Adios Hermanos.

Yesterday i almost blew up a generator, a ute, my boss, all my friends, at least 100 cattle, brand new yards and almost started a bush fire across an entire property in one foul swoop. . . . . and it was my last day at delmore to boot. I finally secured a ride to Alice with my bosses son who had to catch a flight today (tuesday). So yesterday i was needed to help with drafting the 800 + cattle that had been mustered into the shiny new Dnieper yards, with their shiny new pneumatic crush and drafting system. basically a crush with air driven doors that open with the flick of a switch, yeah really handy. We spent the morning going really well and sorting about half the cattle before taking a brake and then we came back and started sorting again. At this point we needed to turn the air compressor back on which had run out of petrol. That was my job alone, of course what everyone forgot is that pumping fuel is a two person job here. One person to get up on the back of the ute and pump the fuel out of the drum and one person to hold the hose into the fuel tank and to check how full it is getting. I didn't know how to start the motor without a pull chain and Don came over and showed me much to his verbal dismay. Unfortunately i ALONE had been tasked with filling up the generator. And this is my part of the mistake; instead of asking for help before going ahead, i performed a complicated maneuver involving me holding the hose in the tank with my foot and reaching behind and above me to turn the pump in the back of the ute. It got the fuel out of the tank well enough, but i couldn't see how much was coming out of the hose. Too much. The fuel tank overflowed spilling petrol all over the radiator that was still hot from running all day before. 

WHOOSH.

Instantly half the generator and the fuel pump hose was on fire and i turned and ran. The only thing that was going through my mind was "get away the ute is going to explode." and then i realized "oh yeah, the ute is going to explode and kill everyone" so i turned around and got into the ute and drove it to the road 20 meters away fuel pump still on fire. By this point the tall grass that surrounded the compressor was all aflame and spreading slowly (thankfully) in the lack of wind. We got the 20 litre tanks of water off the utes and poured them over the flames (burning off my arm hairs and some eyelashes in the process) but the petrol was still spilling out of the fuel line and it just spread the flames even more. Then all the pressure blew out of the compressor and everyone ran as fast as they could. We are really lucky that no one was hurt or anything destroyed except for the generator. Luckily even the air compressor was fine, but that was still the dumbest mistake i have ever made. 

A lot can be said about Don's . . . attitude towards his staff but one of his finer aspects is that he is very quick to forgive for even huge mistakes. I'm sure that it's a product of having grown up in an environment where everything that can possibly go wrong eventually does. Part of why i think i was so promptly forgiven was that while Don drove off to find another generator for the compressor, the rest of us continued drafting the old fashioned and more "hands-on" way WITHOUT the pneumatic race. AND we finished it all, who needs all that modern technology anyway? But we eventually got the thing up and running again and had a much less eventful day tagging and branding calves. Although i spent the rest of the day pretty shaken up. 

After an early night i got up and said my goodbyes and drove to town with Baden. And here i am feeling very out of place suddenly surrounded by "tons" of people and buildings. . . .  but more on that later. It's time for dome dinner....FROM THE GROCERY STORE!!!!!