Kutchera Station

Hello from Queensland! 

On Saturday Elisa and I helped Charmaine to spread out some of the mulch we had made on the front beds.  In the evening, Elisa and I attended Easter Vigil Mass at the local Parish. The Mass was very similar to the way we celebrate Easter at home.  At the end of Mass the priest handed out gummy candy to everyone as a special Easter treat.   

Me and Elisa on our way to Mass

Easter morning we made chocolate chip pancakes ate them with fruit for a breakfast.  We then drove to the neighboring town of Penguin to attend the Sunday markets.  The market stalls are set up in a large building which was good since it was raining.  The markets had local crafts, foods, antiques, books, clothes, and other junk/treasures. 

Penguin Markets

 

For Easter dinner Wayne and Charmaine invited their neighbors and fellow helpx hosts, John and Glenda, and their current helpers, Ice from Hong Kong, and Katie from Germany, to join us for dinner.  We ate a lovely meal of sausages, chicken, green salad, potato salad, carrots, and rolls. For conversation John and Alex discussed the current and future problems of a world based on oil consumption.

Easter Dinner

 And for dessert we had Germany apple pie.  German apple pie has the sugar and spices mixed into the pie crust and in place of a top crust the remaining dough is just sprinkled in pieces on top.  It was very sweet and delicious.

German Apple Pie

 

Monday morning I helped Charmaine to pull out five hydrangea bushes from Glenda’s garden so we could transplant them over in Charmaine’s garden.  Pulling out such large bushes was a lot of work, but Charmaine and I had fun chatting while we worked.  In order to pull out the huge bushes we had to first chop off all of the branches.  Then we used a pick axe to dig a trench around the base of the bush. 

Diggin out Hydrangea

We also saw some very colorful Tasmanian mushrooms in the back corners of Glenda’s garden. 

 

Tuesday was a very exciting and yet sad day.  It was the day I flew out of Tasmania.  Wayne and Charmaine drove me to the airport, and I said a very heartfelt good-bye.  Wayne and Charmaine were such wonderful hosts.  They treated me like a member of the family and were always thinking of things to see and do that would interests me and the other helpers who were staying.  I loved Charmaine’s cooking and watching music concerts with her on DVD.  Wayne always had an interesting opinion or topic to discuss, and he was willing to let me help him with the painting and outside work.  And I will of course miss Toby, who would sit with me on the couch while we watched Big Bang Theory.  I don’t think I could ever express how grateful I am to Wayne and Charmaine for their kindness and hospitality.  And some day I hope to see them again, either in America or on another trip to Australia. 

Flying out of Tassie

Late Tuesday I landed in Cairns in Queensland.  All of my flights and plane changes went without a hitch.  While I sat in the Melbourne airport, a little girl, almost two years old, was waiting for the same flight with her parents.  I was sitting in the corner over by the window, and she kept coming over to sit next to me and “chat”.  She actually could not talk yet, but she would point at things and happily burble.  I felt honored to be chosen as her confidant. 

I spent the night in a backpackers’ hostel in Cairns and the next morning I caught a very early bus out to the middle of Queensland.  The ride was almost eight hours.  We drove through several mountain passes, past tropical plants, large ant hills, avocado, banana, mango, coffee, and sugar cane plantations.  The farther inland we traveled the drier it became.  The last town we stopped in was Georgetown.  The surrounding country is scrub land and while during the rainy season there is plenty of water, currently the landscape appears very dry. 

View from the bus

 And just outside of Georgetown the bus met my new hostess, Belinda, and her five dogs, on the side of the highway.  Kutchera station is my new residence for the next few weeks.  The station raises Brahman cattle on over 200,000 acres.  Belinda runs the whole station pretty much on her own.  She occasionally has a station hand or backpackers come through who help her, but for the last eight years she has been managing the station without any other assistance. 

Kutchera Station

The same night I arrived, Belinda’s recently hired station hand, Dan, arrived.  Dan worked at Kutchera a few years ago.  Besides the cattle, there are five horses, five chooks, eight dogs, and orphan calves to feed near the house.  And out on the property itself there are wallabies, birds, wild pigs, snakes, lizards, and dingoes. 

Goanna that wondered up near the house

On Thursday morning, Dan and Belinda worked on welding the last pieces onto a new loading ramp for the trucks. 

Dan welding

In the evening we feed and locked in all the animals.  The orphan calves are fed some pelts and the two of the smaller ones are given powdered milk. 

Feeding the orphan calves

Friday morning was spent in trying to take out parts from under the large dozer that Belinda uses to repair roads that wash out during the rainy season.  Unfortunately the parts that had to be taken out to be replaced were right under the back of the dozer in a place that was very hard to maneuver around. 

Belinda driving the dozer

Belinda had to do grocery and supply runs for most of the weekend, so on Saturday morning I cleaned out the battery boxes on the sides of the dozer while Dan dug out a pad for concrete in the cattle yards.  After lunch I helped Dan to start leveling out the base of the pad.  Belinda would like to pour concrete around the cattle crush so that she can set up her gear for de-horning and branding the cattle right there. 

Sunday was our day off.  Belinda believes that every week we should have some time off from doing the station work or else everyone goes sour on it.  Dan took me with him to see if he and his dog, Rocky, could rind and catch any wild pigs. 

Rocky

We didn’t find any pigs, but we did get to ride the motor bike through some beautiful country.  Even though Queensland is full of scrub and seems to be quite dry, during the wet season heavy rains pour down washing out roads and fences and then filling up natural watering holes and lagoons.  These wet areas are home to many birds, fish, and plants.  Many of the lagoons are filled with beautiful water lilies. 

Lagoon

Water Lily

Brolgas near the lagoon

On Monday Belinda and Dan finished replacing the parts for the dozer and in the afternoon two more helpers arrived.  Jeremy and Brian are from the LA area in California and they are excited to work in the outback as part of their Australian trip. 

Setting up the pad for pouring concrete

Tuesday morning the boys laid out the rebar and frame work for the concrete slab while Belinda and I worked on replacing the rear brakes on one of the motor bikes.  Belinda had me take apart the rear brake system for one of the bikes and clean out all the dirt and rust.  Being a mechanic is very messy work. 

Belinda replacing the brakes on one of the motor bikes

Wednesday morning the three guys started pouring the concrete in the slab.  Belinda and I had to drive into town to get some more bags of concrete. 


Pouring concrete

The highway into down is mainly just one strip of asphalt with the occasional passing area in between.  So when cars meet on the single strip they have to drive with one wheel off the road in order to pass. 

Outback driving

Georgetown is a small town but it does have the necessities: grocery store, gas station, post office, pub, and a small building where people can buy anything from horse feed and spare sprinkler parts to bags of concrete. 

After pouring the concrete slab, on Thursday morning we got all our supplies together and headed out on the motor bikes to work on repairing the breaks in the boundary fence.   The fence has the occasional snapped wire or loose post, but the hardest parts to fix are the flood gates.  Flood gates are where the fence crosses one of the numerous little creeks or streams that run between the properties.  During the wet season these little creeks grow into huge, gushing rivers full of downed trees and debris that flow right through the fences. 

Putting up new fence where the water
 knocked down the old fence

Once the fence itself is repaired at these creeks, we must then hang logs, called brushing, underneath the wires to add weight to pull the fence down low enough so that the cattle cannot walk through the river and under the fence. 

Belinda stringing up brushing under the fence

We spent all of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday working our way through over 200 km of fence.  The days were very hot and we would often immerse ourselves in the creeks during our lunch break to cool off.  On the three motor bikes we had two chain saws for cutting trees that had fallen on the fences, an axe to hammer in posts, pliers, wire, cloth cool bags full of frozen water bottles, five people, and Dan’s dog, Rocky.  Every day we would return hot, dusty, and tired, but we had plenty of laughs during the day. 

Dan, Belinda, Jeremy, and Brian out fencing

On Friday we drove out to the farthest point on the boundary and we ended up riding through the scrub for over an hour in the dark on our way home.  I thought we were going to end up lost for sure, but after eight years, Belinda knows her way around the property pretty well.  The stars in the night sky were gorgeous and Belinda pointed out some of the different constellations to me, the most obvious was the Southern Cross.  The Southern and Northern Hemispheres each have a different celestial pole which means that from the North Pole a person would not be able to see any of the stars that a person would be able to see from the South Pole and vice-versa.  So from Australia I can see some of the same stars that I would be able to see from home, but there are also some different stars.  I can still see the Milky Way though. J 

Today is Sunday again, and everyone is taking a much needed break.  And tomorrow the work will begin again. 

I hope you are all enjoying a beautiful Spring.

Love,

    Hana

Sunset on the station