Penguins & Australian Football

Life on King Island has been a load of fun. After Red and Barten left I started working on James and Karmens farm. The first day was spent with getting some wood planks for their new house through a thickener (I think it's called like that). Worked all day with the local carpenter/joiner Roger and his apprentice Dave. James and Karmen coming to help put the planks through the machine and driving it back to their in-progress house. The next couple of days where spent doing all sort of knick knacks around a farm. Getting a ventilator fitted on their organic toilet, feeding a roll of hay to some cattle and doing a lot of fencing. I had to learn from scratch how to do that, but we got a rhythm in the end, so we completed quiet a bit of it. Some of it looks a bit crooked, but it is only following the shelter belt. Shelter belts on King Island are rather important. They are rows of trees to make sure the cattle, grass and pretty much everything on the island are not blown of by the strong coastal winds.

We visited some penguins on the southern coastline of King Island. The so called “little penguins” are native to the island and come out of the water every evening/night to rest in the shrubs of the coastal areas. Evan and Gipsy where given torches with red foil in front of them (disturbs them less) and I took my GoPro to try and get some film footage. Turned out to be to dark for that, but I saw my first ever wild penguins and they didn't sound to happy with us being there after the amount of racket they where making in the hedges. So we left them in peace and went to the Grassy Club to have an evening meal, where I met a few other backpackers that where spending time on the island. A German, a Dutch and two English guys which are working on cattle farms on the island. We found out after some time that we would meet each other the next day, but on opposing sites as is described bellow. 

I visited my first ever football match (ozy rules) last Saturday. Evan (oldest son) is playing for the northern team and was competing against Curry. The island only has a population of 1400 people, but still manage to have three football teams. Most of them are understaffed and I was approached by a lot of people from all three teams to play for them. In the end I though “What the heck? I'll give it a try”. Me living at James's I went to Northern training on Tuesday and Thursday and had my first match this Saturday, right after Evan had played. Me being a pretty tall guy I was placed on the position of rook immediately. That sort of seems to be the place the lest amount of people want to have. It involves jumping high up in the air, flying towards the opposing rook and trying to direct the ball towards your team mates at the start of a match. My first few second of the game where spent trailing the enemy rook around the field after getting a knee in the gut and being a bit winded, but the recovery was pretty fast. As the game progressed everyone started limping more and more (it is a kind of brutal sport) and I acquired a small split in the head after getting an elbow from not jumping high enough against the opposing rook. In the end I managed to get a mark (catch it save) and helped a bit along, but we'll have to see how it continues. After getting my head injury glued back together I went with the team to have something to eat and drink and then went back home for a nap and hopefully not to sore muscles in the morning.  

King Island

A long time no update. Sorry about that, a bit to myself as well. The weeks have just been full of work, sometimes some fishing trips and a bit of spotlighting in the evenings. Also my internet connectivity isn't the best in the world, I am spending less and less time actually on the computer (most of the times just to read a book now and then).

Katherine came back to the farm after two weeks of absence, once again to help along a bit. I managed to slowly digitalise James farm (only the Heifers till now, but it is a start) to get him more opportunities in future. April (the abandoned twin calf) has been getting stronger and stronger with every litre of milk she gets and is complaining about not being fed enough. Got a few early morning pictures of the fog coming up the creek valley in Tahara and lots of other small bits and pieces. Got whacked in the shin by a 310 kg Heifer which has left a bit of a bruise, but no problem otherwise.

I have moved on from James's farm for now, who knows, perhaps I might spend a bit of time on his farm again in the future. See how things are going. He took me along to his pheasant shooting weekend on King Island, where an old friend of his (also named James) lives and accommodated us. Getting there was interesting, as the only real standard commercial connection is a small aircraft from Melbourne to Currie which only has eight seating places, including pilot and co-pilot. James had his two dogs (Lola and Oscar) with him and we ran out of space in the passenger plane, so he tagged on along in the freight plane. Barten, one of James's friends also came along and the weekend was spent together with Nick and John out in the paddocks of King Island looking for the birds. We spotted heaps of wallabies and I saw my first pointer (type of dog) in action, pointing out the position of a pheasant. I also caught my first edible fish and we had an evening filled with fries, fish and fun. Weather wise we where really lucky, as the southern hemisphere is moving in to winter, King Island tends to take on the qualities of a well known island in Europe. Instead we had (mostly) sunshine with some windy weather coming in on Monday. Looking at the sea on that day we could fully understand why so many ships have been wrecked on the rocks of the island. Massive and brutal rolling waves coming in on the shores of the island, only leaving a few small sheltered lagoons for the ships and fish to seek shelter in.

On Wednesday morning James and Barton left and I started my stay on King Island, staying with James, his wife Carmen and children Ethan and Gipsy. First day of work was getting some planks of wood treated, so they wouldn't have splinters in them any more. All day long we lifted the wood with Roger (a carpenter and joiner), his apprentice Dave, James, Carmen and me. We managed to get it all done and back to James and Carmens soon to be house before dark. Went back, chopped up some firewood and had a nice evening meal prepared by Carmen before starting to make some home made bread. After that a shower and some time on the laptop to update stuff.

Greeting from King Island to everyone, an Island small but similar in weather condition to England.

Seasick Fishing

The week was full of various farm work. Catherine left on Thursday, heading back up to Falconbridge. That meant that James and me had a bit more work to shoulder, but the stressful week of cattle sorting is over for now. Sometime in the near future it will have to be done again, as some cows are still with calf. The week was packed with driving out hay to the various mobs in the paddock, repairing an old Chamberlin tractor, repairing a seeder for sowing some fields and checking on the still expecting cows with a quad bike in the setting sun of the evening.

For the weekend a bit of relaxing was in order. Once again fishing on Saturday. The weather was forecast with good conditions and we set of in time this time. Just James and me, thought, so we went to Portland again. Driving there we saw a load (or in Victorian Australian “a s**tload) of kangaroos. They where just everywhere, on the roads, beside, in the gumtree forest, on the fields. Heaps and heaps of them. They are not very well liked in the area, as they are part of a lot of car accidents and eat away the grass which the cattle should be getting. They still are interesting to watch, especially the way they hop along and come in a lot of sizes, from just coming up to a meter to standing taller than me at over two metres. We arrived in Portland and there where already a lot of other boats out, gone far out to the continental shelf (about 40km out) to try catching some tuna. We just went of the coast of Portland again, had a lot of bites last time. Whilst James was driving out I was reading through the manual for a sonar he has bought and got it up and running to see some fish underwater. Was a bit empty and after stopping the motor and putting out the roods we spent a while not getting anything. James caught a flat head which are excellent to eat and a few parrot heads over the day, which where thrown back again as they don't taste that well. I spent the majority of the day being seasick. Not the real bad seasick, just not felling very well. Third time that has now happened to me in my life and I didn't learn from last time. James took some anti-seasick pill in the morning and I

 declined thinking I would be okay. I regretted that decision in the long run and wasn't fishing at all after a while. James had a few roads out just being manned by him. One was attached to a shark hook, but the only thing it ended up catching was an albatross. The bird had grabbed the end of the hook with the fish on and got it caught in its wing, so James reeled it back in, bird still on the line. I grabbed it by the neck whilst James got the hook of and how does the large bird say thank you. Bites me in the arm. He wasn't that strong and I was not hindered in any way, nor did I get injured. He did manage to bite a hole through my rain jacket, unluckily. After not catching anything else except a flat head after nearly seven hours we set back of towards Portland, just to be caught in a highway of boats returning back from tuna fishing. Shortly worded, we got out, found out we had done something wrong, had to get the boat back in and then on properly, all in a high stress area.

On the way back we visited James's cousin Brian and had a long chat with him, his wife and their child about a lot of things. They own a horse farm and their son takes part in rodeo, some activity I was offered to try, so I'll see when I can get down there to do that. Took back a dog that Brian didn't need anymore (or found) to look for an owner and had a pizza before heading home for some rest.

Relaxing day but could have done without the seasickness.  

Hayday

Rise and shine with the sun, up early shortly before eight. After some toast and jam for breakfast, April was once again feed. Calfs drink a lot of milk

Once the morning necessity had been completed, Catherine and me where back to delivering hay bails to cattle. James took a few load in the beginning but went of on his quad to who knows where in the end whilst us other two had a drive around. We had a check up on the the young cows with calfs in paddock “Five” where there where some dead cows lying around. Well, that is how it is. Lots of calfs and a few dead cows. We saw no cows in distress, but in the paddock “Driveway” a cow had had twin calfs. That always seems to be a fickle situation. James said that in 25% of cases one twin dies, 30% both die. This cow had left the stronger, mewling calf behind and was tending the weaker calf by her side. Without intervention the stronger one would die of hunger or cold after a while. So we rounded her up and dropped both her calfs and her in to a smaller paddock with hay. That way she would have a reason to stay in the paddock with the two calfs. We where lucky the birth was seen soon enough, as any longer out in the paddocks further away from the house would have left one calf dead. That seems to be a pretty common thing, actually.

Once we had that sorted out we had some lunch. James shot a rabbit a few days ago that was eating the bark of his new trees, so that was our lunch. As the rabbit had been hit with a shotgun round you had to make sure you weren't eating any shotgun pellets. After lunch I had a check run for the spooked cow and the calf. We still weren't sure if the calf was hers or if she had accepted it and James had only seen her in the morning on a check tour, not the calf. Coming over the hill in a ute I saw from quite a distance that they where together and turned around and left them alone. Coming back I took a drive with James to one of the further away paddocks, “Lucern” and “Top”. We took a tour up the top of the hill at “Top” and let the hay bail roll all the way down until we had a nice stretch of hay. The cows and calfs appreciated it and we left. Getting back James took his tractor with a contraption for hay sorting on the back to another part of the farm whilst I started to get the chain saw running to cut up some wood. I managed a few tree trunks when the chain saw gave up and I had to readjust a screw. In the meantime James had returned and was getting an old saw running for smaller stuff. A disc saw you powered with the back of your tractor. As he had done some repairs and changes he was the one to try it first whilst I cut him up some pieces. By the time it was getting dark we stopped with a bit of a bigger pile for fire use.

After some chicken dinner Catherine and me had to feed the fresh twin calfs some milk, as we weren't to sure the mother had. A bit of a drama in the dark. We got to one calf but it would just not take the milk. By that point the mother had lost her fright of us and was getting closer so we backed of. The one we had been trying to feed got up and followed her whilst the other one was standing in one spot. Luckily this one did take two bottles of milk and will most likely have enough energy to survive until the morning. The other one was scampering around the cow, but to stupid to figure out how to feed from her teats. We had one problem, the cow was thirsty and there was no water in her trough. What does a cow do? Go to another place with water. A fence in the way? Squash that. After lots of VERY SLOW arm waving (don't want another spooked cow) we got her back in her pen. Next thing, fence is squashed again. Catherine and me lost her and her following calf whilst we got the other one beside some dry hay and just closed of the whole area in the end. Catherine spotted a shadow moving across somewhere and after some looking with the torch, two pairs of eyes shone back from the other end of the enclosed space. We left her and her following calf at that and went inside for me to write the blog and the rest to go to bed.  

More Calf Sorting

More cattle sorting, more small calfs to see. I have come in just the right season to get to see calfs as they are all about at the moment. Lamb season starts soon, so there will be heaps of small sheep about soon, too. The first thing we did in the morning was sort the cows that have already had calfs from the ones that haven't had any yet, so the sorting is a lot easier later. One of the cows had calfed in the night, so there was a new calf in the pen. Unfortunately the cows seem to be on edge just after calfing and the cow of the newly born got spooked and took of. Her calf tried to follow, but got entangled in an electric fence and whilst trying to get it out the fence gave me a jab, too. I managed to half pull, half kick the calf out so it wasn't getting electrocuted anymore. The cow, after a few more minutes, got entangled in the electric fence and was shocked every two seconds. The main fuse for the fence is in the wool shed, so I had a sprint there and switched the main fuse off. James cut her free and she raced of to who knows where. We later, after leaving the calf in a hay bail, saw that she had run of about two kilometres away, through three paddocks and over the creek. We left her there, as going near her would just make the situation worse. After we had gotten that disaster we got two mobs from the paddocks “Landslide” and “ Bellow the House” in to the pens. One was a mob of cows and calfs, the other was one of steers (castrated bulls). We ran them through, vaccinated and checked the cows and steers and tagged the calfs, all the same as yesterday. The steers where a bit difficult to handle. They seem to be frightened of everything and getting on the wrong end of those hoofed is painful. Once that had been sorted we had to get them back to the paddocks. First to go was the mob of

 mothers with calfs. Using the “carrot” tactic, we lured and herded them to the “Landslide” paddock, all with calfs in tow. The carrot tactic is put a bail of hay on the back of a ute and drive along with the cows behind. They want food so they follow. It mostly works, exception is the rule, but for this mob it did. The wind had picked up by that time and when we got them to the paddock a small stretch of windy rain hit us, just to pass by in a few minutes to clear the sky for sunshine. After the cows it was the steers turn and they came in to the paddock “Above the Landslide”. Them being a rowdy bunch they more or less ignored the hay bail on the back of the ute until we dropped it in the pen. I went of to get another hay bail and meet James over in paddock “Edwards” to lure the spooked cow to the hay bail. We then went back to retrieve the calf and by the time we returned to the dropped bail the cow was close by. We left the two alone and hopped that she would look after the little guy. Going back was a challenge, as the resent rain has made a lot of the ways slick and muddy. I didn't get up one hill, so James took over the ute and zoomed up the slippery bit with a lot of speed. I would have probably managed too, but it is his car. Once back at the farm house I feed April (an abandoned twin calf, about a month old) and then went for some dinner that Catherine had prepared. An early night was due, as we had worked pretty hard.

Calf Sorting

Onwards to proper cattle work today, mustering and tagging. The first problem is that cows and calfs do not like being herded. So we got one mob from the “Top Landslide” (paddock name) in to the yards (smaller paddocks) and started sorting them out. The “Top Landslide” mob fortunately was a small mob of AI (artificial insemination) cows. We got them in the yard in fair time, as the calfs are pretty energetic animals that have no idea that we are trying to get them to go somewhere. Luckily in this one no calf tried to break out of formation to bad, but that could be because Catherine and me where acting like mobile fences in the utes and James was at the back pushing the mob forward with his quad whilst two dogs (Marley and Coke) where helping along. Some cows did not appreciate the dog, thought and the mom's went after them sometimes. Once we had rounded them up in the yards we took them through even smaller yards to get them to the race (a line of iron fencing where they can only go single file). We sorted out the calfs from the cows in a separate pen and got to vaccinating and checking the cows for any harm. After all the cows had gone through it was the calfs turn. Whilst getting them out of their pen to the race some of them proved to lively and, I was warned by James beforehand, got kicked just next to the knee by a two foot calf. Luckily it didn't hit the knee head on, that small guy had enough kick to possibly shatter my knee cap. After that I was a lot more wary of the animals, as I especially did not want to get hit by big cattle. Once one or two of the small calfs had been tagged and recorded we let them out to their mom's to find out which calf belongs to which cow. The calfs were pretty hungry after spending a morning in the pens all on their own. The amount of racket made the whole time over is unbelievable, as calfs are calling for cows and cows are calling for calfs. Once that had been sorted out the mob was put aside in another smaller paddock for the next mob to get. The next one was a bit more problematic, as they where on the other side of the creek in a paddock a bit further away. By the time we had gotten the bigger mob together we had to

 get them over the creek. The calfs had never seen running water before and where reluctant to cross it. It ended up with one getting caught in wire and saved by me, anther being pushed out of the creek by Catherine on her knees and the three of us herding the few remaining ones in to the creek and up the other side. It ended up with Catherine, James and me having rubber boots filled with a mixture of water and cow muck. We eventually, after a lot of work, got the cattle up to the pens and went through the same process as the mob before. As this was a bigger mob it made a hell of a lot more noise and the small pen for the calfs was filled with lots of small (I dare say cute) mooing calfs. We had to let them go and look for their mom's after some point and took up all the information in the books.

That took it's fair share of time, so by the time we had all that done it was dark and we went back to the house for some food and warmth. Watched a film about the misuse of backpackers in Australia and happy I ended up here.  

Fox Hunting

Today was hunting day, at least for some of us. As all the local are farmers here, some of the wildlife can cause some problems. Some more than others. Foxes are one of the worst. A lot of farmers around here have sheep next to other sort of farm things and an old fox who's teeth have been worn down will sometimes rip up to 20 lambs a night. Some of them seem to just be out for the thrill of it and leave the lamb intact but dead a lot of the times. If you estimate that the lambs will go for something between 50-160$ when they are older, that is a lot of money the farmers are loosing. Money they need to survive.

So I went with them on to the hunt. In the beginning it was three main farmers and some people they had brought along. In total we where seven people and six dogs. The dogs where there to hunt them out and the humans to shot them. The first patch we went through there turned out to be no foxes or they had all run of. The second patch we went through two foxes got away, after being shot at and missed a lot of the times. They have to use shotguns, as it is not a single hunt and the shotguns don't have that much of a distance to cause harm to the others with you. So after those two got away, we went to the next patch. Just under a farm who also had Angus (a type of cattle breed for meat) and went down along a creek to get the foxes. One was pressed in towards two hunters at the bottom by the dogs. The other one tried to double back and was hit by James. It nearly got away, too. It was behind James when it took a run for it. The first was shot by Bucky, a friend of James. We searched through some burrows along the side of the creek, but the dogs found them to be empty. On the way down one of us had spotted something unusual. An Angus calf had been wedged in between two rocks down in the creek, with no forward way out. It was lucky we found it then on the hunt, or it would have been smelled/found dead in the next few days. After getting a tow rope from the farmer who owned the paddock, we pushed/pulled it out backwards and back towards it's family.

We had some lunch after that. Grilled some meat from one of James lamb and had a chat with some of James's friend. Sometimes it was a bit problematic understanding them, as I don't really speak the slang of the area. We had a talk anyway and after a good lunch (plus some scones that Catherine made and bought along) we where back out with one more person. Drove to a patch where I was in a line driving the foxes out of a small forest and heard shotguns go of everywhere. Must have been a really good fox, considering how many pellets he evaded. Most of all hares where running around and I spotted a wallaby, which was not shot at. Wallaby's create quite a problem around here, too. They feed on the grass that the cattle and sheep need, basically taking away two sheep worth of field. When we came back from fishing the other day we saw about 50 kangaroos (similar to the wallaby) in one of the farmers fields. They are not allowed to be shot, thought, so it was left alone. The next paddock also proved worth the while, as it was surrounded by expecting sheep. One fox lived in there and could have caused massive damage. Also there where a load of bones lying around, because of animals the farmer had towed in or the fox is unknown. That was the first dead fox I picked up and dragged to the cars. The next patch was a gold mine in fox hunting. Around five where shot, and a few ducks where also targeted. The last creek was found to be the home of another fox. All in all the whole day a total amount of ten lamb killers and a few hares where got. The foxes where scalped for their bounty (the government of Australia has given out a reward of 10$ per fox, as they are introduced and not native to Australia) and the hares where prepared for dog meat.

In the evening we went to Luigi (nickname), a friend of James's, and had a wonderful evening talking and laughing about all sort of things. He and his girlfriend have a very friendly cat, too.

Interesting first hunt with first time seen use of real firearms.