Recap pt.2 From Lochinvar

Recap pt.2 From Lochinvar

Echidna Surprise!

                After a long morning of breaking in wieners, Davie and I had just sat down for a much deserved cup of coffee – smoko as they call it – when the station owner’s wife showed up in a tissy. The water wasn’t working, a pipe must have burst. She asked if we would find and fix the problem. A fairly simple, quick task. Yup, we’d get right on it, after coffee.

                Turns out, in order to locate the leak, someone, had to squeeze under the house and inch along the ground between floor joists up and down along the whole house. It wasn’t a short house! And you can guess who ‘someone’ was. Me! So off I went.

                Luckily the water was running out at a pretty decent rate, enough to have made a sustaining puddle, from which I could hear the “drip, drip, drip”. As I inched up alongside the pipe, which had been cut miles too long to begin with, I found the leak. It was no ordinary leak, definitely not a burst from cold or pressure. I called for someone to toss me a torch to get a better look. Sure enough, the pipe was covered in bite marks over about a 3 foot section.

                It hadn’t dawned on me till this point one bit all of the critters that could be living under there. The thoughts that quickly filled me head did seem to speed up the repair job though. But half way along the fixer-upper one of the hoses slipped out of my hand and began pour water into the hole in front of me. I put down my pliers and inched over the whole to reach for the pipe. My entire upper body covering the whole I got hold of the pipe again and rolled onto my side to finish the job when I noticed the tennis ball, which I had rolled into the hole earlier, starting to move a bit. I grabbed my torch for a closer look, praying that I hadn’t been lying in a snake’s nest, to find three giant echidna (kind of like an Aussie porcupine) lying in the hole. The same hole I had just strung myself across, dangling a mere 3” over these fellas.

                Now, we all know that porcupines are not very vicious animals, and echidna are known to be quite sluggish and shy, but we all know what happens when a dog sticks his nose up to a porcupine for a closer sniff... he gets a snout full of quills! And since the last thing I wanted was a snout full of quills I made an executive decision that the job could be completed much more efficiently from the outside and that I should probably hurry up and get out of there, you know, ‘cause we had other work to do. 

                 Interesting fact - Echidnas are an egg-laying mammal. One of only four extant species in the world - Along with the platypus. Who knew!

It Does NOT Taste Like Chicken

It seems the world is fascinated by the claim that so many things taste like chicken. I personally don’t see it, or well, taste it. In several different instances crossing Queensland, I heard people refer to many different animals all tasting like chicken. Not every white meat taste like chicken folks!

Snake, goanna, frog, yes are all white meat, but taste nothing like chicken! The meat may look quite similar once cooked, but the taste is very different. Unless you are just frying everything in heaps of butter, then it all just tastes like cooked butter... If you want the true taste nothing beats roasting over an open fire.

Personally I find snake reminds me of catfish, but that’s just me.

                Interesting fact – Goanna’s have two different types of meat on them, white and red, in their tail and hind quarters.

Hog Tied

Working on cattle station for the first time meant learning all the ropes really, really quick. This included: how to muster properly – using formations and controlling the heard effectively; how to keep up in the draft ring; branding; and, how to hog tie a full sized bull without getting impaled or trampled.

Most of these things got some sort of brief explanation before we got started. Most of these things I was told we were doing before we started. Not the hog tie.

We had just finished up what had seemed like a pretty flawless muster. Just when I thought I could kick back for a quick breather and take in the morning’s good work, Davie flies past me on the bike heading back out into the paddock.

“Get up on side of him,” Davie yells over the two-way.

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Righto!” and off I went. Flying down the fence line to god only knew where. I cleared the brush line just in time to see the big bull break out at full speed from the trees heading away from me. On the far side Davie flew around headed straight for the bull.

Ok, now I think I kinda get it... almost. Kicking it up one more gear I headed in towards the bull, trying to follow Davies lead.

“Get up, get up!” he was yelling and waving an arm for me to move in.

Before I even knew what had happened, the bull was down, Davie was yelling for me to pin it down. Rather than ask questions I figured ‘what could it hurt’ (aside from getting kicked in the chest) and dove off my bike onto of the bull, and without even thinking, reached in, hauled his tail in and around a hind leg and heaved with all my might to keep him down while Davie tied the hind legs.

No sooner was that done than the bull kicked up, knocked me off and was standing pretty aggravated on three legs. Needless to say we wasted no time in putting the bikes between us and the bull and waited for the truck to pull up. When it did Davie scrambled to get the trailer set up to haul the bull on and prompted me to rope the bull and get ready to haul him in.

“Rope and haul?” I thought. Then it struck me why Davie had passed off this coil of rope earlier on. Joy, lets lasso an angry bull with a short rope. Good idea.

I was shocked at how easy it actually was. Whether it was just natural skill, or the fear of getting it wrong the first time and getting mauled, I made pretty quick work of getting the bull roped, and with a solid tug had him back down into a manageable position.

It wasn’t long before we had the bull on the trailer, tied down and were heading home for lunch. All in a mornings work.

Not bad for my first time. We had three other instances like this during my weeks on the station. Always a different situation. Always happening in the blink of an eye, and never an extra hand to hold the camera. But man what a rush.