Our outback adventure....

Since we left Sydney and last updated you on our travels we have arrived in the outback in NSW. We are staying on a cattle ranch in order to gain approval for our visa extension. This has meant learning to live in a fairly remote regional area of NSW. If we need groceries it takes us 45 minutes drive to get into the nearest small town. For those wanting to track where we are the nearest town is called Forbes. We are living in a small sheep shearers cottage and our driveway is 4.5km long! We drive to work each day in a yute and are having many experiences that you can only have in the bush! We are working for a couple who have three small boys and are all madly into the sport polocross. We went off to our first competetion last weekend and I can only describe it as fast, furious and you have to be a little bit crazy to be involved! Its basically a racket sport on horseback. We were also treated to a delicious dinner cooked outback aussie style, one pot, a fire and some ash, a couple of hours and a lovely meat casserole dish...yum! Beer in hand and plenty of laughs. You can see me here with Murray and Emma's youngest child Aidee who has just turned one. I have been looking after the horses and learnng to ride in a stock saddle just like a cowgirl. No more do I ride simply one horse alone, these days I tend to take out three at a time...which has taken quite a bit of skill. The horses are all pretty good and this seems to be the norm so I haven't encountered any serious problems yet!



Nigel has been enjoying farm life and when he isn't up a tree he is chopping wood for our fire which keeps us warm on cold autumn nights. He has also been set loose on the farm quad bike which he regularly uses toi muster sheep, cattle and yesterday he even rescued a little lamb that had fallen down a well...lets just say it is going to take quite a few days for it to dry out!

The highlight of our trip has definately been the last week. We have been involved in mustering sheep and baby lambs, I have held a lamb that has just been born and we have helped out with the process of lamb marking (hard work if not quite mean!) We had about 1,150 lambs to catch, vacinate, ear tag and mark, and putting bands on their tails and boys bits to make them fall off...apparently they aren't needed and the tails just fall victim to infection from an infestation of flies so they are better without. The first day I was a mere bystander, a bit horrified by the whole process but from then decided to get involved and had a lot of fun trying to catch and pick up the lambs....I even got a few cuddles along the way and also a few kicks! Our legs and arms are now covered in bruises and scratches. As you can see from the pictures, Nigel was responsible for the more, shall we say cuddly of the lambs or just downright fat! I opted for the younger and cuter little ones!!



You can even see little Colly getting involved....it was his fifth birthday and he thought the whole thing was great....his dad even showed him his own unique way of keeping hold of the lambs!!! The rather large alpaca however did not get picked....he is very evil and hisses and spits at me every time I try to muster the sheep. It can be quite scary riding at him to get it moving I can tell you! The other great thing we did this week was to herd about 250 Angus cows across the most beautiful scenery at about 7.30am in the morning....it was incredible. They were mostly well behaved and went in the direction that me and my horse Joe told them to. When they stopped I just told them to MOOOve it along !! Okay so it sounded funnier at the time! Nigel then had the complicated job of drafting them into three groups ready for sale. A really tiring and physically demanding week and next week we are set to be helping the team of sheep shearers who are coming to shear 1,200 sheep!