G'day from Rawlinna...

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Well, I'm still alive and still travelling. After a bit of a break, I am resurrecting the blog and shall give a brief account of what has happened since my last entry:

After my trip to the islands in Thailand and the blog about the Muay Thai, I hung around in Bangkok for a while before making my way back to Brisbane to settle into some work and earn some money to continue my travels. Unfortuneately I had to wait over a week before I was offered work. With basically no money and very little to do, this drained my enthusiasm badly, but the prospect of escaping the city renewed me significantly. I took a swift, three hour flight to Adelaide in Southern Australia where I received details of my assignment. From Adelaide, its a twenty-four hour train journey out across the Nullarbor into Western Australia to reach the station at Rawlinna...

One of the most remote stations in Australia, Rawlinna is 400km east of the nearest town, Kalgoorlie. The size and distances involved at Rawlinna have to be seen to be believed ( approximately 2.5 million acres !! ) and development of the Station was completed with a laneway complex running from the extremities of the Station to the sixteen stand shearing shed centrally located at Depot Outstation. An example of the massive scale of the Station is that one paddock took eight hours to muster with the wind and sheep ( of which there are 70,000 !! ) all in the “right place”. The Station plane logged eight hours for the muster.

Apparently there is no mobile phone coverage in the Nullarbor, and most likely no internet access either! So, it may be some time until I get the pictures online and recount of my adventures. The paddocks are so big that you cant get all the way up and back in a day, even on a dirtbike, so you have to camp out in the desert for up to a week at a time to finish a muster ('muster' is when you round up the animals and herd them into the yards to work them, in case anyone didn't know). I think it should be a good laugh, although the talk about health and safety and what to do if you get lost in the paddocks ( surprisingly easy, it's basically a thousand kilometres of featureless desert in every direction before you reach the edge of the property ) was quite disconcerting! I was assured however that they have never lost anyone for more than 24 hours...

The website for the station can be found here: Rawlinna website

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Photos

Rawlinna
Nothing, in every direction!

Rawlinna Station Map
Oh shit !!

Route so far...
Bristol -> London Heathrow ->
Cairo -> Alexandria -> Cairo ->
Bahrain -> Bangkok -> Kanchanaburi
-> Bangkok-> Hong Kong -> Tokyo -> Kyoto
-> Nara -> Kyoto -> Osaka -> Cairns -> Brisbane -> Rainbow Beach -> Gympie -> Goomeri -> Brisbane -> Sydney ->
Bangkok -> Koh Samet / Koh Chang -> Bangkok -> Sydney -> Brisbane -> Adelaide -> Rawlinna

Comments

[Mr D]

Time Travel
Adam, I can see from the date of your entry you are quite good at time travel. Do they also teach you this whilst playing with the sheep? Ha Ha

[AdamKent]

Re: Time Travel
Ah, because Australia is so far away, and you cross so many time-zones, and I'm in the southern hemisphere, and it was a full moon yesterday, I'm actually three and a half days ahead here...

[Jess]

Rawlinna
I have just recently left this station. I regret that decision. It was fantastic. I got lost countless times crashed several times, even gave myself a concussion and still Simmo continued to help me and even taught me to ride a motor bike properly. :) If I could go back again I would. I loved it but it took some wrong decisions for me to realise it. A cattle station trial and a waitress job later, wishing I had never left. You're lucky you got to see it and be a part of it.

[AdamKent]

re: Rawlinna
Hope it brought back some good memories for you! Definitely a tough way of life out there, but very rewarding. Check out the "I killed SKippy" blog for more photos