Red-backed Kingfisher on the wing, Kilcowera Station, Outback Australia

Once again these lovely images are from Nevil Lazarus.  These sweet little birds can be found just about all over Australia.

Just how cute can a bird be?

Red-backed Kingfisher, Kilcowera Station on the Dowling Track SW Queensland.

They often sit up on the power lines, calling out in a mournful little voice.  I think, because they are always alone they are looking for love.  And I’m certain they find it too!

Budgerigars at Kilcowera Station

We have had some wonderful photographers here over the years and seen some terrific images taken of the birds, scenery and wildlife.
Nevil Lazarus is one of my favourite visitors, he has been here a few times and loves the outback, often bringing friends with him. Last year he borought out his beer drinking team AKA, the navigator, the cook and the organiser. Leaving him to take his photos. Here are a few of them.

I think his prey is a little yellow throated miner, there are plenty of them around here.

Settling in with his little meal.

About to be attacked!

WTF!!  Cheeky little sod!  I don’t suppose the falcon was put off his meal by this litle fella.

Greg down the well fixing things.

Many of you will be aware that we have 2 places out here, the other one being Zenonie which is 80,000 acres of mostly mulga shrubland.  While Kilcowera is watered by 3 capped flowing artesian bores,  Zenonie has 3 sub artesian bores and 5 wells all powered by windmills, so during summer it is a continuing and ongoing job to check each and every watering point at least every second day.

With temperatures as high as 48 C during the summer months keeping the water up to the cattle is critical.   One little accident can lose all the water in the tank in a matter of a few hours, then if there is no wind to pump more water we have to move stock to another watering point.  So many things can go wrong, a beast might knock the float cover off and the float gets stuck and all the water just spills out of the trough in a constant stream until the tank is dry.  Or a beast might fall into the trough, can’t get out and dies, it pollutes the water and the others won’t drink it then.  So they will stand around bellowing and eventually perish.  Greg tells me his heart sinks down to the bottom of his boots if he pulls up at a windmill and hears that low down, unhappy bellowing as it means some disaster has struck.  Then there are the little things like buckets wearing out in the pump, or something stuck under a valve, a hole in the columns, the rods might break, something falls down the well and clogs it up or just no wind for days or weeks on end.

Today we had to go to the 7 mile well as it has not been pumping much water at all for the last week.  Greg thought the intake valve which sits down the bottom of the well in the water might be partially clogged up.  He clambers down into the well and sits on this little frame that he’s made and pulls things apart and we haul up the length of poly pipe with the valve on the end.  Sure enough it’s encrusted with ….. stuff.

Upon closer inspection he decides some of this stuff is snake fat.  Now I ask you – why snake fat??   Snakes do live down there, but so do snails and spiders and frogs and bat.   Oh well whatever keeps him sane, at least he can have a little joke about things.  Well I think he was joking……… however it could have been snails brains or frogs legs or bat wings.

Finally some water, more than there was, I hope when the wind picks up so does the water supply!

Relaxing by Cardenyabba Lagoon, Kilcowera Station, Outback Australia.

One of the few downsides to living in the bush is lack of access to services. When equipment won’t work or you run out of something it can be very frustrating. Just recently (again) we have been having trouble with our phone services. The landline would not work, the mobile which is next to useless would not work and we also had no internet.

 Now we have a really weird phone setup, it’s evidently a mobile that they have made our landline. Our internet is supposedly wireless but there is a wire and a modem and it plugs into the phone line which I would have thought made it ADSL. It’s either wildly clever or an abortion of a set up I’m not sure which!

 We also have no choice whatsoever about our carrier: It’s Telstra all the way for us and has always been. Well if it wasn’t for them we would not have any phone, such as it is. Anyway someone eventually reported our phone as not working and it was fixed, til next time. The last time we had no phone, we did have internet and mobile and could report the problem ourselves. Someone famously said “ All we want is a phone that works and works all the time!”

 One lonely Christmas a few years ago we had no phone for 10 days but we did have email. Now when we come out to put the coffee on in the morning we check to see if the phone is working and if we have internet too!

Murderers Bore, Kilcowera Station, Outback Australia.

In the early 1940’s a horrific murder was carried out on Kilcowera, the murderer, James Callaghan was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment.  This fascinating case was the first one in Australia where a conviction was made solely on forensic evidence.  It was also the springboard for Detective Sergeant Bischof who later became Commissioner of Police in Qld. 

But the interest in Murderers Bore lingers on.  About 1990 some misguided soul dropped a large rock down the bore hole and effectively clogged up the bore thereby making it useless as a stock watering point.  A few years after that some Queensland Museum guys were visiting Kilcowera and seeing the original drilling rig used by James Callaghan sitting in isolated splendour alongside the borehole, asked if we would like to donate it to the museum.  So feeling very important, we agreed and in due course they came back with a truck and took it away. 

Since then we have started our tourist business and realise what a valuable asset we gave away.  And to rub salt into the wound – the rig has never been displayed but is evidently sitting in a big shed in Brisbane gathering dust. A lovely old lady tracked it down for us and took some rather blurry photos and sent them to us.

In the intervening years we have had some wonderful visitors who have given us much more information on the grisly murder.  The story made it into a book on Outback Murders, another bloke who grew up with the story gave us lots of newspaper clippings reporting the story of the murder and subsequent trial.  A few other people have made the trip out here just to see the site of the tragedy and experience the isolation of the bore.

The last of these visitors was Jean, an 84 year old cougar with her toyboy aged a mere 72.  Jean was living at Boorara Station at the time of the murder and was about 13, she met Callaghan on numerous occasions and also met the poor bloke who was killed, William John Groves.  But best of all Jean gave us her old photo album showing the bore being drilled, the trucks used to cart the equipment to the bore site and pictures of the two men involved.  She was happy to give the album to us as she said no one in her family was interested and would just throw the album out when she died.  She was also thrilled to have the opportunity to visit her old stomping ground once more and we were very grateful that she did and will treasure her photographs as part of Kilcoweras’ history.

Hungerford Field Day is on every second year in the tiny little town of Hungerford on the NSW, QLD border.  The permanent population fluctuates between about 5 and 7, however every second year the metropolis comes alive in June with visitors from all over the country showing off their wares to an appreciative local crowd.

This year there was Jane the chook lady from Cheepie, bulls from somewhere way down south, rams from somewhere else, kelpies from Cooma along with displays from National Parks and Rural Fire Services.  The NP people had live snakes, bilbies and lizards.  Our youngest daughter was there with the South West Natural Resource Management team showing off their state of the art fishing boat and also various weeds that we all have to be on the alert for. They also had their Sun Oven going, providing smoko for visitors to their display, then they put some chicken pieces in for their lunch.  All very handy considering the caterers for the event were flat out for most of the day.  The chook took ages to cook and they were all starving by the time it was done, the four of them looked like a pack of little cannibals tearing into their chicken pieces with their hands.  No bread, no salad, no serviettes.  Bless their little cotton socks!

There was a display selling all things electrical for the home and office and UHF radios, another with plants, there were work clothes, leather goods, cosmetics, a hairdresser, a business selling steel,  another with tools and gardening implements,  2 wheel motor bikes and quads, locally made jewellery, an opal display,  water pumps and generators, a craft display and haberdashery.  The stock and station agents were there as well trying to drum up a bit of business .

This year I was in the market for a new motor bike unbeknownst to the MOTH, after all my one and only bike in 30 years of wedded bliss and love of the land had turned up its toes two years ago.  So I found a pretty red Honda and bought it.  Just as well I had insisted we go down in the ute, wasn’t it?  He, he,he.   And it was the only thing I bought all day apart from a feed and a beer.

Most people drive to the field day but some choose to fly in and there were about eight planes lined up on Hungerford’s beautiful bitumen airstrip. 

 The local publicans, Moc and Sherree provide the all important liquid refreshment during the day.  Thank God for light beer because the incumbent coppers get the breathalyser out and do just about everyone leaving the grounds.  There’s a booze bus for those who have had a few too many but lots of people camp at the grounds for the night and so, have no worries about getting picked up. 

Early in the evening there is the big auction for the RFDS – all the exhibitors donate something to be auctioned off with all the proceeds going to keep the Doctor flying.  It raises a lot of money too, as everyone is pretty happy by the start of the auction and ready to bid.  Then the band kicks in, playing on the stage which is the trailer of a truck.

And so the night goes on with some kicking their heels up in the dust, others valiantly drinking on in the freezing night air while standing around the firedrums, arguments, tall stories, plenty of yarns, some trying to sleep  and lots of sore heads guaranteed in the morning.  Nothing that a good big greasy breakfast won’t fix.  But hell, that sunlight is bright first thing in the morning when you stick your head out of the swag!

 Years ago we won a fruit tray at the field day and carefully put it near our swags which were also carefully put inside a post and rail yard originally intended for horses.  We put all the rails up, so no horses could get in and just knew we would be safe that night, tucked up in our swags after the auction and the nights socializing.  No cars would run over us, no horses could stand on us, we would be safe, even if a little inebriated!  You have to plan ahead with this sort of thing! 

 Morning comes around and we can hear munch, munch, snort, munch but don’t really want to put our heads out in the freezing cold to see what’s making all that noise.  We eventually discover it is the local town pony helping himself to the fruit tray and  it’s nearly all gone.   Rules don’t apply to pets such as him – under the fence, stepping delicately around the comatose beings in the swag and into the apples, mangos and pears thank you very much!

Friends at Kilcowera Station, Outback Queensland

Well why not?  They’re  lots of fun!   We had four blokes fly in from Narryilco, four drive up from over the border, four rangers from the National Park and another near neighbour flew his spoofy little R22 over.  Then there was Greg and me, our newest member of the family, Bernd a volunteer from Germany, the organiser of the day, Suzanne and the grader expert who had travelled down from the Northern Territory.  Bernd was very taken with the chopper and marvelled at how the neighbours just “drop  in.”

Such a handy roomful of men, boots, Akubras, Wranglers, long legs and experience!  David, one of the neighbours said to Greg, “When was the last time you had so many handy blokes here at once?  You oughta think about bunging a muster on, getting a bit of work out of us for the day.”

We started with smoko, then moved into theory and a DVD, next was learning how to take levels with a Dumpy Level.  I didn’t know you could do so much with one of those things.  And it’s surprising how you may think the water will flow one way across a bit of land but take a reading and you can see it will actually go the other way.  The point of the workshop was to learn how to minimise erosion when constructing roads and fence lines.  Also to maximise the beneficial aspects of even the smallest amount of rain – keep the water on your land – don’t let it just run off.

There was quite a social aspect to the whole day too, catching up with old friends and meeting new people.  We had a sausage sizzle for lunch with fruitcake and biscuits and then the yarning started.  With seven pilots in the room the talk soon turned to incidents involving aircraft, getting lost, running out of fuel and other common occurrences of the aeronautical kind.  

Stuart told of the Piper twin that landed on his airstrip way back when, the pilot was unsure of his position and very low on fuel.  He was heading for Dubbo still a couple of hundred kilometres to the south.   All Stuart had was super, as that was what his aircraft used.  The bloke said that’s fine, she’ll be right mate.  Now Stuart was a bit sceptical about a twin using super, but hey it wasn’t his plane, he was only helping the bloke out.  So they pumped a bit in each tank and Stuart suggested that the pilot ought to give the plane a bit of a go, up and down the airstrip without actually taking off just to make sure the engines were happy with the super.  Yeah, Yeah, I’ll do that was the reply from our gung ho pilot, well he did give it heaps taxiing to the end of the airstrip, turned around and roared off heading due east.  Stu reckoned the engines sounded all right but never did find out where the bloke ended up.

We had 3 planes here just recently with twelve blokes on board and they were a fairly relaxed bunch.  They didn’t have a GPS between them which is ok, you can navigate the old tribal way if you’ve got paper maps, but they didn’t appear to have them either!  On their way here they were going to land at Quilpie to refuel but landed at Eromanga instead!  If you are not familiar with the towns they all look the same from up there, the only trouble was they had organised the man at Quilpie to refuel the planes and couldn’t work out where the hell he was!  They found us though.  And then must have got themselves home to Warnambool the next day.

After lunch the practical component of the day started with all the men and a couple of ladies out watching the expert driving our old grader, putting up little banks and drains to control the flow of water.  The construction of fire breaks was very interesting as there is so much grass around, bush fires over spring and summer are a distinct possibility for us all.  The fly in people all left about fourish and the rest departed at five.  It’s great that we are able to learn about stuff like this on our own places as we all want to manage our properties in a sustainable and productive way.

Youngest daughter Angela with a friend at Kilcowera Station

Well Easter has come and gone and was a great week with lots of campers, family and friends around the place.  We had so much food in the coldroom it was difficult finding just what I wanted at times.  One of our campers kept us in yabbies for entrees on two nights, he also had a couple of kayaks which everyone had a go in.  They are just the shot for sneaking up on water birds!

We finished our cattle mustering just before easter and then had a contractor come in and muster some goats off the place, that was very exciting –  seeing how a professional handled the job.  With two choppers, two trucks  and lots of men and women.  We  have some further cattle work to do in late June, when  the cows have finished calving.

Also just had a party fly in and stay overnight in a beautiful helicopter.  What a nice machine, gets along at 130 knots – I think it is a Eurocopter.  We had roast beef and veg done in the camp ovens and copious quantities of red wine to stave off the evening’s chill.

We have been having a mouse plague all through the west and Kilcowera has it’s share as well.  I have been catching 50 or 60 in traps every night, but numbers seem to be steadiying up, down to about 15 a night now.  The two terriers are dam good mousers and enjoy the thrill of the chase!  Maisie has become quite demented about the mice, like she has a one track mind.   MOUSEMOUSEMOUSEMOUSEMOUSE!  It’s also a new topic of conversation for our campers, trading mouse yarns!

Greg eventually got his truck back from the garage in Thargomindah, where it has been for the last 8 months, waiting for parts that had to come from Japan.  Talk about a slow boat from Japan.  The truck also suffered a mishap while being worked on and subsequently the garage owners had to procure a new second hand door for it and that, too, took months to arrive.  Anyway when he got it back it’s first job was to go back to town to  bring home two horses that we have recently bought.

Thargomindah has a yearly Stockmans Challenge and as part of the show they put on an auction of, mainly, stock horses.  We bought two nice quiet ones to start mustering on again instead of using bikes all of the time.  There is so much vegetation covering up all the other things lying on the ground that it is exceedingly dangerous riding a bike around.  At least the horses can help by looking where they are putting their feet, leaving us to look for the cattle.  More on horses next post.  Some photos too.  Cheers Toni 

My Mum in the red shirt arriving at Thargomindah – she’s finally made it to the internet!!!