Cattle to go under the hammer 9th December.

Cattle in the yard at Kilcowera Station.

 

We have had some rain in the last 2 months but all after we sent our cattle away and it wasn’t enough to promote sufficient pasture growth to bring them back here.  So next week they will be auctioned off at the Moree Saleyards.  I hope someone is willing to pay reasonable money for them.  The Drover has been asked to have them all back at the Moree yards on the evening of the 7 th so we can sort them out on the 8 th.  They should look a bit different than when they left here anyway. 

We have a local man coming to mind the place for a week so we can go and see the demise of our herd…….hmm maybe I won’t go to the auction, Greg can just tell me about it.  Then I am going to see my Mom in Brisbane, then we go to Toowoomba for some shopping then home.  We are going to have to leave Lucy behind as we will have to stay in Motels.  I do like to get away but I worry about the dog and the gardens and whether the caretaker is keeping the doors shut to keep the snakes out, so we won’t be away long.  Will let you all know how the cattle sell after we get back.  Cheers, Toni

What else can you say about rubbish dumps?

Handy little treasures at the useful dump at Kilcowera Station

 

I guess city people never give  a thought as to how we get rid of our rubbish ?  The ways are many and varied.  And you know what really annoys me?  Some mail days I empty the mail bag and go through the mail only to find that 75 % of it goes straight in the bin.  And packaging of some products produces more rubbish than useable product and we have to get rid of it somehow.  

Our rubbish get sorted up 2 ways – what we can burn and what we can’t.  Of the household rubbish the only stuff that doesn’t get burnt is soft drink cans, beer cans and bottles and wine bottles.  All other tins like baked beans and food tins and plastics need to be burnt to take the foody smell out of them so the stock don’t sniff them out and get them stuck on their jaws.  A very sad sight to see a beast or sheep with a tin stuck to it’s lower jaw as they can’t eat or drink and usually die because we would probably not see the animal unless it’s happens to hang around a stock water.  Even if we do see the poor thing it may be too far from a yard to get it to.  So please don’t throw your rubbish out when you are camping in the outback.  I have seen a brown snake slithering along blindly with a VB can stuck over its head. 

We have 5 dumps on Kilcowera – just as well we’ve got plenty of room!  Greg digs a big pit with the dozer for the afore mentioned beer cans and harmless rubbish to be put into.  The only problem with this is birds pick up some of the cans and fly around with them and drop them all over the place or whirly winds come along and scatter the cans too!

This is a picture of Greg’s wire dump where all reusable wire and steel posts are lined up.  Depending on how financial we are there is always a supply of new plain and barbed wire, posts, weldmesh, droppers and steel cable here too and it all has to be kept off the ground as steel rusts fairly quickly when it is in contact with our soil.

The most interesting dump is the one where anything that might be handy for something gets put.  There is a line up of old washing machines, dog kennels, batteries, tyres, interesting pieces of steel, old bottles, chains, fish tanks, old rain water tanks and wooden fence posts.  About every 10 years or so someone comes along and wants to buy stuff out of the dump………….batteries, copper wire, bits and pieces off old cars, aluminium cans. 

The previous owners had a dump like this too, some of the stuff there is pretty old but not so old as to be valuable.  There are tractor seats, horse floats, beds, engines, woolpresses, wheel barrows, old toys, horseshoes and a dazzling array of little bits of steel like chains, nuts and bolts, locks etc.  They also had another dump right near the shearers quarters where they lived.  Unfortunately though they did not dig a pit but simply and with gay abandon threw everything onto this ever expanding pile.  The pile is basically in the creek so whenever the creek runs so does the rubbish, pilsener stubbies and longnecks mainly – straight down toward our lagoon.

The next door place sold to a new owner 10 or so years ago and we went to the  clearing sale and the very last thing to be auctioned was the contents of the dump!  It really brings new meaning to “One mans rubbish is another’s treasure”. 

Driving to town one day I was sailing past Yakara Station when out of the corner of my eye I noticed something big and new on their dump.  A great big white Toyota trayback on it’s roof!  It had been rolled and the owners had dragged it there and just left it, along with quite a few other old cars.  The dump is very close to the road and a bit of an eyesore. 

Another neighbour to the south has his main dump right along side the road that you drive on to get to the house.  The dump goes on and on and on.  I would love to have a scrounge around there ( I suspect Greg would too! ).  Bad form to go sticky beaking around though if there’s any chance you’ll get sprung!

 

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.