Hi hi!
So as promised here’s a little bit of what I’ve been up to since coming to Australia three weeks ago. Lucky for you I’ve had plenty of time offline to type, which means I’ve had time to get an especially detailed outline of some of my time here in Australia together (I know you all like it when I can type an extra long post on here… Kane…)
So here we go: Louisa and I left the hostel early the morning of Sunday December 4th, but thanks to a broken ticket meter at the train station we literally jumped on to the train as it was moving out of the station. Most of the other people participating in that week of OutBack Packers (the training ranch’s official name) were also on the train but we only met Jake who was sitting with us. However I didn’t talk to him that much as I was trying to catch up on my sleep – I was kept up until 2:30am the night before by the drinking Irish guys in my hostel room, cheers! We met Donna, one of the temporary staff from OutBack Packers at the train station in Lithegow, and then she drove us to the training ranch in Coonabarabran. When we got to the ranch around 4:00pm – after 10 hours of traveling – we met the final participant in our training week.
In total there were 8 of us. Louisa and Jake were from England, Tim was from Germany, Rudmer was from Holland, and Charles, Sheze (Shay-zee), and Marion were from France. Except for Louisa and Rudmer, who were both 27, everyone was younger than I was and were taking a gap year from university. That night we met Craig, our trainer. It was his farm that we were staying at and his equipment and animals we would be using to learn all we could in that week. At first I really didn’t like Craig; he just yelled at everyone especially the Frenchies, who as it turned out, spoke very little English. His teaching methods hardly counted as teaching; his go to resort was just yelling the same thing at us as if we were struggling – which by the way, does nothing to help you do better. But as the week went on and we got a better idea of what was expected of us and we hung out with Craig after the day’s training I really enjoyed hanging out with him. He was very funny and was always trying to trick us into saying “mine” in which the penalty was to do ten push-ups – apparently I got a record for the year, I probably accumulated 400 push-ups, each time I told Craig I would do them later that night. He took a genuine interest in our lives back home and what are plans were in Australia other than working. His wife Amanda would cook us dinner each night, and Donna helped out with cooking and watching their two children: Ruby and Molly. The other staff member we interacted with was Jo, who was in charge of advertising the farm and then booking accommodations and travel for us to and from the training ranch.
Each day at the training ranch was somewhat designated to a new thing to learn. Monday was going to the town in the morning to get our bank accounts and cellphones figured out, get our boots and hats, and go grocery shopping for any little snack you wanted. Monday afternoon was all about learning to ride the motorbikes; two-wheel and four-wheel. The quads were easy enough but it was the first time I had ever ridden a motorbike and there were times that I actually thought I might seriously hurt myself or others. For example: As we got used to driving around normally, Craig took us to a field with a huge, long, peaked, mound of dirt in the middle of it. We were to drive over it on our bikes (ps. Bikes is interchangeable for quad and two-wheel, I’m not sure if that’s the same for America but it got pretty confusing at times for me when using the word over here) up and down it, making a special effort to carefully hit the accelerator at the bottom and then release as we ascended up the 7 foot high peak. Well it took Zarah two times going over this thing to realize exactly how soon you needed to release the accelerator if you didn’t want to soar over the top of it and nearly eat dirt when landing on the other side. So with my nerves all shot, I continued to drive up and over with the rest of the group until Sheze, who was driving in front of me, fell off her bike in the middle of the track and didn’t move by the time I got to her. Fortunately I just hit her back tire but both of us were shaken up, and a shouting Craig didn’t help us feel better; he was more worried about us getting the bikes up straight than the state of our well-being – which leads me to let you know how hard it is to stand a motorbike upright from the ground with shaky arms. By the end of the day I was completely exhausted; mentally, physically, and emotionally but did receive some praise from Craig who was surprised that this was my first time riding a bike.
Tuesday was dedicated to riding the horses, something I was pleased about and looking forward to after the previous afternoon with the bikes. We drove down the road to Craig’s other farm and met his seven horses. Because he knew that some of us wouldn’t be getting jobs that required us to ride a horse, only some of us practiced catching, saddling, and riding a horse. Somehow Craig thought that I was a champion horse rider so he kept asking me to show the rest of the group what to do, which led to him yelling at me a lot when I couldn’t canter right away. Apparently Charles was the one that had rode horses all his life and won awards and such, but didn’t let Craig know when he asked, I’m assuming because his limited English prevented him from understanding the question. So after a rough morning of having high expectations we went off on a trail ride. It was a fun morning but the whole time I could just feel my legs and butt getting sore and was dreading the next day. Later that evening we mustered (rounded-up) Craig’s cattle on the bikes and learned how to sort them out from the herd in the holding pens.
On Wednesday we went back to the other farm in the morning and used the horses to muster Craig’s sheep to have a closer look at them in the yards, spraying dip on a few that looked like they might be having fly problems. Then we went and mustered his cattle and brought them to the yards. Here we tagged the calves’ ears and cut off a few of the cows’ horns. I really didn’t mind the cattle work; cattle are so much easier to handle than sheep. The highlight of the morning was successfully cantering back to the farm on my horse – and doing it properly so I didn’t hurt my butt every time the horse’s feet hit the ground.
By this time, Craig and Jo had already found me a job opportunity on a horse and cattle farm in Roma, Queensland. After they find you a job it’s up to you to call the potential employer to have a phone interview to see if it’s a good fit; so I called the farmer to hear more about the job and see if he would like to hire me still after our conversation. My potential employer’s name was Brendan Fitzgerald; he told me a bit about the farm and what I would be doing and I told him that I was NOT a champion horse rider but am comfortable around horses and am willing to learn more about riding and mustering than what I currently knew (aka nothing). He seemed like a nice guy and offered me the job, just asking me be in contact in the next few days about what time my bus would arrive in Roma.
Now that I had a job in place, the rest of the training ranch days were still hard but without the pressure of proving to Craig that I was actually employable I enjoyed myself much more than the first days. I think it was also due to our group as a whole getting a hang of what we were doing and getting to see the friendly, joking side of Craig instead of the shouting, frustrated one.
Thursday was a quiet, random task filled morning, but the afternoon was dedicated to fencing. Fencing in Australia is just as much fun as it is in America – not at all. And I’m not talking about fighting each other with thin swords, I’m talking about fixing and building new fences that go around the edges of the pens the cows and sheep go in. Here’s what we did: Because there were eight of us we were divided into different groups to get the process along quicker than if we all worked on the same one together. The group I wasn’t in had the duty of taking the wires off the old fence, straightening them out and putting them to the side, removing the old fence posts and putting up new fence posts. My group was in charge of digging a 80 cm hole (which is around 2 ½ feet – yeah, I’m getting really good at converting things from metric) in which we were to place a massive stay post (a post that’s larger than all the rest that bares the strain of the wires in the fence – usually at the corners of pens or in the middle of a long stretch). We were doing good digging the hole in the hard ground, getting the post to stand up on it’s own – by pounding the loose dirt in around the bottom, and were almost done, but when Craig came around to check on our progress he told us that we did it wrong and needed to pack the loose dirt in more frequently or the post wouldn’t be able to hold all the strain and that we had to take the post out and start over. Well, I think he just wanted to keep us busy while the other group continued to sort the wires out because as we proceeded to take the post out we realized that it was really in there and it took us longer getting it out than it did to dig the hole and pack it in there. Thank god we had Charles in our group, who, is a very large dude. Converted to measures you understand Charles was 6’11” and about 300lbs. And he’s only 19, so he’s still going to grow! Even with his strength we had a hard time trying to remove all of the packed in dirt around the post, but eventually we worked it out and re-did it, making sure to pack the dirt in very frequently this time. We were also in charge of digging a smaller angled hole for the supporting post, a post that goes at about a 45° angle from the ground up to a notch in the stay post, helping the stay post hold the strain of the wires going to it. By the time we were done that we strung the old wires back onto the new posts using certain ties and knots and contraptions called strainers to fasten the wires to the stay posts and to each other. Do I need to elaborate how much it sucks to tie a little knot with stiff fencing wire? And of course Craig volunteered me to do the top wire – which is the only one done with barbed wire, yay fencing!
Friday was our last day working at the training ranch and it was full of random little tasks on both farms. Craig taught us how to use a chainsaw – which was actually pretty fun, but also really dangerous – I only have 9 fingers now. HA! Just kidding. But speaking of fingers I will tell a little story about my right thumb. One of Craig’s perks of his job is messing with us, which includes starting to drive away without all of us being in the vehicle. So during the mad scramble to get everyone piled into the car that morning, I was the second to last person in. As I hung around in the doorway trying to find room to get in so the guy (who will remain anonymous because I’ve already made him feel bad enough already) behind me could get in, he noticed that there were some trees coming up and the moving car with it’s door open would soon hit them. So he slammed the door shut and hopped in the back trailer with the firewood we had just cut up. The only thing was that somehow I was holding onto the doorframe with my thumb in the way of the shutting door. Ow. I got hit just above the knuckle and while Craig and the rest of the guys think I will lose my nail – I just have a pretty black in blue under it for the next couple of months. Too bad I left my black nail polish at home!
So with that, we finished off our week of training. Myself, Tim, and Charles were the only ones placed in a job right away; Tim getting a job in Southern Australia on a vineyard and Charles on a smaller farm near Sydney. Rudmer attended the training ranch basically just to kill time – he already had a job and was heading to somewhere way out in the outback to drive a tractor all day long. Louisa and Jake both wanted to be in Sydney for the holidays and will get a job placement in the New Year. And the French girls turned down the jobs Craig and Jo found them so they could find a job on their own (I’m assuming it won’t be farm work – I’m pretty sure Craig’s yelling scarred them from ever doing a job with physical labor ever again) near where Charles was going to be working. Jo had booked me a bus from Coonabarabran to Toowoomba to Roma, so I spent all of Saturday driving north to Brendan’s farm. With all the rain eastern Australia has been getting a lot of roads were closed and my first bus had to take a detour that took us 3 hours out of our way. But I finally arrived in Roma at 11:45pm and met Brendan and Lisa, another girl from OutBack Packers who would be leaving soon to spend the holidays with her sister in Sydney.
But because I’ve went on and on in this post I’m going to leave the details about life here at Brendan’s farm for another time. What do you think, did I set a new record for longest blog post ever? Haha. Unfortunately it seems like my blogs are going to be a little on the longer side during my time here in Roma, unless I figure out a easier and more convenient way of using internet that doesn’t require me sitting at the McDonalds in town. Oh well, I’m sure you will be able to handle reading my ramblings. And let me know if you have any specific questions about anything and I’ll do my best to include that answer in my next post.
Hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas – fingers crossed it will be a white one! Meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy sitting outside in my shorts and flip-flops. ;)
xoxo Zee
