gravel pit (the boys bathed in the river to give me some privacy). Having said that, it was comfortable and the food was good and you had everything you needed for most days. I was employed for mustering and general station work, but the yard building was behind so i had to help out with that. To be fair, i reckon i did a reasonable job and i put in as much effort as i could. It was around 40 degrees most days and we worked from 5 am until about 6pm every day. Mostly my job involved cutting up lengths of steel piping and box section, holding said pieces to be welded onto gates, rails, ramps etc and fetching and carrying tools and setting up welding equipment and so on. The problem was, being a relatively lightweight girl, and a total novice to such things, i couldn't carry as much steel as the guys and i generally took longer to do jobs. So in the end i just couldn't keep up and i was finding it too hard in the heat, being burnt by dropsaw and welding sparks and generally trying to be a mindreader to 3 guys, trying to guess which tool they would want next. I also found it pretty hard emotionally and personally. The guys were very nice and despite their pasts were really good to me and quite good fun and we got along well, but they were the most foul-mouthed guys i have ever come across and often fell into conversation that i really didn't want to hear. sometimes i would go and work on the other side of the yard just to get away from them so i could get some peace and quiet for a change. I had my own gravel pit of water to bathe in but otherwise there was no privacy and nowhere to chill out in the evenings except around the fire where the guys were talking. Thats not to say that there werent good times. The area is so beautiful, with a backdrop of cliffs behind the camp, and we had a lot of laughs and good conversations. I was fascinated by the boys rather checkered past and they couldnt get over me being a 'real, proper' Christian. Our lives and background were in such stark contrast. They boys nicknamed me Princess as Queen Victoria was old and wrinkly so i'd have to be the younger version! On the Saturday night that i was there we all went up to the resort's staff township for the evening. They put on an excellent buffet BBQ and there is all sorts of entertainment with a couple of guys singing, some rope and whip tricks and the "Swinging Arm Bar" song which features a different staff member in each verse. On the Sunday we went fishing with their friends Shane and girlfriend Tee, who were to do the horse part of the mustering. I didnt manage to catch anything but it was really good fun. Shane made curried barramundi with coconut milk - soooooo good!

However, this turned out to be the job that never was. After 5 days i had a chat with Lindsay and we decided it would be best if i went back to town. It was a mutual agreement and best for everyone i think, but it did send me into a bit of a panic as it had taken a while to get this job and i had no idea if i would be able to get another very soon, with very little money left until then. But i went straight to the job shop after arriving in town, (before i even had a shower!) and had another job within an hour! That was definately a very, very fast answer to prayer! It was on a feedlot within a cattle station, which wasnt quite what i wanted but i was prapared to have a go and see where the experience took me. It was Monday when i left El Questro and i wasnt due to start that job for a week so i spent the next few days doing as little as possible to save money, mostly reading, sunbathing and catching up on my diary. I caught up with a friend Andy, who i met at the hostel before i started the job, and when he wasnt working we hiung out together, cooked together (he bought the ingredients and i cooked them, which worked out fine by me!), watched a lot of episodes of House and of course the daily trip to the supermarket where i had to persuade him NOT to buy me TimTams (like penguin chocolate bars but better) every time! The hostel there is lovely, probably the nicest i have been to in Australia, and i made a lotof friends very quickly. Most people staying there are long-termers working on local farms to earn their second visa so everyone knows everyone but its nice and quiet in the evenings as they all get up at 5 am! On the last couple of days there Andy took me out to Hidden Valley, a beautiful place about 5 km down the road. When tourists get to Kununurra the main thing they do is go on a flight over the Bungle Bungles - beehive shaped rocks in the nearby national park. well i couldnt afford that but this was definately the next best thing. the rocks there are almost the same shape, with stripes of red and black algae. we climbed all through the bush and so on all the way to the top (very slightly spoilt by the metal gantry they put up there for 'easy access') to watch the sunset over the plains. simply stunning. We went back there on my last night, with Reina, Kuto and Yuka, 3 Japanese girls from the hostel, who were totally nuts, doing the whole thing in flipflops and taking crazy pictures of themselves leaning over the cliffs! On another night we went out to Ivanhoe Crossing, and huge shallow weir where lots of fisherman wade out to try to catch barramundi, despite the local population of crocodiles. Andy, Mitch and I chose to walk along the bank hunting crocs, snakes and anything else we could find. the water was flowing too fast to cross but Mitch did find a good tree we could make an Aborigine hollowed-out canoe from, if we had a spare week! there were some mammoth slides around (the marks made by crocs on the bank) so there must have been a good few salties about! the sunset on the way back was stunning, really really rich red and spread for miles. i love it up here where its so flat and everything is just bigger and more spectacular!

So, not quite the experience i expected, but i am still glad i did it. it certainly tested my patience, my stamina, my fortitude and resilience. i learnt a lot, especially about using tools, and in building yards came ot understand a lot more about the importance of their design and how to handle cattle properly. Roll on the next challenge!

---