Nearly the end of the line.

Greg and one of the trucks taking the cattle away from Kilcowera.

 

 The dust storms at the end of September and early October have just about wrecked our country and as a consequence we have mustered 95% of the cattle off Kilcowera.  We didn’t have many left on the place and did have them spread right out but with the Mulga now totally coated in dust there is nothing for them to eat.  We still have a couple of hundred on Zenonie and I suppose they will go soon too.   I was so sad to see our cows and their little calves and weaners being trucked off the place I didn’t want to ask what happens next.

If only we could get an inch of rain to clean the mulga up, but no, not for us.  This is our ninth year of drought and we have only had 28 mls of rain this year, so I think this is our worst year of all.

 We started here with a pretty ordinary, small herd of mixed up Brahmin cross cattle when we bought the place and by constantly buying good Hereford bulls and putting them with the cows and then culling the offspring for temperament, and type we had built up a nice herd of cattle. Mostly quiet cows who knew the country, where to get a feed and a drink in the dry times and with high fertility rates. 

The cows have gone to Moree where a Drover is taking them on a stock route for a few weeks, supposedly there is plenty of feed and they will put some weight on and freshen up.  The poor old girls will enjoy the grass anyway, it’s a long time since there has been any here.  We’ll then advertise them for sale and they will be sold through the Moree saleyards.  We have been told there are lots of paddocks down that way with either a failed crop or a paddock of stubble from a harvested crop where the farmers will put stock into to fatten them up.

 All that we have left here now are a few bulls, some cows that had tiny calves or who were about to calve and the odd one we missed.  And Feral, the quarters resident poddy who will spend the summer here mowing the lawn.

 

  

 

 

 

Miss Lucy – newest resident at Kilcowera

Miss Lucy our little Australian Silky Terrier

A busy August at Kilcowera.

 

It started cold but gradually warmed up until we were in shorts and t shirts, eating salads and warning the visitors to keep an eye out for snakes.  We’ve had several changes in the weather that promised a slight chance of rain but it didn’t happen, so the drought continues for us.  A large chunk of south west Qld is still drought declared and we have been constantly advising would be visitors that it is dry here still.  They all seem to think that, as the channel country rivers ran earlier this year the drought is over.  All we have had here are dust storms and a measly 26 ml of rain this year. 

With the unappealing threat of a long, hot, dry summer ahead of us again, Greg has been repairing stock waters around the place.  One tank and trough had not been used for about 5 years and we have refurbished it so it holds water again.  A windmill broke down some months ago and it too is being fixed, he thought it was a write off but the problem is not as bad as first thought, thank goodness. 

We have had quite a lot of visitors throughout the winter, mainly birdwatchers and campers also a few fly in people. One bloke was flyiyng a little Cessna 150 to Thailand and he stayed here on his way there and back.  Brave man!!!!  Many of our guests were on their way to Lake Eyre to see the spectacle.  It must have been pretty busy out there over the winter months. 

Both Greg and myself had a little trip away for shopping purposes – his purchases were mainly for water improvements, he’s got pumps, pipes, fittings, compressors, motors and all manner of things in an endeavour to make our stock waters more dependable and not so reliant on wind. 

I had a week away mainly to visit a daughter and to see her graduate from Uni.  I was soo happy for her that she passed as she has worked so hard to get through Uni and hold down a job as well.  The other big job on my agenda was to come home with a puppy as my little Chihuahua died last year and it has been a lonely existence without a little companion.  Someone to talk to. 

So Lucy has joined the family, she is an Australian Silky Terrier and what a bundle of energy!  She loves our visitors and is getting more confident and cheeky as every day goes by. She is also the scruffiest little animal that I have ever seen and it is nearly impossible to groom her as  she just wants to play all the time and won’t stay still.  She has been a bit crook today and looks very pathetic.

 

 

The Shearer’s Cook Part 2

A Roo hole in one of our fences – Kilcowera Station

 

 

  The cook also had to branch out a bit in the smoko department or the grumbling would start and the sandwiches would come back all pulled apart as the shearer’s checked them out for anything interesting….. just the odd bight out of them and the rest thrown back in the dish.  In contempt.  So I learned to make bacon and egg pies, sausage rolls, fancy savoury scones and pizzas.  You had to be careful not to give them too much of a good thing or they expected it all the time though. (Sound familiar girls?)

 

 

I gradually weaned them on to stews by the cunning use of dumplings as allies. Then curries, but not too hot.  Matter of fact they liked a sweet curry with lots of sultanas, apples and chutney in it.  By the time they picked up their eating irons they mostly had splashed so much tomato sauce over their meal, they really wouldn’t have known what they were eating any way.  Tomato sauce seemed to go with everything. To my disgust.  

As my confidence grew in the kitchen I became cheeky.  One day I didn’t make gravy for the roast leg of mutton. “Where’s the gravy love?”  Asked the shearer, to which I innocently replied “ Oh tomato sauce will do you today”  He,he,he,he.  Black looks though. 

They were enjoying my meals I think, there was never much food left anyway so I decided to try the shanks that previously had been sneered at and given to the dogs.  Out came my trusty mutton cookbook and I whisked them up Thelma’s Lemony Shanks, served with mashed spud and carrots and peas.  After much initial grumbling and grizzling about eating the bloody dog food they ate it, tossed the plates on the kitchen table and marched out as per usual.  There was none left, the family said it was a nice meal so I figured I had a win up there.  

 Lamb shanks were on the menu, but I still had to get them to eat the flaps as they called them, this was the sheep’s ribs.  I would bone the flaps out and make mini roasts out of them or have them as spare ribs with honey and soy etc.  I even got rid of the sauce bottle occasionally by snatching it off the table and saying “You won’t need that it’s already seasoned ,you bastard!” to the offending party.  When in Rome……. 

They came around eventually when they realized I wasn’t trying to poison them and that the Cocky’s missus wasn’t short changing them by not providing enough food. And we were only going through a sheep a day instead of 2.  Much easier on my husband.  The dogs missed out a bit though.

 

 

 

 

 

The Shearer’s Cook Part 1

Shearing at Kilcowera Station

 

 For the first 10 years of married life my little family lived in the shearers quarters here at Kilcowera.  Shearing time was a major drama for me as I had to share my home with 9 or so extra people for up to a month at a time.  My kitchen was taken over by a stranger and strangers also thumped and lounged all over everything that I had tried to make homely in the previous 12 months. 

So to take back some semblance of control I decided to do the shearers cooking myself with some child minding help from my mother in law.  A bonus was that I would get paid for doing this as I would be working for the contractor. Including the family and musterers I would be cooking for about 14. 

The cook was not allowed to spend too much on luxuries for the men, whatever luxuries there were to be, the cook made them.  After all the contractor had to make a quid out of the shearing and sheep were cheap and groceries weren’t. I think we were allowed to buy sausages, bacon and mince once a week.  The rest of the time it was mutton. 

I had been horrified at the waste of meat by the cooks in previous years.  The shanks, necks and quite often the shoulders of the sheep were just thrown in the bin, given to the dogs or chooks and the shearers just seemed to live on roast leg, boiled leg and chops. Also Greg had to kill the sheep and cut them up for the cooks, he’d do such a good job only to have half of it thrown out! Those cooks would go through 2 sheep a day! What a waste of food.  But still these were blokes who had never seen a zucchini and regarded a curry as suspect. I also learnt that the cooks weren’t looking to make their job any harder than it already was by boning out shoulders. 

A full cooked breakfast including porridge was to be available at 6.30, then the clean up of pots, pans, frypans etc. Cakes and biscuits and sandwiches had to be made for smoko at 9.30.  All in the wood stove remember!  Someone would come over to the kitchen and help me take the smoko over to the shed.  A big urn of tea, cold water, cordial and oh yes  -  the shearers did like toasted sangers for at least one smoko. 

Back to the kitchen, another clean up and the finishing touches to lunch at 12pm.   They always had to have dessert at lunch time so I would make a super big one and the leftovers would be for tea.  Desert was optional at tea time but mandatory for lunch.  Clean up and another smoko over to the shed at 3pm.  The afternoon smoko didn’t need to be quite as elaborate as the morning one. 

They would finish work at 5.30, bolt half a dozen beers down, have a quick shower and be ready for tea about 6.45.  And while they all toddled off to bed or outside for a smoke and a rum, me and the family would be cleaning up again and trying to do some tomorrow jobs just to keep up. (Cutting up chops, buttering bread, peeling vegetables, carving meat for sandwiches)  God it was a lot of work and honestly I had never seen people eat so much food.  More to come on this subject………………….

 

Mustering at Kilcowera 2009

Ang in the cattle yard at Kilcowera Station – Outback Queensland

 

Well the last month has been sooo busy.  Our 2 girls came home for a week with their boyfriends to help with the mustering, also had 2 other men come to do the job and Greg and me. 

Katherine the eldest girl and her friend Brad flew over from Perth to Brisbane and drove out with Angela and her bloke, Glen.  Both really nice guys and useful!!!!! And we all got along like a river in flood.  

Of course there had been much baking of biscuits and slices and muffins beforehand and these were frozen so I didn’t have to do so much during the muster.  The freezer is nearly empty now but I really don’t care, I feel that I could live on cereal and 2 minute noodles for a fortnight after all the cooking I have done. 

 I tell the world “THE BREAKFAST FAIRY HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!!!!”  Coming up with a nice brekky at 5 every morning for 3 weeks is a pain in the a#*e.  One good thing is they all cut their own lunch at breakfast time, so I didn’t have to cook a lunch every day too.  But keeping the cold meat up to them was a bit of a challenge as I was operating from a freezer that was seriously depleted of meat! And still is. 

We also had a few tourists through and had to do a camp oven dinner one night and a BBQ another.  I flew about 50 hours mustering and enjoyed that immensely. The weather was perfect. The little Skyfox Gazelle performed faultlessly.  It does need an oil change badly, I thought that I had oil for it but there wasn’t enough and I could not get what I needed locally.  Hopefully I will get some on the mail this week.

 

Peter and Jimmy, the main musterers had 18 dogs between them and the chorus that would start up when they left for the days mustering was deafening.  The dogs that were left behind would howl and bark until about 10 o’clock, then all lie around in the sun and sleep until disturbed then they would just start up again. I am so happy to see the back of that pack of dishlickers. 

When we finished mustering Kilcowera we trucked about 160 cattle away on 4 decks (2 trailers).  Our truck driver comes from Cunnamulla and has been carting our cattle for years.  Same when we finished at Zenonie, another 4 decks gone.  Greg reckons if we don’t get some rain over winter we will have to sell a lot more as the country is soooo dry there will be nothing left for the cattle to live on.  It will be very sad if we have to sell our cows as they know their way around here and where to get a feed usually.

 

All finished for the time being, so it’s time to catch up on other jobs around the place like doing my blog and office work, gardening, watering and Greg back on his dozer and fencing and fixing the bore that has mysteriously broken down.  Anyone want to buy 30 old cows and their calves?