The Fight Goes On.

(All of this was written on the 15^th of June so it’s a bit out dated)

Oh boy what a day. I suppose it’s been a few days since I’ve posted on the blog. We have been doing work in the yards and mustering and driving cattle everyday since. . . . I don’t know it feels like forever now. All I can hear is mooing in the back of my mind right now. Last Saturday we had the day off, truly off. Tom, Esben, Rasmus and I went to town and watched the prologue for the Fink Desert Race. That is a huge 500 km offroad car and motorbike race in the outback. It was pretty cool to see all of the motorbikes and quads going all out on the dirt tracks. Also to have another day in town to chill out was nice. But then we started the mustering again.

At this point I am actually starting to get used to the cattlework. I am definitely less afraid of the cattle and am certainly more confident blocking one when they charge. I have started to be able to tell what they are going to do by the sounds they are making and where to put myself so that I can avoid being hurt and get them to go where I want them at the same time. It may be less exciting to write about or to read, but for me it is a big step. Being able to overcome an instinctual fear and to think on my feet. Becoming acclimated to life as something adventurous as a cattleman is pretty cool if you ask me.

Over the past few days I have been doing more of the before mentioned eartagging as well as ear marking which means actually cutting a little circular chunk out of the ear to mark them somehow. Again I don’t really know what it is for I just do as I’m told haha. I got to brand a cow this morning that was interesting. I can’t tell how much it hurts them, some of them scream and kick and some don’t really do anything when the iron is pressed on. Either way the cattle are pretty hardy.

Today we were working on branding and tagging a large group of calves and I had the lucky job of filling up the race. Calves of course haven’t been in the yards before and most are only a week or two old, so they are scared and don’t know what to do. But most of the other cattle go away from you when you walk towards them but the calves just freak out and go in all directions. It’s like when you throw a football at the ground try to guess which way it will bounce. (haha an AMERICAN football that is) They just go crazy and smash themselves into the fence or they just freeze up and block all the other ones from going where they need to go. So I ended up getting kicked like 10 times today trying to get them up the race. And boy can they kick hard. One of them got me right square in the side of my right shin and another kicked me on the back of my left knee. Both of my legs are now pretty bruised and swollen but otherwise fine. I look pretty funny walking around tonight especially considering what happened later. But yeah, the calves may be crazy but they are so adorable. Especially the newborn ones; they can’t even walk so we have to pick them up and carry them from yard to yard. If they stayed that size, and that calm, I would love to have a little baby cow running around the house as a pet. But they quickly get to be 1000 pounds and pretty wild very quickly.

So we worked all today in the yards and that was good, but then it got to be almost sunset as we finished up. Then we had to get the cattle back to the paddock where we mustered them from. Rather than use the cattle truck tomorrow, Don decided to have us walk them the 4 or 5 kilometers back to the paddock. This is the classic cattle drive where there is a huge long group of cattle with a few guys at the back and a few guys running up and down the sides to keep the cattle in line, except we are in a ute and on motorbikes instead of horses. Theoretically it should have been pretty easy, we were just sending them back the same way they came in and there would be less of them this time. But we had no radios, the sun was down, there was no moon and it was actually RAINING. I know! Of all the times! At first we did pretty well, I was in the car with Don driving helter skelter through the bush, and then we started to lose containment. They were starting to go off the road to both sides and then it started to drizzle. For whatever reason that is a signal to the cows that it is time to stop and eat so they all just split up and started grazing. And then the wheel fell off of Esben’s quad bike. So in order to try and get them all back into the group Don had Esben and I go ON FOOT. There probably aren’t very many people in the world who can say that they have driven cattle on foot at night. Now I am among those chosen few. Our job was to walk through the bush and make sure that we didn’t miss any straggling calves and to get them back into a group. For the most part it worked. I started walking north screaming at the top of my lungs, “WALK UP WALK UP!” Then I noticed some cattle to my left and I brought them back to the group but then we crossed the road, or some road anyway, keep in mind it was pitch dark and I didn’t have a light. The cattle were meant to stay on the road but more so we want them to stay in a group so I pushed all the ones I could see towards the group. At this point I swear I kept going straight north or in the direction I started. I pride myself on my excellent sense of direction, but apparently it’s not excellent enough to handle walking the outback at night with out a flashlight and driving cattle at the same time. But apparently I lost my way big time. I think that everyone did. Every motorbike that passed me said they had no idea where the road was and that they couldn’t see anything. I told them to try being on foot. Anyway at some point Don showed up with the ute and showed Esben (who I had found elsewhere in the bush) and I where the road was and we managed to get most of the cattle going again up to the gate to the holding paddock, (which also happens to be the airstrip for the homestead) and then somebody told Don that one of the new guys was missing. Oh yeah I forgot two new Aussie guys showed up. So we hopped on the back of Don’s ute and started calling and searching for him back in the direction of the yards. At this point down a quad bike, a motorbike-r missing and Don’s ute searching for him the cattle were a lost cause. We just opened all the gates for them and eventually they’ll smell the water in the holding paddock and come in on their own. But we searched and searched and I turns out that he had kept going on the road like he was told and ended up way ahead instead of behind. We were all glad to see him safe.

All in all today was the hardest day yet I think. Any way I am the most tired and hurt I have been so far even more than the seventeen hour day I worked last week. That time we had an assembly line going and I was just bending over and eartagging most of the day. But today was jumping fences, blocking big angry mama cows, battling calves and on top of it all basically walking home and shouting my lungs out. At least you get good cardio at this job. I’m sure that there is stuff that I’ve missed (haha like the fun I had this morning driving the Subaru with the broken engine to the yards) but I’ll have to save it. I am indescribably tired. Sleep.

And now another day is done. Spent loading steers onto our cattle truck, branding and tagging calves and drafting steers to get ready for the road train to come tomorrow.morning EARLYEARLYEARLY. But the past few days have been great, Don’s girlfriend has come to visit and she has cooked us wonderful gourmet meals every night. And we get wine! The work is hard and there is not much time to sit down and think, but life is pretty good right now. Even for Delmore life, which I always an adventure. Although I haven’t had time to draw or play my banjo in a week or so hopefully I will get the right side of my brain some exercise soon. It’s funny how doing a job seemingly 24 hours a day, that requires you to be thinking in the moment and react quickly gets you thinking in such different ways that a job where you have to be analytical or can just think about things all day. I can tell that I am thinking differently now than I was just a week ago when I had time to sit in the shop and reflect and write and draw. Now I am working physically all day and have to use my action instincts all day and I can’t seem to access my creative brain at the moment. It’s not that it won’t come back, my point is that I can see how people really are products of their environment.. . . and now I can’t remember what I was saying because I fell asleep and now it’ s another day later. This one marked by the arrival of three new girls, an Aussie a German and a Brit, and by the leaving of Tom, the four month hard-hitting world traveling Danish Delmore veteran.