Holiday’s and a new toy!
After the rough 2 years everyone has faced we decided to pack up the camper and do a 3 week trip up to Mackay and back. Easy thing to do if you live in town, slightly harder thing to do on a farm in the middle of Winter when you have 33 mouths to feed twice a week. Having great neighbours and an Aunty that is willing to house sit makes things considerably easier! Before we could hit the road a few jobs needed to be sorted out and a few hurdles overcome. Keep reading to find out how we went!
Enough feed for 3 weeks - Because we use rotational grazing and have smaller paddocks we needed to open up enough gates to allow them access to an adequate amount of green feed that will last the 3 weeks that we’re away. we needed to install a few extra gates along fence lines to allow free flowing movement of the cows and calves. The last thing we wanted was a cow getting stuck in the corner of one paddock and the calf in the other.
Hay - The hay was stacked neatly in the shed to allow our neighbour easy access to feed out a few bales a week. the easiest way to do this was to allow him to use our tractor. As you know Murphy’s law is always around the corner… On the Saturday before we were due to leave the front tire on the tractor went flat! After a few expletives were uttered we made the mad dash to Trafalgar before the tire shop closed! We made it with 5 minutes to spare. The guys at John Brown Tyres were kind enough to work back and replace the tube.
Tagging and marking calves - We still had two late comers that needed tagging and marking. Easy enough job, we’ll bring them down to the yards the day before we leave then send everyone back up the hill to their fresh paddock that will be home for 3 weeks. Enter old mate Murphy’s Law again… Everything was going smoothly, the cattle were moving quietly through the yards while we were splitting off the two calves. First calf done, now onto the second, well this fella wasn’t so happy about becoming a steer and in all the commotion managed to puncture a hole in his leg. There’s was blood everywhere! We rushed up to to the house, grabbed some bandages and stopped the bleeding.
That’s it, the holiday was over before it started! How can we go away for 3 weeks with a calf like that? Well after a call to the Vet we were advised to leave the bandage on for a few hours then remove it and the clotting should have blocked things up. A few hours later we do exactly that and everything looks fine. He’ll just need to be monitored each day to see if anything starts to swell or get infected.
Holidays back on track!
The Holiday - The main objective was to get up to Mackay to see Will’s mum for a few days. We planned on camping along the East coast on the way up and camping down through the middle on the way back. Well, they say things happen in 3’s! Murphy’s law decides to dump 600mm of rain over parts of NSW the week we’ll be coming through. After a quick alteration of plans we decide to have tea at Marlo pub and then book a cabin at Bemm river caravan park for the first night, from there we shot up to Bateman’s bay and camped at a place called Red Gum campground, it was a beautiful spot right next to the Clyde river and had plenty of friendly possums that paid us a visit at night.
The next day we travelled onto Umina and stayed in a cabin as the rain had started to fall. Umina is a nice spot to pull in, there’s plenty of kid friendly beaches and if we had more time we could’ve found some good spots to fish. The next day we travelled to Ballina and managed to get past the worst of the rain in NSW. On day 5 we went to Seaworld, we timed this perfectly! As we pulled through the CBD we bumped into the Gold Coast Marathon, trying to maneuver a Landcruiser and camper trailer through the back streets of the Gold Coast is no easy task! Fortunately it only added about an hour onto the trip. After Seaworld we continued onto Childers, this small town in Queensland is a must visit. There are lots of old ‘Queenslander’ homes and beautiful boutique shops. The next day we travelled to Bundaberg for a Rum tour and look around. We didn’t stay long because we needed to get to Rockhampton before dark, we stayed in a beautiful old pub called The Criterion, in it’s hay day this pub would’ve been the place to be. We were told the Queen has even stayed there. The day next we made it to Mackay and had a much needed few days rest!
The trip home - After 3 days of R&R in Mackay it was off to Longreach for two nights camping at Goodberry Hills Broadwater campground. Wow this place was beautiful! they have their own private lookout to view the amazing outback sunset. We looked for fossils and tried our luck at catching a few Yabbies. during the day we visited the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame, a must see if you’re going through Longreach. The next stop was Roma, we visited the Roma Saleyards, this saleyard is the largest in Australia, thank god we missed the sale the next day as Sarah would’ve tried to buy something.
After Roma we spent 2 nights camping at the Glengarry Hilton in Grawin just outside of Lightning Ridge. The locals are some of the most entertaining people you will ever meet! The bush pub is fantastic and there’s plenty to see and do in and around Lightning Ridge. We even managed to find a few Opals. Next stop was Dubbo for a cabin and shower then onto Tawonga to see Sarah’s family. After 2 days of rest and a little bit of milking we packed up all the gear and travelled home to find all the animals legs pointing to the ground and a happy Aunty and dog waiting at the front door. We weren’t done yet though. We had a quick shower and took off to Will’s dad’s 60th birthday where a few too many celebrations were had well into the night.
The new toy - For a while now we have wanted to upgrade the old tractor to something bigger. We eventually came across a reasonable priced McCormick CX85. This will be more than capable of performing the tasks we require with a little more comfort on those cold winter days.
A few happy snaps of the holiday
