Boongalla

We are on the Boongalla organic wheat farm and cattle station. Today is our tenth day and we have been asked if we will stay on and work for two more weeks. It is not always fun, but it is nice to being doing work for a change and getting a pay check. Most of our time has been spent fixing fences. That means driving metal stakes into the ground and them wiring them on to the existing wires. It is dusty and fly's in your mouth kind of work. The fun parts of the job include cattle mustering on quads, it didn't go so well with us on the horses. We've done cow tagging, counting their teeth, and horn removal(yuk). We are currently building a new ramp to load the cows onto trucks. That means that I'm doing a lot of welding and Rachel is doing the grinding. There is a nice Polish boy here with us as well. He is doing a lot of shoveling dirt and filling holes in the road. He is jealous of our jobs, but he has never done any work like this before and the boss, Ian, thinks that he eats too much so he gets the crap jobs. On our day off we rode around on the quads trying to find kangaroos and cow skulls. Then we went to the dam and caught yabbies for dinner(a yabbie is an Australian crayfish). The farm is 9000 acres, so there is much we haven't seen yet. It is beautiful here. Every sunset is wonderful. And the stars are the brightest I've ever seen. We are allowed to take the quads out on clear nights to ride to the middle of the wheat fields to take a look. Nothing but stars. And the only familiar constellation is Orion. On the third day I was sent with the boy to round up 8 bulls and bring them to the pen. Everything went well until we got to the gate at the pen and they decided that they didn't want to go in. They all ran in different directions and it took lots of fancy driving, yelling, and horn honking to get them headed the right way. There are also lots of old cars and trucks here that we get to do some maintenance on which is also exciting. We've been into town twice as well. It takes an hour to get there. We are now recognized as the girls from New York. It makes getting stuff done hard because everyone has lots of questions. They really like us at the steel place because I know about welding. They have given Rachel and I a pair of gloves and some grinding disks to try out. If we don't want to go all the way to town, they is a gas station a half hour away. It is also the post office. Basically it is the town. Maybe you could look up were we are. The town is called The Gums. Our remoteness has made it difficult to stay in touch. Cell phones don't work and the internet is iffy. The house we are staying in is large and I'm sure amazing 1967. Now it is run down and vintage. The kitchen isn't to bad but the stove doesn't work so we make everything in a plug in skillet and microwave. He says the oven works but we're not that adventurous. We all take turns cooking dinner, except for Ian, he does all the dishes, sort of. So we are jillaroos now. We get to see kangaroos in the morning and pink sunsets at night. On Monday we start plowing the fields. The tractor is huge. Its a John Deer, only the best. Oh, and Ian has two wonderful cattle dogs named Bonnie and Clyde. They never bark and they love everybody. But when its time for work they are no fooling around. Boongalla rocks!