Brokeback Mountain
Trip Start
Jan 22, 2008
1
46
101
Trip End
Sep 30, 2008
Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Extreme lawn bowls had all the Oz Experience passengers fired up and we were making steady progress towards Kroombit cattle station when disaster struck and the front wheel of our bus exploded. At first it felt like the feeling of going over the cats eyes but the smell and temporary loss of control told a different story. Fortunately some local, laid back cops were soon on the scene to have a laugh at our female driver, Hailey, and to attempt to help to change the wheel. Sadly, it was a non-starter and we had to wait a couple of hours for a replacement which put us way behind schedule, although Oz Ex did offer us all a free meal at a small road side cafe as compensation. Never a man to look a gift horse in the mouth, I ordered the most expensive item on the menu - am mixed grill - which, being an Australian portion, turned out to be most of the contents of a farmyard, including the farmer's wife's arm (I think).
We eventually landed at the awesomely named Kroombit cattle station, a 240,000 acre ranch near in the outer Outback, at 9.30pm as opposed to our planned arrival time of 5.30pm and were all pretty tired. That didn't prevent us participating in whip cracking - the sound of the crack is generated by the whip breaking the sound barrier, I only managed one sonic boom. There was also a mechanical bull, where despite my pathetic seven second stint (there is an activity which rhymes with bucking which would see this duration as I career achievement) I managed to get three whoops from the assembled crowd of about 50 - one when I could barely climb onto the inflatable around the bull, let alone the machine itself; one when I screamed like a child twice as the machine threw me around, and the final one when I swan dived off in slow motion. The drinking games never really got going, so it was a much needed early night after three consecutive 6am get ups (I do however have an excellent story about a Scottish man and a goat, but I don't think this is the appropriate forum for its publication)...
Tuesday saw me complete my first morning's "work" since setting off traveling. I mounted my horse 'Ledger', a handsome dark brown beast, who ironically seemed obsessed with the bottom of which ever horse was in front. The name of the game was goat mustering, which involves herding around 300 goats into a smallish pen at the other end of one of the fields. Apart from a small unprovoked gallop, I was actually fairly decent at controlling Ledger although I didn't manage to influence his ass fetish.
In an action packed morning, the mustering was followed by clay pigeon shooting - I hit a respectable three out of five - and then goat catching. Me and partner Claire were fortunate to have a fairly passive animal which Claire caught and dragged across the small ringed enclosure before I lifted and spun the animal, allowing Claire to apply the 'brand' (actually a non-heated metal stick) to his hind. Finally we did a spot of lassoing as well as having 11,000 volts passed through us via a cattle prod as we stood in a ring holding hands - it was like the sensation of playing one of the electric shock arcade games, making my forearms feel bizarre. A couple of peeps, including our borderline insane driver, went a step further and took shocks to the bare cheeks of their bums, but I decided that one can have too much fun when dressed in an uber-camp white cowboy hat...
Comments
Ass
I think Ledger got the ass fetish from you in the first place.