Cattle Sale
I went along with Georgie to a cattle sale and it was fascinating (not that I have been to many back home - actually I've only been to one - Bill and Jan Huber's :).
The cows are sold by the pen. It says the average weight and how many are in the pen (there is other info on the sign but I had no clue what it meant).
The auctioners walk ontop of the pens and sell them from there. The price will be finalized (example $820 - I thought that was such a bargain for a whole pen of calves. But one of the livestock journalists finally broke it to me that that is the price per cow in the pen).
As soon as a pen is done they start loading up the cattle up right away - I think this was the truck going to the meat works plant :(
We teased Josh and sent him this picture on his cell phone while he was working. We told him that I bought this one calf from the person who bought the pen - and one of Georgie's grower was going to let me keep it at his farm and then sell it when it got bigger. I still can't believe that Josh believed us and he wasn't even upset. The only thing he asked (which I did not think about) was if I knew about "if you have livestock you have deadstock".
Australia Tourism put out this website http://www.australia.com/campaigns/100_things/aus-traveller/ of 100 things that you can only do in Australia. We have now started to keep a running list of how many we are achieving (some aren't that interesting - we will also list the ones that we hope we can do depending on the floods).
Completed:
#42 - Land a Spaceship in the Main Street (Coober Pedy)
#23 - Bake on the World's Largest Salt Lake (which I actually did)
Want to Complete (on the website it gives a description for each)
#76 - Sleep Underground in a Wartime Bunker
#80 - Learn the Ropes at Jack and Jillaroo School
#3 - Drink Among the World's Oldest Grape Vines
#57 - Set the Pace with the World's Fastest Boat
#96 - Wade with the World's Most Poisonous Mammal
#8 - Drive along the World's Largest War Memorial
#74 - Search the Hills for the Mahogany Ship
#53 - Stand where the Rainforest Meets the Reef
#22 - Dive Among the Dwarves
#94 - Sleep Soundly on the Great Barrier Reef
#54 - Visit the Only Numerical Town
#79 - Watch an Ancient Creature Take it's First Steps
Yesterday (January 11th)I went along with Josh to work to ride in the header. I was quite happy that I had a book in my purse (don't know what I was thinking to go along for an entire day) but too my enjoyment we had a minor breakdown at around 5:00 and our day was completed (Josh was combining Faba beans).
We went back to the boss's house (Ian) and stayed and visited with his family and a couple other workers - they are all such nice people. They have a beautiful home with there own private pool, vineyard and tennis court. It started to rain here so Ian wants Josh to go to Loxton (3.5 hours north along the Murray River) to spray. So I am now officially employed - I will be the water truck driver and gourmet chef for the blokes at there farm in Loxton :)
January 12th (Wednesday)
Josh headed off to work this morning and I was thinking about my work adventure starting tomorrow (what am I going to make for all these meals?) And I had the perfect idea - I headed out to Georgie's parents farm and brought enough ingredients that Jenn and I can make 50 pasties for me to take along. They are scrumptious and should be a good start.
Where to Go Next?
So we will probably stay in Loxton for 1-2 weeks or a little longer. Then we are either going to fly to New Zealand for a few weeks or go on a ferry to Tasmania. Our initial plan was to leave here and drive along the Great Ocean Road and then continue on up the East coast. But for right now those plans are haulted. The flooding in Queensland is unreal and is getting worse instead of better - it keeps raining and the rivers are too full. It is now also causing inland Tsunami's. The last one that hit was in Toowoomba - the big problem now with the flooding is they can't predict the flash floods and give people warning (something with the rain and the levees).
This is an excellent link that shows you some pictures of some flash floods and a video of the flooding in general:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1345736/Australia-floods-9-dead-72-missing-flash-floods-sweep-Toowoomba.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
If you follow this link it shows you all of the towns/cities on the East coast of Queensland that are hit by the flood:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/qld-floods/default.htm
A green frogs catches a ride on the back of a brown snake to safety:
P.S. As we were going to post this we are even more unsure of what our plans are. The flood is slowly taking over the South, East and West of Australia and is absolutely devastating. The news coverage shows people in vehicles getting taking away by the flood waters. The average is 19.5 meters high of flood water and in some areas it has been approximately 151 years since there has been a flood of this magnitude (1974 there was also some smaller floods in some areas in the East).