So sorry it's been 2 weeks since my last entry - things have just been busy as ever out here and I've got very behind. So where did I get to...

Mustering. As I may have said last time, it's a lot harder than I ever thought it could be. Generally I spend my time chasing up the tail, which means zigzagging back and forth riding about 4 times as far as the cattle actually go. Some mobs are better behaved than others in terms of keeping walking and actually staying with the rest of the mob. Sometimes a beast just decides they don't want to be with the others any more and shoots off, and it's up to whoever's closest to chase them back in. Initially I kept out of the way and let the others do the chasing, but gradually I've been getting more confident. I had a couple of good chases at Mellish while riding Grumpy - in one case Alan actually said over the radio that "Grumpy was in full flight", which I think amused some of the others. When you're chasing a beast it's really important as to what position you're in - not too close and not too far ahead or behind. Also you've got to try not to send the beast back into the mob too fast or it can push others out the opposite side. As PJ said, its like squeezing a balloon - if you squeeze in one end, the opposite end has to widen out to make up for it. The same goes for just keeping the mob together in general, as the back corners have a habit of spreading out, so you have to push them back in, but not so hard the mob bulges out elsewhere.

For me, the most difficult part of mustering is the first bit, when you're collecting your first few cattle, because you have no mob to send them back to, and you just have to contain the ones you find. There's often a lot of mad cantering about, and everyone is obviously so involved in it that they can't instruct me as to where I should be and it's hard not to end up in the way or too far out so the cattle decide you're a good exit route! I'm getting there slowly, though the last couple of days we've been mustering bullocks, and they are nothing like anything else! Until then we'd had mixed mobs, or mainly cows (we did have one just of bulls but they weren't too bad) which are quieter, and like to stay together, whereas bullocks (castrated males over 2yrs old) want to go every which way and just gallop and be very unhelpful. I now seem to have reached a point where I sometimes know where I should be, but can't get there in time or turn fast enough. But hey, it's got to come with experience right? It's just very frustrating at the time, and I really don't want to be responsible for losing a large part of the mob and therefore a large part of the morning's work.

When we eventually make it back to the yards - which can take anywhere between 3 and 10 hours we then have to cut out. This involves holding the main mob in one area, while Alan and often Anne move among them cutting out any strangers (cattle that don't belong to us, and have escaped into our property from one of the neighbouring ones) and also whatever else they might want to cut out that day, such as old cows to be sold or bulls etc. Everyone else's job is to keep the main mob in one place and the cut beasts in another and stop them getting back to each other, which again wastes a lot of time. Never before have I really felt such a need to have eyes in the back of my head!

One day up at Mellish I was riding Bel Ray for cutting out, and one of the main mob tried to join those that had been cut out, so I went to chase it, and in the process my hat flew off, spooked the horse who started bucking, I managed to sit out a few then decided I should bail out, and of course landed in a nice fresh cowpat! I wasn't hurt and got back on straight away, and to be fair I've been overdue a fall for the last 5 yrs or so!

Once the cutting out is done, the drafting begins. This sorts the cattle into different yards such as calves, cows, mickeys (uncastrated young males), steers (castrated young males), heifers (young females) and bulls. It's a pretty impressive process to watch, and the guys working the gates in the pound have to be so quick to open and close the right ones to let the right beasts through and block the wrong ones. Most of the cattle aren't too bad as they've been going through the yards all their lives, and know to look for the open gate, but some, especially the ferals up at Mellish just go nuts. They charge at you and charge at the rails and you have to climb up the rails to get out of the way. We only had one injury while we were there, which was that a heifer charged at the rails, and Billy's hand was in the way, so his thumb got crushed and just popped open - it looked like someone had sliced it open with a sharp knife! He was fine, but the flying doctor came out and I think he had a night in hospital. My job was on the calf cradle with PJ and Luke. Basically I had to chase up the calves that had been drafted into a smaller yard, then chase a few of those into the crush (narrow alleyway with slide gates at each end and behind the first calf). From there the first calf is release out the front and runs into the cradle, so his head pokes out the far side, while PJ (or whoever's working it) tightens the cradle by pushing it in along the ratchet then pulls it towards him, so the cradle and the calf end up on their side on the ground with head out one end and back legs the other, and supposedly no chance of escape till we release them. I'll try to put up a picture at some point as it's very hard to describe. Then th calf has to be branded on the right rump with the station code B5N for Nardoo and V2F for Mellish, with a 7 underneath to say this is a 2007 calf. The right ear is then earmarked with a pair of earmarking pliers which cut out the registered shape for the station, and if necessary the calf is dehorned, which is a bit brutal with lots of blood but needs doing and heals pretty quickly. Also if it's a mickey calf (male) who doesn't look like he'll make a good bull (about 95% of them!) they get castrated. So my accomplishments now include branding, dehorning, earmarking and castrating cattle - well they always say you should put something a bit different on your CV to attract attention!

The other cows get sent down the big crush and are given a botulism injection and their tails banged (the tufty bit at the end gets cut straight across) so we can tell which have been done. When we were out at No3 the cattle we had there were going to be sold, so they all had to be eartagged and sent through the dip too. I found it very entertaining watching them go through the dip as some kind of fall into it, others take a flying leap trying to make the other side, and some just dive in head first!

When we were up at Mellish, we generally spent a day mustering then the next day on the yards "cleaning up", but out at No3, where we've been for the last couple of weeks we sometimes manage to do both in the same day. One day we had two huge road trains to transport some of the cattle - 3 double decker trailers each! Loading them was definitely an experience, as all their eartags had to be read before they could be loaded 6 or 8 at a time, as each deck of each trailer has two compartments. I was taken for a ride in both road trains - they were very posh and absolutely massive! The cab looked like those big american lorries with the bonnet out in front and inside was all leather with comfy looking bunk beds and a fridge! But for the amount of time those drivers spend on the road they definitely need it. I think its 16 hours to Townsville, which is where most of our cattle go, and that's regarded as a pretty short journey!

This week I was given two new horses as Luke had taken my other two and Grumpy really needed a break. So I now have Afra (who's pretty big) and O'Reilly (who's pretty small!) both of whom are chestnuts, so I have a complete fleet of chestnut mares. Afra is fantastic, once I got used to riding her as she's quite different to Grumpy, and hopefully O'Reilly and I will get on better soon - she needs to be ridden in spurs, but I had to take to ones off that I was wearing as they were too loose for my boots, so I had a few problems actually trying to make her go anywhere, which was a big nightmare as we were mustering bullocks that day!

I'm enjoying camping out at No3. I've claimed my tree, and now I have an extra blanket on my swag I'm sleeping pretty well. I was worried about snakes, as the first week we were there we had two black headed pythons come into camp 2 nights running. Technically they aren't dangerous, but they're beginning to cross with one of the poisonous snakes so some have fangs! I got PJ to burn the long grass behind my bed as that's where the snakes like to go, and Kev burnt some of the grass around his - his camp is about 20m away from mine. However one night this week about half an hour after I'd gone to bed I heard this big bang coming from Kev's direction and a lot of movement. At the time I thought "Argh he's killing a snake!" then I told myself not to be so silly and that I was overreacting, turned over and went to sleep. Turns out though it was a snake! Kev woke up to hear it moving about under his bed, so he killed it. Or so he thought, as when he woke up in the morning it had gone! As I said, camping is good, the stars are so beautiful out here, like nothing I've seen before. On the bad side though, the insects love me. Mainly my hands and sometimes my arms and face, though I've had a couple of bites on my feet this week. I put on insect repellent before bed but it doesn't seem to make much difference. One night last week I even had two different repellents on but that didn't work either. My hands can get really itchy with all the bites - often 10+ on each hand, but Bev told me to but vinegar on the bites to take away the itch, and it really works! I've had a couple of bad reactions to bites though - one day both the backs of my hands were really swollen and a couple of fingers and the next morning one side of my face and my lips were huge too! But it went away within a couple of days.

The weekends have been busy too. When we got back from Mellish it was Luke's 18th so we had a barbeque for that and then I got taken to the pub in Gregory for the first time. It's nothing like ours in England, just kind of a bar with a couple of fridges behind it in a bit of a big shed thing. It was a bit of a quiet night there, just us and Andrew and Holly Clark who live on one of the stations nearer to Gregory. They are 21 and 18, and it was nice to meet someone else from the area. We all ended up playing pool at Mr Forshaw's house across the road before getting home about 3am - I was very glad that the next day was Sunday and I didn't have to do much.

Then, last weekend was the races on the Saturday. It was definitely an experience - the food was very yummy and everyone looked very nice dressed up, and the racing was interesting to watch. You don't really get an idea of how fast those horses go on the tv! Joe, Anne's cousin who's doing some building work up here had a couple of good bets and won about 700 dollars I think, so he was happy. When we arrived I went to help Bev and the other ladies in the kitchen buttering bread and making sandwiches etc, before watching the races. I saw a dutch girl who's working on one of the nearby stations for 6 weeks, who I met at Luke's party (who's name noone can say so they call her Tulip!) again, which was nice, and Ting (one of the other girls on the outback placement) was there too, so we had a good catch up and were comparing notes. She's having a good time out there, doing much the same as me, but I seem to be very lucky in that I'm given the chance to try most things, like castrating etc, whereas her people are rushing through too much for her to have a go. I got a lift home about 5:30 from the races as I had to get up early the next morning because Anne and I had volunteered to be at a safety checkpoint for the canoe race at 7am the next morning, which meant leaving home at 6am to get there! So an early night was definitely in order, after I'd helped PJ feed the calves and yard up the goats (the little kiddy goats are sooo sweet, there are only 13 of them now but we're expecting more).

Sunday morning Anne and I were up bright and early as I said, for the canoe race. I think it was best described as semi organised chaos, but it was good to see - especially as the only thing my travel guide mentions about Gregory is the canoe race! We were at the start, and then at checkpoint 3, although we left at 12noon before the race finished, as Anne had to come home to sort out her paperwork, to be back out at Gregory for the bull ride at 4pm (she's the secretary for the races and the bull ride). The evening was good fun. Ting was there again, and we watched the crazy people being bucked off the bullocks and bulls. There was also a calf ride for the kids, and although they had people holding both ends of the calf and holding the kid on it, we couldn't understand who'd let their child do such a thing! PJ was clowning in the arena along with 2 other guys, which meant that he had to pick up the people who fell off and stop the bull from hurting them, if necessary trying to make the bull chase him instead! Sounds a bit crazy, but these people are doing this kind of thing in their day to day work anyway on the station so they're used to it - rather them than me though! Generally the bulls (which came from Nardoo) performed pretty well - the only problem was that they didn't seem to want to leave the arena! It was a good night, and I met a few more people from surrounding stations, and we got home about 3:30am! And we had to work the next day, although not properly until after lunch thank goodness.

This week I think we all spent a while catching up on sleep and we've been back out camping at No3, although we mustered the stud paddock out at Big Lagoon and started on the bullocks in the 20mile paddock. Cleaning up on the yards at Big Lagoon was a bit eventful, as the calves we were branding etc were a bit mad, and kept trying to charge, kick, jump over the crush (and flip themselves over) or lie down and get themselves stuck. PJ managed to almost knock himself out while we were trying to get one up, as he went to jump up the rail, but misjudged it as the rails there are higher than the other yards, and whacked his head really hard and just fell backwards! He was pretty out of it for a while, but fine again by the next day.

PJ, Anne and Josh are away at Augustus (a neighbouring station) this weekend for a riding school. They've each taken 2 horses, a young and and a more experienced one, and there's a guy up there who's doing dry work and cattle work with them and the other people who work up there. They hadn't been to one before so it'll be interesting to see what they make of it but it's pretty quiet here without them.

Well I think I've caught up on most things that have happened over the last few weeks, so until next time, whenever that may be...