Franz and all the crew drove into the field, which was burning fiercely and started to put out the fire on the cuber. Marlee had stopped at the workshop and jumped into the grader and headed for the fire. She graded a firebreak around the cuber, then another break around the burning field to try and contain the fire and save the rest of the hay. Everyone had a busy evening which finished late, but they managed to save the cuber and the rest of the hay field.
The morning revealed a semicircle of burnt hay with the cuber standing forlornly in the middle. All the work on the hydraulic system had literally gone up in smoke, only two days after it was all installed! There was about ten thousand dollars worth of damage.
Some machines are bad luck. Since the cuber’s purchase we had cleaned, checked and oiled the machine and replaced parts to bring it back to its original working state. This machine, in my opinion, was not meant to be ours. I just knew it belonged somewhere else and was wishing at that point in time it would just disappear, leaving behind all the money it had cost us in a neat little pile on the ground!
Unfortunately the cuber didn’t go anywhere. It just sat in the workshop in a miserable, burnt state waiting for more work to be done. The plan of cubing the hay was now out of the question so it was back to baling it. We had already baled most of the hay and the plan had been to just do a few of the paddocks in cubes, so luckily there wasn’t much to do.
No sooner had the fire been conquered than Boots had an accident. This horse had more accidents than any animal or human I have ever known. This time he cut his leg just behind the hoof and had come limping into the garden with blood pouring everywhere.
Marlee applied a pressure bandage and it stopped the bleeding. But after a few hours it started again and just kept bleeding. Marlee tried another pressure bandage but to no avail—he had cut a small vein and she knew by now the only way she was going to stop the blood flow was to find the vein and try and stitch it together.
It was 1 a.m. by this time and Gail had been sitting with Boots up to this point. Too valuable and skilled in all the outside work Marlee had quickly moved Gail from housework. Gail also loved anything to do with animals, especially horses. Boots had charmed her completely, so she willingly gave up a night’s sleep to help.
This horse had been through so many dramas with us he knew when he was being helped and was always very cooperative. What Marlee achieved in the next hour was remarkable, and possible only because she was working on Bootsie boy. She injected a local anaesthetic around the cut as Gail held a torch. So he couldn’t move around while she was working, Marlee had one of Bootsie’s legs in a sling. So he was standing on three legs, including the injured leg. She finally found the bleeding vein and with extreme difficulty managed to get two stitches into the vein and stopped the bleeding.
Boots was so weak near the end of the operation from loss of blood he leaned most of his weight on Marlee or Gail and one stage nearly fell on top of Marlee while she was working.
Marlee gave him another injection for the pain, put on his rug to keep him warm and Gail stayed with him for the rest of the night to keep him company.
The next morning Gail was very weary but a happy, limping Boots greeted Marlee ready for his next meal. Marlee gave him another painkiller, in case he was in pain, but he appeared calm and gave no indication of being distressed in any way.
I think he enjoyed having Gail sit with him all night and lapped up every minute of the attention he received during his hospitalisation in the garden until the cut healed. Then he was let out to chase his favourite fillies and get into another mess!
Meanwhile the new season was maintaining a blistering pace with some of the men cutting hay, the jillaroos trucking it back to the storage yard, Franz and Marlee taking turns flying the plane to Darwin for various urgent spare parts and different people coming to the station for a wide variety of reasons. The truck was also taken to town regularly to pick up parts and equipment too heavy for the plane. When not flying, Marlee was grading the road or fence clearing on the bulldozer, or building fences with the rest of the crew.
I was putting the finishing touches on my third book and selecting the photos.
During my two months at home in June and July I watched our new people for the season jell into a good operational team. They worked together smoothly, quite capable of handling all the problems that were coming their way.
With the team fully occupied with a long fence line to complete Marlee and Franz headed for Queensland and the Dundee Stud to look at cattle to buy. Franz was also planning a quick trip to Sydney to look at a cement truck we had the opportunity to buy.
Marlee managed to control her urge to buy all the cattle at the stud and stuck to what we had agreed. Not that she didn’t try to convince me that more would be better! The arrangements were made for the road trains to pick up our precious cargo and Marlee waved goodbye to our beautiful new cattle as they left on their across-Australia journey. The cattle would have a three-day rest in Cloncurry and be dipped and spend another day in Katherine, making it a long journey. The rests are not only kind to the cattle but extremely necessary or they will get footsore. And a breeding bull with sore feet is not the thing!
We were well into the drafting of the next muster when the road trains with the Dundee cattle arrived. Their two rests on the long journey across Australia had them looking well considering they had travelled thousands of miles. We had sorghum hay waiting for them in the yard and they were straight into it. These cattle had been in drought conditions for a long period of time and it had been a long while since they had seen hay the likes of Bullo home-grown sorghum. They stayed in the yards and ate for most of the day, only sitting down to rest after the sun had gone down.
Another giant leap forward in fulfilling Charlie’s dreams happened when the Dundee cattle stepped onto Bullo country. These animals had the very best of Brahman blood running in their veins. Decades of devoted breeding was standing quietly in our yards munching on hay. We were very excited and couldn’t wait to see our first calves.
The drafting of the cattle from the muster was finished and the sale cattle were loaded onto the same trucks that brought in the Dundee cattle, saving us some freight costs.
Right on schedule Marlee and most of the staff were off to the Katherine Show. Marlee was about to introduce Bazza, our Bazadaise breeding bull we were so excited about, to the cattlemen and women of the North!
Bazza behaved himself at the show despite the fact he’d only had ten days out of the paddock to be spruced up and learn showring manners. He carried off his first parade with flying colours, only letting out a few dignified snorts and doing one joyful leap into the air with a massive kick, just to show how happy he was to be at the show.
I was sceptical about the chances of a French bull taking out a prize in the rugged Outback. I could already hear the jokes about a French bull on a cattle station run by women! But I was wrong. The cattle at the shows in the North are almost always Brahman, so there are only the two categories—the Brahmans and other breeds. And Bazza walked away with first prize in the other breeds division! Although I do have to add that all the judges were from interstate, so we still don’t know what the North really thinks of our French bulls. However a lot of the men mosied over to Bazza’s pen during the Show and gave him a thorough once-over while they thought no-one was looking.
The day Bazza won first prize Franz flew to Darwin to pick up Robert, a school friend of his and Papa Ranacher. Papa seemed to like Bullo. He was here on his second visit to help Franz with the welding of the new horse yards we were planning to build. These new yards would come complete with a roof over the round yard, so at last we would be able to work with horses in the wet season.
Franz and the stockmen had been cementing in the posts and cutting the lengths of steel for yard rails and gates. Papa Ranacher was a master welder before he retired and just between you and me I think he missed being involved with large steel projects.
But befo
re it was down to work, there was a bit of sightseeing for our guests. We wanted to buy some young heifers and Newcastle Waters Station was having their yearly sale. We decided to fly over and see what was on offer. Papa was doing well: he had only been in the country two days and had already visited the Katherine Show, been to the annual Brahman dinner and was now off to Newcastle Waters, just south of Katherine.
There were some lovely lines of young heifers but the export trade of heifers to the Philippines was at its peak and there were buyers there trying to fill their export orders. We dropped out of the bidding at around three hundred dollars plus per head and it was still going furiously as we walked away. We had planned to stay the night which would have been necessary to arrange the trucking of cattle purchased. But with no purchases we decided to fly home. We rushed out to the airstrip and just made it home to Bullo before last light.
During this time my friend and speaking agent, Christine Maher, came to visit. Christine was flying to Perth and she decided since she was almost here, she would take a break and head north. She was going on an organised safari from Broome to Kununurra where we would pick her up and bring her out to the station for a few days before she headed home to Sydney. An overland safari in the Outback of northern Australia just didn’t fit with Christine. So after we had talked about these plans for months, I finally voiced my concerns. I could sense the excitement in her voice and I didn’t want to dampen this enthusiasm. But I was assured this was a very up-market safari and so the subject was forgotten.
When Christine stepped out of the plane at Bullo she looked stunned. Her up-market safari had included a shovel for the toilet and bathing out in the open out of a billy can. I think she arrived at Bullo terrified she would find more of the same. A grateful smile spread over her face when she saw a room with a bed in it and her own bathroom, with a flushing toilet! After a few delicious meals cooked by Marlee she was back to normal and very glad the safari was behind her.
Our next important arrival was our new sheds! A prime mover towing two trailers fully loaded with forty tonnes of new equipment sheds and an aircraft hangar arrived on schedule with no hassles on the entire journey from Dubbo to Bullo. So we were busy all day unloading prefab sheds and entertaining guests in the evening.
During this time I was approached by a television station to host a new weekly program. As much as I would have loved to have been involved, it was physically and logistically impossible. Running a half a million acre cattle station usually keeps a person fully occupied for a whole year. Writing a book every fifteen months could also be viewed as a full-time occupation. Add to this conference speaking, book tours each year and regular directors’ meetings and I was finding it difficult to visit my family or take a holiday.
The thought of fitting in forty-six weeks of filming was totally beyond me and I said so. They said they would work around my schedule! They obviously had no idea what my schedule looked like.
Considering I was already away from home on average eight months of the year, the arithmetic didn’t work. It seemed I would need twenty-two months in my year to do the show. So I declined.
Handling thousands of head of cattle, problems are always present and this season was no exception. We had yarded three thousand cattle and were just over a day into the drafting. Eight hundred cows had been released back into the big holding paddock and the process of drafting the rest of the young heifers and cows out into this paddock was almost complete. Next, the very young calves would be branded so they could be released into the paddock and pair up with their mums for a feed.
Then the drafting of cows and calves would have been finished. But two bulls changed that idea. These two decided to have a knockdown, haul-out fight. The power of two thousand pound wild bulls in combat is something to be seen. Only the naked eye can appreciate the energy of solid muscle slamming into solid muscle.
These two bulls in question were taking all their frustration out on each other and there was nothing anyone could do except watch. One launched himself at his opponent and their massive heads connected. His opponent was slightly off-balance and his muscles gave way sending him backwards at tremendous speed. He quickly ran out of space in the pen and his backside came up against the steel panel of the portable yard with colossal force. They both hit the fence with a mighty whoosh, the force snapping off the lugs holding the steel pins that held the panels together.
The two panels sagged open but were still standing, but not for long. The attacking bull saw he had his opponent off-balance and in he went again. The next charge saw the two bulls explode into the steel fence sending panels flying through the air like frisbees. With two panels gone the rest of the section went down like dominoes.
In a few seconds a whole side of the main receiving yard was lying flat and eighteen hundred cattle were released into our just-released, drafted cows.
Luckily the mustering chopper had gone to a job on our neighbouring station, so it was arranged he would swing by on his way home and remuster the paddock. His job was easy in the small paddock, but we had to redraft the eight hundred cows we had just released. So instead of drafting 3,200 cattle, we had to draft four thousand animals.
The cows were not happy about being drafted a second time and the crew had a lot of practice climbing the rails to avoid the swishing horns of very agitated cows.
The pressure was also on because we had to get the calves back to their mums. And the delay had us working under lights to catch up on lost time. There were a lot of cows with full udders bellowing from discomfort and a lot of calves bellowing from hunger. Quite a few of the older cows stood against the panels so their calves could squeeze their heads through the rails and have a drink.
With all the cattle drafted, the sale cattle departed in road trains and we moved to the next mustering site. While some of the crew were dismantling yards there was fence building in progress and the new horse yards, under Papa’s expert care, were taking shape. The yards no longer consisted of a lot of poles sticking out of the ground. Rails were welded in place and the shape of what was to come was clearly evident.
Even the cattle and horses were sniffing around, curious about the new structure. The yards were built on a rise of land where the animals like to sit at sunrise and sunset, overlooking miles of lower paddocks. It is a favourite spot because there is always a cool breeze coming up from the river. Marlee often leaves a gate of the now-finished yards open. And on a hot day it is not unusual to find the yard full of animals, resting in the shade of the roof and enjoying the breeze.
By mid-September I was thinking maybe we had been a bit ambitious with our plan for the year. We are always anxious to get improvements done and often bite off more than we can chew. With not much of the dry season left, we were bull catching at twenty-two-mile camp. We were also moving the equipment and portable yards into Bull Creek which was a distance of around eighteen miles from the last mustering site and over a very rough road. The road had to be bulldozed and graded in places for the vehicles to get through. Then the chopper mustering, drafting and branding had to take place before everything was moved back to homebase before any rain trapped us in the valley.
Back at the homestead we had to build two large equipment sheds and a hangar before it was too hot.
In between all this activity somewhere, I had my birthday. We were just far too busy for the usual day of rest and my favourite meal, so Marlee presented me with a cold beer and grilled cheese that had a burning candle on top! But it was still a birthday to remember because she told me she was expecting a baby. It was yet to be confirmed by the doctor, but Marlee was sure!
So with this exciting news I was off on my next book tour and had continuous engagements, until the first week of December. So I wasn’t going to be much help on the station, but I didn’t go out and buy a book for reading in my spare time!
CHAPTER 10
October 1995 – December 1995
Our final muster of the season out at Bull Creek was problema
tic from start to finish. We had not been into the valley for a few years and the road over the rocky sections was unpassable. So the road had to be repaired and graded at the creek crossing and over sandstone ridges. We also did more fencing and built part of a permanent yard at the mustering site.
The outlay of money for all these improvements would be justified by the numbers of yarded sale cattle. So when we were ready to start mustering Marlee called the abattoir to book in the cattle a few weeks later. She was informed they had brought their closing date forward which meant we now only had seven days to get our sale cattle to the abattoirs in Katherine.
It was total panic stations. We had to muster, draft, brand and release the cows, calves and breeding bulls back into the area. Then we had to truck the sale cattle back to the main valley near the homestead in time for them to be loaded on the road trains. The road—or lack of road—into the Bull Creek valley meant that the road train rigs had no hope of getting in there.
Another major problem was that we had pulled down our old wooden yards back at the homestead and were in the process of building new steel ones. So there was a bit of a juggling act because we only had portable yards to work with. This meant we had to draft and release the cows, calves and breeding bulls out at Bull Creek then dismantle the panels of the empty pens and rush them back to the home yard site. Then they were reassembled before the cattle in the truck arrived from Bull Creek. It was fortunate we only had to do this for one muster as it was a very stressful operation. Timing was crucial and there was no room for breakdowns or hold-ups of any kind.
The Strength of Our Dreams Page 13