The Shearer’s Cook Part 1
June 4, 2009
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………………….
Lake Wyara’s water birds.
January 26, 2009
In the first half of 2008 there were approximately 10,000 pelicans breeding on the western shore of Lake Wyara. It was a magic sight and sound and smell to stand out there seeing all those pelicans that had come all this way from the coast to breed. In the 28 years that I have been here it is only the second time that I have seen them breeding on Lake Wyara. They could have been there at other times though.
They kinda snuck up on me this time as I did not think there was enough water in the lake for anything much to be happening there. Then out of the blue a journalist rings me up and asked “ How’s your pelicans going?”
Says I “No pelicans here mate”.
Journo “Well the National park ranger reckons there’s about ten thousand on Lake Wyara.” “Hmm, I’ll ring you back tomorrow when I check it out.” So a quick fly out over the lake confirmed this amazing news. Here’s some pictures.
Greg and National Parks are currently working on a new boundary fence that will keep stock out of the park and enable us to use our 70,000 acre Lake paddock again. We have had no stock in it for 5 years as a part of the old boundary fence was pushed down for a road to the lake from the Currawinya side. This little guy just came right up to us to check us out and then waddled off to his mates.
Lake Wyara a Wetland of International significance.
January 23, 2009
In 1991 National Parks and Wildlife took over the grazing property Currawinya, our eastern neighbour. They also took Lake Wyara a 6000 ha salt lake classified as Vacant Crown Land which was our eastern boundary and physically on Kilcowera.
When Lake Wyara is full it’s a beautiful blue saline expanse of wetland that supports enormous numbers of birds, fish, turtles, crustaceans and sea grasses. It is filled by 5 big creeks, 3 of which start and end on Kilcowera, Benanga, Youlaingee and Kihi creeks. The lake has been listed by RAMSAR as a wetland of international significance.
Lake Wyara had some water in it in 2008, this picture taken from the north and at 1500 feet.
We have an interesting scenic drive which is a 60 km round trip out through our Lake paddock. It goes over the highest country on Kilcowera and offers great views of Lake Wyara and the creeks. The lake has been pretty much dry for about 4 years now but surely it will fill again soon.
Kilcowera has many different types of vegetation and land types, ranging from dunes to gibber plains, out around the lake is sort of like channel country with small dunes.
The image above shows Pink Eared Ducks on one of the creeks that flow into Lake Wyara. We see some interesting birds out there not seen around the Homestead, like the gibber bird and orange chat. Of course when the lake is full it is teeming with water birds. These beautiful birds below are Red Necked Avocets. To be continued………….
