I’m still alive!

Oh my god – where does the time go when you’re travelling? I haven’t blogged in AGES but it feels like just the other day!

So, it’s been about a month since my last post and what an eventful month it’s been… I’m actually in Bangkok now but I should probably update a little on my ozzie adventures first. (I’m also very hungover so please excuse the sloppy writing style and anything that doesn’t make sense…).

Anyway – Just after I last blogged I headed down to work on a horse ranch for ten days. Leconfield, which is about 40km outside of Tamworth (the back of beyond basically), is owned by an 86 year old guy called Brian Skerritt. Brian set the place up decades ago to teach young jillarroo and jackaroo (that’s cowgirl/boy to you and me) wannabees the tricks of the trade and to help them find work in the industry. Needless to say I wasn’t looking for work but it was an awesome experience.

I learnt how to muster cattle, tag calves, crack a whip (almost), milk cows, fix fences and lasso stuff (mostly the ground to be fair….). We also got to assist in the castrating of the bulls, well we watched anyway, and we were given the opportunity to choose which bull’s balls we wanted for dinner that night. I politely declined but most of the men got heavily involved in selecting the biggest bulls and had them fried that night with their stew ( I reckon Freud would have a field day with that).A few people did ask why I didn’t want to try them – I said that normally I’m the first to try anything new but I’ve had enough bollocks in my life without having to eat a bull’s. The other students in my school were awesome by the way and we had a grand old-time working hard during the day and getting drunk round the campfire at night. I think it’s safe to say I’ve made some life long friends there and can’t wait for our Leconfield reunions in the future!

On a slightly negative note I did find the horse riding style a little odd – a hybrid of English and American I suppose. English saddles (which seems for strange for mustering no?) with the American bridged method of holding the reins (which we had to hold on to with 2 hands for safety reasons…). It was also a bit annoying that the alpha female (who was an ex student who had got it together with the lead farm manager) had only been riding for about ten months as having been riding for near on 22 myself I did expect an instructor with more genuine experience. She was by all accounts an excellent horse rider don’t get me wrong – but it did  a bit when she barked at me to get both hands on the reins ‘because you’re student and you’re learning so it’s safer’. As you can imagine I had to bite my tongue quite a lot….

Anyway aside from that the whole experience was fantastic and I would definitely recommend it to anyone that wants to get an alternative taste of oz rather than just the coast. Book through them directly if you can as it’s cheaper (http://www.leconfieldjackaroo.com/). If you can’t commit to 10 days they do a 5 day school too.

Right got to go get me Pad Thai – will follow this up tomorrow and not leave it so long this time!

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