Happy Anniversary

This year marks 10 years for me in the Northern Territory. I've seen some good times. I've seen some bad. I've been knocked out by horses and cattle. I've broken my back. I think at one point I may have even broken my leg. I've been bogged in mud. I've been in a chopper doing a bit of cattle work. I've been from the edge of the Kimberleys to the edge of the Barkly Tablelands and everywhere in between. I end some days covered in blood. I end some days covered in dirt or mud. I end some days covered in oil and grease. I've swum in croc infested waterways. I've cut up countless cows and bullocks for beef. I've processed over 70,000 breeder cows across 12 different stations. I've raised approximately 80 poddy calves. I've chained srcub with a D9. I've kept a 700km square property ticking over. I've fought dozens of fires. And I learnt early on that there is a million different ways to skin a cat and that no one skins a cat the same way. There's not one part of me that ever regrets coming up here and hardly coming home. I've done it all and had a ball.
I've met some fantastic people along the way. I've met some I'd rather forget. But there are two people that stand out above the rest. I met them in Rio's, now known as Club 23 (at least I haven't been around long enough to have known it as Wings) and they have been there for through thick and thin ever since. When I saw them I thought "These are my type of people". I bet when they saw me they thought "What's this drunken, college tart up to?" But never-the-less, they tolerated my annoying presence.
Two years passed and we had lost touch. Till one (yet another) night on the turps at Daly Waters. I was greeted immediately by warm hugs and big smiles from Shorty and Stace.
Ever since they have been there in my life. Shorty providing me with a roof over my head and food in my belly whenever I have needed it and she's never been afraid of giving me a kick up the arse when I needed it either. And Stace is the best mate by my side here in the NT. Alcohol fuelled nights and lunches wherein I miss my plane and not to mention the countless rodeos.
So I raise my glass of my now non-alcoholic beverage to two special people: To Shorty and Stace. The Cowgirls Mama and the Rodeo Queen. Love yas!

Once a Jolly Swagwoman

My earlier blogs being longer and less refined, some parts of which may not be remembered by readers means I will quickly relate an excerpt from "Tigger the Reluctant Townie - The Last Supper (and the First Siren)".
I was in Darwin about a year ago visiting my best friend since infancy as it was to be her last weekend in the NT for some time. She said she had a bed available for me to sleep in at her apartment but I didn't want her to go to any trouble and told her I'll just roll my swag on the floor somewhere. Upon unclipping the swag straps it was discovered that my bed roll had been harbouring a plague of crickets which were now jumping about my friends 3rd floor apartment. The swag was banished to the balcony for the night and I belatedly accepted the offer of the spare bed... after squishing all the crickets.
The New Year rolls around and here we are in 2013.
Before the Christmas break I moved all my stuff in to my future residence and went on my merry way back to my mothers. Upon returning I found my swag, which I ever so intelligently left outside for the duration of four weeks, to be a little wet. I shrugged my shoulders, willed myself to get over it, the swag has seen worse days and besides, I have a proper bed to sleep in now.
I had spent the entirety of the previous year since leaving Providence Station in May living out of my swag. It was my bed every night with only a few random exceptions. And because almost every night was spent sleeping in it, it only got cleaned on occassion (gross I know). The first time it got cleaned was out of necessity for hygiene, the second was thanks to an infestation of fleas caused by Lacey running around underneath the floorboards of my accommodation. Little troublemaker she is!
But with a big weekend approaching it has dawned on me "I need to clean my swag" so I dragged its flooded weight under the lean-to in the hopes this will help it drain. Then came the scary bit... I unclipped it. And along with the usual crickets that seem to attracted to my bed there was mould. And lots of it. White mould, green mould, black mould. All growing from their little spores, drinking from the damp patches. I can't believe I let myself be so careless!
My workmate just laughed at the sight as I put blanket after blanket in the washing machine, carrying each like it was a petri dish of active gangrene bacteria. I guerneyed the canvas and hung it to dry over the rails of the cattle yards. The mattress got a few squirts of floor cleaner, a dumping of rain and a good hose down and left to dry in the shed on a stack of pallets.
Once all was relatively clean again I rolled it all up and threw it in the back of the ute and headed on up to Darwin. As the evening wore on and I was offered a sleep on the futon for the night I gladly accepted. After all, despite my efforts, my swag still smells of mould!

The Habits of Nocturnal Wildlife

Everyone has their little falling-asleep nuances. But none I have found more strange than the one that I am currently experiencing. Some people turn on night-lights (but they wouldn't willingly call it that). Some drink a warm beverage. Some people, like me, have a teeny-tiny background noise. I play a movie on my laptop but have the volume so low that it can only just be heard.
Helping a friend move into the home of a bachelor that works away saw me temporarily staying at the same residence as was offered by the man himself. It was quiet and peaceful and we went to sleep early so we may feel refreshed for work the next day. Then the bachelor went on his fortnightly break...
He cracked open cans early in the morning and got around all hours of the day or night in his vehicle or on his quad bike. He had sessions with the neighbour and fixed flat tyres at 7am. But at night, when he went to bed, he did what I thought was rude and strange. He turned the stereo up. And I don't just mean up a dash, I mean up alot. Whatever was on the radio be it ABC or Hot100, it was blaring out of the speakers at goodness knows what decibel! And here were my friend and I, lying in our beds, wondering 'what the hell, could this bloke be serious?'
I slept one night with the pillow wrapped around my head, window and door closed and I could still hear that racket. The following night I just bailed. I'd fallen asleep but around an hour later the bachelor cranked up the radio and hit the hay. I was wild. I felt like tearing out the radio from the shelf and throwing it in front of my car and running over it a few times. Instead I grabbed my swag and threw it in the tray of my toyota and drove out the gates to camp further down the road, away from the din, so I could get some sleep while being attacked by mozzies.
I returned the next morning to find I should have been a little more patient. At some point during the night the power had run out (the solar panels charge batteries which provide electricity for the house. If it's too overcast during the day or too much power is drawn then the batteries run out of power therefore so does the house). I should have waited out for the power outage. I would have got alot more sleep. Instead I camped up down the road to the sound of frogs and crickets and cattle in the scrub. When I woke in the morning everything was soaked in condensation. When I returned to the house, he didn't even know I had left until I arrived back.
But seriously, who does that kind of stuff? Who turns the radio up before going to bed rather than down or off like most normal people would? I know who. They don't have to work (they're on break or have no job). They drink when most people are at work. They come in at all hours and wake everyone up with their noisemaking and their cooking of strange concoctions they regard as dinner. They watch their movies loud or play their music loud and keep everyone else awake. Yeah, I know who. I've lived with a few and I am definitely more than over it!

Silly Skinny Funny Finny

Born to the floodplains south of Darwin, she took her name from a river that flowed nearby, the Finniss. Black and tan and full of bounce, but no brains, she found a home at weaning on a Sturt Plateau station with some friends. They did their best to get her to work cattle but the pup thought it was her job to ride and sleep on the rack of the quad bike. Eventually they gave up.
At odds at what to do with their non-productive dog I was keen to take her on. I didn't care that she wouldn't work, she's a happy, boisterous dog that would make good company for Lacey. So Finny became mine.
I didn't give up on her cattle-wise. When walking away some cattle on one place I have been working on, I asked if I could bring her along. She found her place on the back of the quad bike and once again fell asleep. I tried to convince her to get off the bike and walk with me behind the cattle but she just looked at me with that absent look of hers and went back to sleep. Another half a kilometre up the laneway I pushed her off the bike and sped off in the hopes that she would just stay on the ground and tail the cattle. Nope, she jumped straight back on. I tried over and over again. At one point I stuck my foot out just as she was about to jump back on and she rolled on the ground, got up and jumped up on the rack. I laughed and just gave up. There was nothing else I could do. She was just plain not interested.
The next place I worked on there wasn't a great lot of opportunity to take her anywhere. So she just spent her days playing with her new toys that I bought her, chewing on bones, chasing wallabies for hours on end and sleeping.
Advice from various friends and my Poppa were all consistent: "Don't give up on her, not until she's at least two". So, I haven't. I was determined that one day she would work, that one day she would show some interest. That day has finally come.
Three months after leaving the station she came from we were back for more work. The offer to bring Finny along mustering one day I saw as an opportunity to give her another chance.
With my friend and her working dogs out in the middle of the scrub somewhere on foot and my other friend also out in the scrub somewhere on the quad bike, I got out on foot along the fenceline and let Finny out of the cage. I jogged up behind stragglers and motioned for Finny to join me. I'd call Finny over, hold her by the collar, start jogging and she'd jog with me then I'd let her collar go and she'd jog along faster behind the cattle. At one point she chased a cheeky heifer then realised what she was making it do. I was ecstatic. She'd figured out that what she was doing made the cattle move off her. I made such a fuss over her for her brilliant effort. The light had switched on in her head. Finally.
We continued on the tail together, me occasionally stopping to go back and bring the toyota up. When my friend on foot caught up with us I let Finny stay with her. She had an old veteran dog called Stretch and Finny stuck by him like glue, going where he was going and doing what he was doing. Although when Finny got bored she started to lick his balls... which of course he quite enjoyed.
When the cattle took off into the tea-tree my friend sent her dogs off to bend them back and Finny headed out there too. A report came back from the tea-tree later that afternoon: My friend on the quad reckoned Finny was quite interested in what was going on and although hesitant, gave it a go. My friend on foot was more worried at that point that Finny was more interested on getting on that bloody quad bike than the cattle so we were both surprised to hear that she wasn't.
Another observation that was made that Finny worked her cattle wide when bending them back around. A trait her mother has that she has obviously passed on. I couldn't see what was going on out there for the density of the trees.
So after three months of seeing dear Finny cower behind her kennel when there are cattle grazing beside her or humbugging around the quad bike because the amount of cattle at a water trough is too overwhelming for her, I have hope.

Finny ready for her big day of work.

My Life In Boxes

From the age of 18 I have not stopped moving around. Nearly every year since leaving high school I have been living and working in a different place. I get a job, unpack my belongings and at the end of the mustering season or a year or so later, I'm packing and moving on again.

This year, though, has taken it all to a new level. The beginning of the year saw me leaving my job and life in town to only a few months later leaving the station me and my former partner in crime were on and since then I haven't stopped moving being anywhere from three days to two months on a property before heading to the next place living off of whatever I need and whatever can fit in my Landcruiser.

Most of my belongings are in a rented storage shed. Everytime I lift the roller door into it, there it is: Reality in a box. His stuff on the right wall, my stuff on the left.

There's that old saying about keeping the home-fires burning. At Dad's this rings very true. My bedroom has barely changed since I was 10 years old. In fact, I've actually moved more stuff in much to Dad's annoyance.

"You're supposed to be moving out, not moving more stuff in," he reckons. Yeah, not going to happen till I have my own house on KI to move it all into.

At Mother's it is a different story. My boxes and stuff is moved around to new locations across the motel according to convenience and necessity. Everytime I go back I am sleeping in a different bed, in a different building.

But I don't really want to keep this nomadic life. I would love to settle down. I would love to hang my dresses in a wardrobe, put my clothes in drawers, put all my books on a shelf and display my stuffed toys beside my bed. I'd like to establish a garden that doesn't get eaten by poddy calves, have a carport to park my toyota under, have a yard so my dog doesn't have to be tied up all day. But all that I hope for seems so faraway. So for the time being, my life is in boxes.

Sump Oil and Spanners

It's so easy to go take a car to a mechanic. It's so easy to go out and buy filters and oil in an effort to service a vehicle by oneself. It's not so easy to go out and buy motivation though. In fact it's impossible. Even when I know that my car, poor, old Bruiser, hasn't been serviced since January 2011. I bought what I needed to get the job done over a month ago. It sat in a stack by the front door of the quarters since I took it off the back of the ute when I returned from town. I would walk past it numerous times a day but I still ignored it. But this weekend I finally decided to give procrastination the flick and after coming back from a water run I pulled the toolbox out from behind the seat, grabbed a plastic tub and slid a big piece of cardboard under the car and finally undid the sump plug.

I laid under the car for a while staring up at the oil filter and casually watching to oil pour out of the sump. 

'Can't stop now', I thought to myself as I realised that I had just committed myself to servicing old Bruiser.

Eventually I undid the oil filter. I took out the air filter and gave it a good blow out. It was in pretty good nick considering the roads I drive down and the length of time it's been since it was looked at last. I got the fancy filter-undoer-strappy-thing again and went to undo the fuel filter. A radiator hose, the cooling fan and fuel lines were all in my way making it a fickle task and be buggered if I could undo the stupid thing. I did, however, manage to put an impressive dent in it that will probably somehow, at some point, stuff something up and create bigger problems for me than when I first began. But the patience was tested and it failed. The damn thing can stay there.

I crawled back underneath the car with the new oil filter filled with new oil and put it in its place. I tightened it with the filter-doer-upper-strappy-thing and then laid there watching sump oil drip, drip, drip into the tub.

Then I woke up. I could feel the sun burning my legs. Not good. I don't know how long I had been asleep for but it was no surprise that I did because it seems that everytime I crawl under my car to work on it I nod off. The last time was when Dad and I were replacing the cooling fan and water pump (that had decided to fall out on the edge of the northern suburbs of Adelaide making the rest of the way in a very noisy and tedious journey) leaving Dad to do all the work himself while I had a little nanna nap.

After scolding myself I did up the sump plug and climbed up on the bullbar and filled the engine with new oil. Once the level was right I could finally lower the bonnet albeit still a little annoyed at myself that I couldn't do the fuel filter. I packed everything away and then slathered my hands and arms in heavy duty hand cleaner. The oil slick on my upper limbs all cleaned up, I drove back to the quarters to have forty winks on the cool tiles.

The evidence of my mechanical morning didn't wash off my legs though in the shower. I am sunburnt from where my shorts end to where my boots start and there are beautiful, artistic patches of black to compliment my pink, sun-stressed skin. But my car is serviced... only 9 months late and I'm sure the old boy will appreciate it so long as the oil filter doesn't fall off or anything.

It's Big, It's Black and It's Mean

So, I'll tell you a story. A little altered for the purpose of protecting the identity of a person and property. I don't think they'd like it if everyone knew that they were being chased and not being the one doing the chasing.

A number of years ago during the Build-Up the stockcamp, the manager and myself were all out mustering sale cattle from a paddock that backs onto pastorally unused land. Out of this land comes all sorts animals.

On this particular day, all was going well. I was parked up on the tail, moving out of way for cattle being brought in by the chopper then closing the gap again once I'd finished bringing them in to the mob. I'd go out around the ones coming in once they'd reached a certain point along the fenceline. As I sat there on my horse waiting for two particular head to come in my partner-in-crime of many years told me that I might want to move right out of the way for these two. As usual I ignored him and second guessed him till the cattle came in that little bit closer and his tone became a bit more urgent. I screwed my head back on and heeded his warning and moved a few places around the mob.

"Further than that!" he reckoned. By this point, the bovine pair were close enough for me to see what they were and 'further than that' I did move... right around to the lead of the mob. And I'm glad I did because when they got to the mob, one of them was a very unhappy camper. With speary horns and a shiny black coat, 600kgs of testosterone fuelled madness set his eyes on the nearest culprit of his agitation. The big cleanskin bull lined up the manager on his horse that we'll refer to as Big R. The manager set Big R, who's blind in one eye, in a tail turn and off they galloped with the scrub bull right up their clacker. I'm sure they felt the breath of that bull heating their behinds. One false move by the horse and they would have been gone but Big R kept his feet as they raced away from the mob till the bull gave up the chase and headed off into the depths of the paddock. I watched the event unfold with my heart in my mouth.

Years later, on a nearby property that also backs onto the pastorally unused land, I saw that mean, cleanskin bull again. Pulling down an old fence I kept a very wary eye on his whereabouts. I knew his potential and be damned if I wanted to be caught out. I told the boy I was working with to keep his eyes peeled too because Blacky wasn't the only scrub bull there. But after a while I became complacent while tending to my task and next thing I know, I look up and he's merely metres away from me. I looked over at the boy and mouthed "Holy f***!" while I tried to figure out what my next move should be or if I should make one at all. I looked around me. I had one thick tree to my left and one to my right but despite that there was still too much distance between me and the trees and I decided that once I was behind one I was good as stuck because all the other trees were too thin to use as protection. Nope, not using that option. What else?

After a moment I decided upon a wide berth around the bull back to the old toyota. I slowly and carefully stepped over the old, falling-down fence and backed away. As I placed my feet one of the old cows spooked and took off, bumping into the bull as she spun round and leading him and a few other cows away as she scampered off. My heart skipped a beat as I took the opportunity to move just that little bit faster away from the bull to the safety of the toyota where I calmed my nerves and had a drink of water. I did not like being caught out like that but I was fortunate that he was as worried as I was. He's still out there, impregnating cows that have been removed from the herd bulls. But sure as hell I don't want to be there the next time a chopper is out there mustering that paddock or next time his mood won't be so accomodating!