Yeee-Haaaaaa!!!

"Howdy pardners!" (Im soooo funny....)

After my sailing adventure I arrived at the wild-west style town of Townsville. It is sleepier than expected and had a definite wild west feel to it. All the buildings have those posts that link a roof/canopy out onto the street. Another coastal town which had a really beautiful promenade called the strand. One feature that i really liked were these workout stations dotted up and down the beachfront. A nice touch, even if I was too lazy to use them!

I swapped the sails for another age old transport; the horse! I went to a cattle station in a nearby town called woodstock (not the home of rock hehe!). This was a day trip tour that I booked; you have 2 options, the short option; a cattle muster where you ride on horseback to gather the cattle from the extensive bushland back to the station (1000 acres!). Or the cattle muster, sheep shearing AND also calf branding! I chose the latter, purely because I want to see and experience as much as I can on my travels, despite what prevailed! more on that later...
The cattle station itself is run just by a couple (Peter and Francis) and they run tours twice a week for extra income (they do not have the man power to do more due to amount of work needed to maintain the station). Aside from the cattle and sheep, they have pigs and dogs (2 trained to round up cattle and the other just a soppy little pup - who I spent quite some time playing with it has to be said!).
They only operate in small groups due to the danger aspect (when you are in a pen of angry cattle ready to be branded it can be quite edgy believe me!). There were only 4 of us, an English couple from Kent and surprise surprise a German guy!
We arrived to be seated by a huge camp fire with fresh billy tea and damper (tea and bread made in metal tins on a campfire... very tasty indeed!).
We were then introduced to our new best friend for the day; our horses. This was deciphered by the level of our riding a ability. The other 3 in the group could all ride.... needless to say I have never really ridden before (Emily apart from 2 mins on Pippet of course!). So I got given the laziest horse in the world; Clarence! He was quite a beast, check him out:

I loved his style though, he was sooo laid back! They say pets are similar to the owner, and this was true, all he did all day was defy instructions, eat, pooh and eat some more... good lad!
Now me and Clarence, we had a bit of a team talk about his name - he wasn't happy with it and neither was I! I mean come on Clarence, its a bit of a pansy name..... so we decided on Crusader! (keeping the same initials to make it easier of course!)
Once crusader and I made our acquaintance, I was tought a couple of brief instructions on how to give commands both physically and vocally. Although it has to be said physically entailed whipping crusader with the reins or giving him a hard kick if he wasn't obeying me... me being such a softy didn't really do so with much venom... much to the annoyance of the instructors! haha! I have to say though love the authenticity of the place, Peter and Francis didn't mince their words and there was a refreshing lack of red tape and health & safety madness throughout the day!
We rode through the bush for a coupe of hours mustering the cattle back the station. It was extremely hot but definitely an amazing experience! I felt surprisingly comfortable on crusader, although we spent the WHOLE time at the back of the group due to his constant 'tea breaks'! The highlight for me was riding down and back up creeks which was hell-raising but exhilarating!
Check out some pics .. including some downhill action on horsey cam! :P

After successfully rounding em' up and ridin' em' in we stopped for a huge lunch. Which to my delight (being on a farm) consisted of loads and loads of meat... beef, lamb, chicken.... jackets and the compulsory rabbit food known as salad. Was soooo good though!!!

Next up we learnt how to crack a whip. Peter showed us briefly and then buggered off and left as to scar our bodies.... lol! I kid you not the English couple both tattooed themselves with the whip haha! It was really hard actually :

We then were taught how to sheep shear! I was really looking forward to this part, I don't know why but I have always wanted to have a go.
Here you see me shearing a sheep, apparently I was really good at it, not sure that's too much of a plus tho... don't think it would enhance my CV somehow!

...ok.... let me explain the 2nd pic.... well, its been a while! :P

Next part was the finale'. The bit I was dreading - the 'branding'. Now I THOUGHT would just involve getting a hot poker and stamping the calf with it (which to be fair is bad enough). But no... it got worse.. a lot worse!
First we had to separate the calves from their parents by using a maze of pens and the 2 trained dogs. I love this next pic; man vs cattle!

Once separated, one by one the calves were branded. So the calves were led single file into a really narrow pen so they couldn't turn back. A gate system segregated them. The calf at the front would have their gate released and they trot into this weird clamping trap and then thrown onto the floor. Next they would be branded, have both ears clipped, one ear tagged, horns removed and if they were unlucky enough to be male... castrated! The worst part was not the castrating, but when the horns were literally cut out! Like a sawing motion! Done with a hand knife... the blood.. oooh the blood... All of this was of course done without any kind of anesthetic! much to the surprise of the English girl in the group! The de-horning is done to stop the cattle from bruising each other during transportation and reducing the value of the meat.
To be honest the whole process was really quite difficult to watch. At first it seemed quite barbaric really but i guess being from the city I am not used to the harsh realities of farm life and I think we tend to forget, conveniently, where/how meat is produced. It was a very interesting experience - eye opening. I will definitely appreciate my next big mac a lot more! But am 100% glad I did the cattle muster and branding experience!
I have a really cool video which shows the whole process but sadly cannot upload to the blog. They allowed us to do the branding part if we wanted, no one else wanted to but I thought what the hell:

I then made my way up to Cairns! It is extremely popular this time of year because being so far north and a tropical climate, cairns doesn't get cold! The weather has been 30 degrees consistently and have no had 1 drop of rain despite being their winter!
I have been here for 2 weeks as I feel totally at home here. This place is really good for nightlife and seems to be the capital for partying! It has been the first time I have been out to clubs and bars (apart form one time in brissy) because they do lots of backpackers specials so is definitely affordable!
I am staying in a small hostel called the wooduck and have met sooo many really cool people! Again lots of Germans and sprinkling of other Europeans. We are always partying, maybe too much, but will be my last chance for a while so making the most of it! Here are pics from a night where the girls attacked me with face paint... they pinned me down, I was helpless... honest! :P

Aside from the people the best thing about this hostel is that you get free meal vouchers every evening - redeemable at local pubs, they offer tasty but basic meals for free! that's free meals people!! FREE I tells ya!
Me and my buddy Mattias (who has gone home now ) have worked out a way of scamming extra free meals! I cannot tell you how we did it, because I would have to kill you! but its good for 2 meals a night, and once we even had 3 meals!! haha! You have to swallow your pride a bit though, I got found out once, in front of a queue of people! haha! gotta take the rough with the smooth though folks! :P

Whilst in Cairns I took a 3 day trip to Cape Tribulation. Named by Captain cook due to the amount of hazardous reefs he encountered and being run aground here. Cape tribulation makes up part of the daintree rainforest, which is yet another national park (Oz has more national parks that kangaroos I think!).
My time there was very relaxing, I had a log cabin all to myself! the first time in luxury since arriving in Australia!

Cape trib is very remote! there is only a grocery store and a pharmacy! There is only one way and out and that is across a croc infested river! Although i didn't see as much wildlife as I expected, i did find another scary looking spider - a golden orb! This bad boy was bigger than my hand, almost the size of a dinner plate - I kid you not!

P.S. disaster # 43... in cairns I looked myself out of my backpack... had to drill lock off....

Hope you enjoyed that HUGE post! That's me up to date now. Tomorrow I should be going on a monster road trip through the outback; Cairns to Darwin! This is about 3,000 km!!! I will be travelling with a dutch girl, a German guy and a Belgian dude. Only myself and the German can drive and he is only 20 so not sure if they will allow him... I hope so cos i gonna be shattered if its just me!! We are hopefully getting a relocation camper van. So basically you take the vehicle to a proposed location where they need it in a certain time frame. We have 6 days to complete the journey! We also get fuel allowance and only have to pay $10 per day! Due to the roads though we have to drive from here down to townsville (5hrs) across into outback and back up into Darwin! It will be an epic journey!
I'm told by the woman at the tourist info desk that we are mad, but hey, i think it will be a brilliant experience! Sure its gonna be days of driving with just outback desert, no trees/mountains, not to mention that Fuel stations are 200/300 km's apart! and a lot of the journey we will not see another car but hey it will be a trip remembered I'm sure.... see you on the other side!! =)
gx