Sorry for the lack of updates over the last couple of weeks, but we've been camped up at Mellish Park to start second round, so there's been no chance of internet access.

To go back almost 3 weeks... Anne and I had a nice couple of days in town, not what you'd call particularly relaxing, but as they say, a change is as good as a rest! Anne had a doctor's appointment and I still needed to go to the bank on a day it was actually open, so the day kind of revolved around that. We left at 5:30am with thermos mugs of tea to get us through to Cloncurry, had breakfast there and did a few errands before making it into Mt Isa. It was a very busy day trying to fit in all that we wanted to do, as well as all the things other people wanted us to do - as soon as people at the station know you're going into town you end up with big lists of things they want you to get and you almost spend more time getting their stuff than your own! But we did manage to squeeze in a nice (albeit rather quick) lunch at the Buffs Club as I wanted to take Anne somewhere for her birthday which was in July. We were aiming to make it home the same day, but by the time we'd finished everything it was about 5:30pm, and understandably we couldn't face the 4hr drive back. Instead we made it the 1hr back to Cloncurry and stayed at a place called the Leichardt Hotel, which was really nice, and very reasonable. We had dinner in the bar there and bumped into several old friends of Anne's so it was a nice social evening. After breakfast the next morning we finished off the last of the errands that were left and headed home, with a quick stopoff at the Burke and Wills Roadhouse (about 1hr from Nardoo) for lunch. After that we spent the next couple of days out at No3 shoeing horses, as they all needed 4 shoes on to go to Mellish as the country up there is very rocky. It took a fair while, as there are 8 people with 3 horses each, and although most of the horses had 2 shoes on already, some of these were pretty worn and had to come off and start again.

We were meant to head off to Mellish on the Friday, but we had some rain Thursday night, so we didn't make it up there until Saturday. We were there for 12 days, rather than the 10 we did last time, as they wanted to spend a couple of days mustering far over the range and doing a bit of a clean up of the ferals out there which never usually get touched. All in all it wasn't too bad, but it's a long time without a day off when you're working that hard! The mustering took as long as usual, but since it was second round the yard work was a lot quicker as most of the cows had already been injected and bang tailed, and there were fewer calves to brand, as there were only those that had been born since last round in April. The day we did the top end was probably the longest as usual, although most of the time (4hrs), was spent sitting still holding a mob of cattle, waiting for the chopper to bring in the ferals from over the range. Those things are just mad. Big cleanskin (unbranded) bulls that have never seen people before with BIG horns. They kept bailing up in the thick scrub where the chopper couldn't get to them, so PJ had to go on foot behind them with a gun to shoot rubber bullets to keep them moving. Rather him than me! In the end he had to use real bullets as it was too dangerous for him, but only 1 mad bull had to be shot to stop him seriously hurting PJ. Eventually the ferals came into the mob, and predictably 2 decided straight away that they didn't want to be there and charged straight out again with 4 people in pursuit. Kev and Lee threw one without a problem, but one bailed up in the waterhole and noone could do anything with him. The hired chopper pilot (as we used 2 choppers up there) was amazing the way he could fly, and he was actually hitting the bull in the water with the skids (like the legs) of his chopper, very impressive anyway, but even more so when the waterhole was completely surrounded by trees and there was almost no space to manouevre. However, despite the advice that if anything so much as looked at me as if it might charge I should just gallop out of the way and forget about anything else, the mob walked back pretty well, without any serious breakouts really.

The other long day we had was going up over the range - the country up there is beautiful all hills, but very rocky bad ground. We only got about 70 cattle, about half of which were escapees from next door, and the rest were ferals. We got some very cute little red ferals with tiny curly horns that were pretty docile, and some other ferals which were just a bit mad. The one bull we got was surprisingly well behaved, it was just the big horny cows that were the problem. I think 3 got thrown in the end, and had there horns cut off, but after that they came back into the mob and behaved pretty well. Luckily we only had to walk them halfway back that day as we'd thought ahead and used some portable panels to build a little yard for them overnight, which meant people, horses and cattle could get a bit of a rest from the rocky ground.

We came back from Mellish yesterday - I came back in the chopper with PJ who gave me a bit of a sightseeing tour over the range, and for once I actually took my camera! So I have a lot of pictures of hills and waterholes, and also of some big cleanskin bulls that had been missed in the muster, which was good to be able to come back and show people what they need to look out for another time. We arrived back about morning smoko time and had the rest of the day off, as well as today and tomorrow off - I don't know what I'm going to do with myself! Though I was very grateful for the lie-in this morning. Piglet has grown so much in the last 2 weeks it's unbelievable, and thankfully Nacho seems to be picking up again. He's getting his appetite back and some of the hair that had fallen out is growing back, his coat's shinier and he's beginning to play about again. It's so good to see, fingers crossed he'll keep on improving.

Better go - should go find something useful to do...