Another busy week camped out at No 3 but with one major improvement  - Kev lent me his mosquito net! It's amazing, more like a tent than a net and I can put my bed inside it and everything. It is kind of huge though and has been nicknamed the "hotel room", but it definitely does the job. I now only get a couple of bites a night from dinner time, rather than the 12+ I used to get overnight.

Anne, Josh and PJ came straight out to camp on Monday night on their return from the riding school at Augustus (which they all really enjoyed) and Tuesday we were straight into mustering the 20mile again for bullocks, but this time with 2 choppers. As I said before, bullocks can be a bit of a nightmare, and this lot lulled us into thinking it was all going to be easy, as we stood for 3 hours holding the main mob while the choppers sent more beasts into us, and they were all very calm and stood together well. Once we started moving it was a different matter. We had 500 bullocks, 8 men on horses and 2 choppers. We went along for about an hour all fine, then we reached a big patch of trees on the edge of a plain, where they all started to drift left through the trees. The people on that side blocked them ok, and they came back out towards the plain, at which point they decided they really didn't want to cooperate anymore and would much rather go back to the part of the paddock that they came from. And they all just took off in every direction. Cue another hour's mad galloping flat out trying to stop themm (my horse Afra was fantastic!), we lost at least half, most of which were eventually brought back by the choppers, and then we ended up with two big mobs each with 4 men as they'd all got split up. I was with the back mob, and it was a case of softly softly to try and bring them back up to the others, which we managed eventually, and when we had the whole mob we headed straight for the fence. I can honestly say I've never been so glad to see a fence in all my life, as it holds in one side of the mob for you and makes things so much easier. Then it was a case of just following the fence, the only snag being that we had been cutting across a rectangular-ish paddock diagonally, and now we had to follow the fence around the perimeter, things took rather longer. But we got back to camp eventually, and left them in the smaller paddock near camp.

Wednesday we had the job of yarding all the bullocks in the camp paddock - now about 1600 - into the steel yards, and although the paddock is much smaller than the 20mile, that doesn't really say much. What should have taken a couple of hours, took about 6, as once again they did not want to cooperate. We eventually pushed them all to one end of the paddock and left half in a yard down by the turkey's nest so we had a smaller number to deal with, which we took along the fence to the main yards. Once again all was going well until we tried to get them to make the turn into the yard, at which point all hell broke loose again, with half of this mob jumping through the fence or trying to head back past the bore. It got so bad PJ had to go get the chopper and Richard ditched his horse in favour of the Toyota. We got them yarded eventually but not without a lot of hassle. In the afternoon we went to get the rest  of them, but this time took the coaches (old poddy calves who know where they should be going and so lead the others), and things went a lot more smoothly, although we did have 6 people on horses, 2 Toyotas and a chopper, all of which were needed at some point!

Thursday we spent the day drafting the cattle and getting them dipped ready to be sold, which again was slower than it should have been, as the unhelpful things kept going back through the dip the wrong way and not being able to turn round, and also someone hadn't shut one of the internal gates properly, so 400 cattle that had already been drafted got out with the ones that hadn't, and had to be redrafted again. We had a man come to visit from another station down south somewhere who was inspecting the cattle to see if he wanted to buy them for his feed lot (where they fatten them then sell them). He decided to buy 1092 head, so on Friday we loaded 7 road trains (42 decks) of cattle. We had the first 4 loaded between 6:30am and 9, which was pretty good going, then had to do more drafting and get the others ready for when 3 of them returned to pick up a second load. They were taking them to Cloncurry, which is about 4hours away by truck and they had a very quick turn around and were back with us by 5.

Saturday we loaded 10 decks of cattle, which were going to the meatworks in Townsville, and we were finished by 8:30am, so we had early smoko, packed up and came home, and didn't do much the rest of the day except trying to get through the week's washing! I spent a bit of time sat with the kiddy goats, as they're not as tame as they should be and Anne wanted someone to spend time with them. It took a while, but after about 30mins they were climbing all over me and chewing my clothes - very sweet.

So all in all it's going pretty well. I didn't mention that last Friday we had a big storm and at midnight it started throwing it down with rain while we were at camp. It was a mad dash to move all the swags undercover and retrieve the saddles and various other bits and pieces. But that's the only bad weather we've had. There was a morning glory this week, which is a big band of cloud that brings a cold wind and probably other stuff too, but it's only seen here and in the Gulf of Mexico apparently, and is very rare at this time of year - they don't usually happen till August or September. But apparently it's very warm for May still, normally it would be pretty cool by now, but the weather has noticeably begun to turn this week, the breezes are a lot cooler.

I think we're spending this week at the station, which will be nice having a whole week in my bed. No doubt we'll have to get another killer at some point - PJ and Kev took me with them last time, and although it wasn't a hugely pleasant experience it wasn't that horrific either. I've been eating meat for all these years, and it's about time I actually connected what I'm eating to a living animal, and seeing how they're killed, or at least here, it's pretty humane (a shot to the head) and knowing that they've had the best most relaxed life they could have had makes a real difference.

On that cheerful note I'll have to end. But I'll try and update again soon...