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A good rest, a hearty breakfast, and we were ready for a new challenge today — a cattle roundup. Stephen will be helping his neighbor Tic with moving cows from one paddock to another and separating the heifers from their calves. Until it was time to head over to Tic’s, we lingered over our coffee, did some laundry, and kept learning more about how Stephen came to be in this house.
When time came to head over to the ranch, neither of us knew quite what to expect. Stephen was on his ATV, and Dana went with Tic in another ATV. I joined John in a Ute and with only the barest minimum of instruction, we headed out to the fields. Fortunately, we were passengers for this part, at times holding on to keep from being bounced out of the vehicle.
John, btw, is a friend of Tic’s from way back and was staying in the guest house on Tic’s farm. He’s married to Tic’s ex-wife, and they all get along well. He’s deserving of a blog entry of his own and I will get into some more about him later.
After Tic, John, and Stephen got the last of the cows into the separating paddock, the real fun began. We all wielded poly pipe sections to prompt the cows to get moving or stop calves from following their mothers. Part of raising cattle, though it was sad to hear both the heifers and their calves calling for each other. There are videos below the (many) pics of the roundup and of Tic and Stephen shortening the horn off of a heifer whose left horn was growing into her eye. It looked bad and in the end I think she was grateful for the relief.
After the roundup, we still had a good portion of the day in front of us and Stephen drove us to Coolah Tops National Park where we hiked a couple different trails and visited some of the “attractions.” The park is on land that abuts and/or is on land that Tic’s pioneer family claimed. I may be remembering this wrongly, but I think at some point, the station was around 2000 acres. We saw old cabins where workers would stay while the cows dined on summertime grasses.
We descended from the part back into Coolah and stopped at the Coolah Valley Hotel for dinner and drinks. Stephen and I had the “Works Hamburger” which was probably 1/3 lb and came with cheese, egg, bacon, pineapple, and BBQ sauce. It was delicious and filing. Dana opted for a salmon dinner, which also was generous portions and v. good (I got a taste). After dinner, we walked around town some more and stopped by the Coolah Sporting Club grounds where there were a number of youth rugby games going on. Back at Stephen’s, we went over to Tic’s and had a nightcap and then settled in after a good, long day.
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