Life with cows and the Gibb river road

So by now we have worked here on the station for a month and probably will work for another one and a half. As I think I already mentioned, we are working in a station that is like the stop-off before the abattoir. So basically all the bush around the Kimberley region is full of cows, who live totally free for whole of their life, very often not even ever seeing a human being. Then they are mustered in all of the stations. Mostly helicopters, motorbikes and quad-bikes are used for that, as doing it on  foot or even on horses would be too difficult because of the large areas. So the cows come here in big double-decker trucks, we unload them (they have usually been caught not even a week before they get here) and then we process them. If the cows come from tick-infested areas, then we dip them in water, mixed with a solution against ticks. Then all the cows are drafted, which means that we sort them into groups (getting to know some of the groups takes a bit of time, as they have a different name for everyone - we have mickeys, heffers, pot pots, steer, spadejobs, export cows and so on and so on... every category always has sub-categories as well). The main part of my job is getting the cows and bulls from their pens and chasing them down the lane-ways, keeping them moving (coming through the gate one by one for example) and later, when they are all ready to go into the pens (probably different ones that they were in before because we have sorted into new subgroups) then I use the quad-bike to chase them back. For example they may come in as one group but be taken back as four or even six different groups to as many different pens. In order to do that a lot of different gates have to be opened and closed because the yards are kind of like a big labyrinth that can be changed around according to the needs.  I also help to load the trucks, clean the water- and feed draughts, bring hay for the pens that don’t have a feed drought, fix the fences and basically do everything that is needed.

The cows can be very smart sometimes. For example they figure it out very soon that if they brake their water draught then they will get better water - we have automatic systems in every one that have floats, so when the water level gets too low, more water will flow into the drought. Of course the water gets warm in the 40 degrees that we have outside, so if they break the system they will get a constant flow of cold water. But that means firstly that the pens of the cows downhill from the ’smart ones’ will get flooded and if it happens more than once in a short period of time then they get stuck in the deep mud and we have to pull them out of it. Secondly it means that the pens that are further away from the water pumps will not get any new water at all because all the water goes into the water draught of the cows who have overflowing draughts. Whereas the cows that are in the open paddocks have realized that they can go further away from the water draughts (to get the good grass and stuff from the farther corners) when it rains, because they don’t have to stay near the water anymore. Not to mention the fact that some bulls discovered that it they work together to lift up the pipe above their food draught, then they have enough space to go outside. The latter resulted in us finding 30 bulls in a pen one morning that was supposed to have 80. So they can be pretty witty sometimes.

Another thing that I did not realize before is that cowboys don’t have their cowboy clothes because that is their style and they're trying to be fashionable. Everything actually has a point. For example, the hat covers the face and neck and the dent in top enables you to grab the hat with one hand to use it to chase the cows from one place to another. A 5-dollar straw hat (that you could use for any fruit-veg picking job) breaks in a couple of days if you try to use it like that. The small scarves are for the dust. And I would not even dream of going to work without jeans (or any other long pants that are made of a stronger material) because the fences are burning hot and you will need to jump on them and over them for sure.

So most of the cows that live here are big and wild and will not really let you go close to them. But there are some of them that are pet cows. For example there is a threesome – Snowflake, Chockflake and Peaches, who always chill around together (outside the yards of course) and they love their scratches and pats. In return they will lick you with their long blue tongues that are just about as soft as sandpaper. And then there is Lenny, who is the sweetest big bull that I have seen. He just came up to me one day when we were drafting (I had to stand in their pen to open the gates and help the others form that side) and I was not sure how to react at first, because as I said, they are usually not very approachable. But later I found out that he will come and rub his head against you and is the most gentle animal ever. And then there are the calves of course, who are the cutest things ever. The newborns are cool as they are still discovering the world. For example one discovered that it had a tongue and it was trying to look at it from every corner for twenty minutes and looked very surprised that it was attached to it and that it could move the strange thing. The same happened with one calf and his legs the other time (imagine someone walking and trying to stand up, being surprised and a bit afraid of their own legs at the same time).

One thing that bothers me is the concept of eco marketing, seen from this point of view. So all our cows are being grown naturally and are very ’eco’ but that also means that no additional vitamins or food supplements can be given to them to fight some of the diseases. And when a cow is sick and you treat it with any medications then the price drops drastically (even after the withholding period that most of the medicines have - the period that it takes for the animal to get the medicine out of this system). So as soon as you try to help the cow (and I am not talking about injecting it with some hormones to make it grow faster or anything like that), it is considered bad in the nowadays great ’eco-friendly world’ and the cow is "not as good".

Before Australia, cowboys were something out of the movie for me. I did not really realize that they actually exist. But it is a whole different world. They do actually listen to country music and go to rodeos, catch cows with lassos (but only as a competition). They have their famous bull riders and famous bulls (people actually know some bulls all over the world by name). They have their own brand products – you have like a „Prada“ of ropes that you use for staying on bulls when they are bucking; you have the „Adidas“ of cowboy hats or an „Armani“ of clothes or other stuff that they use. So a whole new world in opening up to me (I don’t think I’ll get too deep into that world, but is very fascinating to have some peeks)

But speaking about other nature around here, it gave me quite the scare once as well – I was cleaning a big water tank a few weeks ago and opened the tap on the outside bottom part that is used for letting water out, when I felt something weird on my hand. It kind of felt like two or three ants had bitten me or getting burned by a stinging nettle, so it was more of an uncomfortable itch than anything else. So I went back to the tap and saw a Redback sitting on the tap (who does not know, a Redback is Australia’s second most venomous spider and in top five in the world according to any lists that I found on the internet). So anyway, the skin was a bit reddish and there was a small drop of blood in the middle. I thought that as soon as it gets worse, I will go back to show it to someone, but it really never did get worse (so I was not sure if I had gotten stung by it at all). In an hour, there was nothing else to be seen than a tiniest puncture mark, which turned into the tiniest bruise on the next day. Well... after some more googling, I found out that only 6-10% of all people have a reaction to the bite, which means that I most likely was bitten  by one of the most venomous spiders in the world but just did not have a reaction. (as the spider was sitting right were I had been bitten and it definitely was not an ant, that leaves a mark like that).

So yeah... the days are long (start at 6am finish at 5-6pm), the temperature is hot (35-40 degrees) the work can be very physical and hard but every time that I feel tired or fed up, something good happens. For example you see some kangaroos hopping by you, while you go home at the sunset, dead tired of anyone or anything, especially when you have had some d***head bulls who just will not do anything you want them to. Or you pick up a newborn cow, discover that the shit on it is not dry at all (and cover yourself completely with it) and you take it back to the nearest pen (being frustrated that you did it at all  because it probably isn’t even the right pen) and then the next day you discover that the calf has found a mother (not necessarily the right mother, but that does not matter, as long as it has a mother who takes care of it). So little good things, mostly things that the animals around here do, are the things that really make this job great.

But we have not been working the whole time. We had a plan to go to the Gibb River Road from the moment that we bought our car. The Gibb is supposed to be a kind of a must-do for 4WD cars in West Australia but it closes down during the rainy season because you can’t really get over all the flood-ways and rivers plus the rain washes some parts of the road away. But now we also had a job that we liked... which was a bit of a problem.  So we managed to talk the people in the station into letting us go on a trip for a week - which owed us some jealous and envious looks, because noone else was getting a week off and had to work. But to be fair, we had planned Gibb for longer than we had planned to be cowboys so we would have gone anyway... the difference would have just been whether we came back or not.

So just as we started our trip, when we had driven for about 100kms (and heading off to 660km of gravel road with no towns or mechanical services etc) we heard a loud pop under our hood. When we stopped to take a look we discovered that one of our radiator hoses had burst into two pieces. We used the cheap and horrible duct tape that we had to patch it up and headed to Derby (the last actual town on our way to Gibb river road, where we were planning to get all the food and fuel etc from), very hopefully. As it was Saturday afternoon, no mechanics were working and no shop or wreckers that sold any car parts was going to be open before Monday. But we did find two guys just having beers and chilling in a garage (that was actually also closed) and fixing their boat or something like that. As it happened they had an old Pajero (the same car that we have but a different model) in their back yard, that still had the radiator hose intact and they were happy to give it to us for free as long as we took it off and put it in ourselves and they even threw a bit of coolant in our radiator. That was another happening in our „extremely lucky Australia“ series. In the same series is: 1. Getting exactly the car that we wanted on the first day of arriving to Australia with less than a half of its market price 2. Getting the jobs that we wanted without really going through too much trouble 3. Getting an optometrist in Broome to open a shop especially for me on a Sunday (they are all closed on sunday)... three times, because I needed new glasses and also wanted to order some prescription sunnies (the sun is really hard on the eyes) 4. the Redback thing 5. We met some cool guys at a gorge, who pulled up at the gorge at the same moment that we did (going the opposite direction on Gibb), we gave them beers, they gave us other stuff in return and we had the nicest chilled two hours before going our separate ways 6.I can’t remember them all, but unbelievably good things keep happening to us on this trip.

Anyways, The Gibb River road.... we were told to carry at least two spare tyres, 40 litres of water per person and were warned that we should drive in a convoy as there are no cars on Gibb and it is so incredibly dangerous. Well sometimes (read:all the f***ing time) Aussies seem to make things worse than they actually are. Gibb was just a gravel road – ok, the rains had washed some parts of it away a bit and we had to cross water about ten times during the 660km but... we did not break any tyres (nor did we meet anyone who had), there was water available in at least three places on the road and we saw 6-8 cars every single day. And people help each other... especially on a road like that, almost noone will pass you, when they see that you have some trouble. It is remote, but people behave differently in remote areas as well.

We did see some crocodiles and accidentally swam with two of them - we did not see them before getting out of the water. They were freshies so they do not really attack them unless you step on their foot or something like that. But even knowing that they are quite harmless, I was not keen on crossing the water inside a cave in another gorge with two crocodiles being next to the water and at last three inside it. so we did not go to the end of the Tunnel Creek. We also saw a turtle and loads and loads of kangaroos and cows. Plus some bigger and smaller lizards. And I could also describe how amazing the nature was, but I am not so poetic, that I could actually explain you any of this. We also discovered (not the first time) that we are not really good tourists because after a few days we stop appreciating things. If the gorges (even one of them. even the least amazing one) were in Estonia I would tell every person visiting Estonia how great it is and that you have to go there.

Unfortunately the wet season is really near so some of the gorges were already closed and we finished the Gibb in just three days. So we decided to go and see the Bungle Bungles as well, which was also very cool, except the drive into the national park because the road was so corrugated that it took us more than 1,5 hours to drive 50km. the Bungle Bungles are basically these mountains that look like orange and black striped domes. It is hard to believe that these things actually occur naturally if you don’t see them yourself.

But now we’re back in the cattle station to work some more. The weather has gotten hotter since we left and the air is more humid, plus the mosquitos have also appeared. So if I post anything else in the near future it will probably be about cows (or other animals) because they are a cool bunch of animals when you get to know them and we’re not quite done being cowboys.

PS. I will not add pictures here right now, because the internet is even worse than it was before (it took me 40 minutes to add this post, although I had pre-written it in the computer), but I will add pics in facebook. If I feel incredibly patient one day, I might add them later.