Cow Country

Wednesday 22 November

Another early morning – up to catch the first ferry, this time from Hamilton Island back to Shute Harbour. We were accompanied by several of the high school children and night shift workers returning to the mainland. The crossing was very smooth and we were able to spend half an hour catching up on some sleep. This tour is called the “Island Discoverer” so I suppose that is the philosophy for visiting islands that really could be almost anywhere in the world – with pavement cafes and activity sports. It was great to see such a large number of islands here “untouched” by humans and to meet many other people, but Hamilton Island is really just a rich man’s (or maybe not so rich) playground. There has been very little of ecological interest.

Once aboard the coach we sped our way to our first stop for coffee at Mackay – a small town, where everyone seemed to be Christmas shopping. There were lots of decorations, a few shops tinkling carols, and invitations to meet Father Christmas when he arrived next Saturday were displayed everywhere. We decided to sample Australian scones again, and the pumpkin variety with plum jam and cream was delicious – I am becoming a bit of a scone aficionado. The countryside around was still very flat with large fields of sugar cane, but as we traveled south along the road, there were more and more trees, until by the time we reached our lunch destination, we were back to a similar landscape that we had seen in the outback – tall willowy eucalyptus trees in woodland stands, amongst scrubby grassland. The road was also long and straight, but with a little more traffic than in the outback.

We wondered why we hadn’t seen more sheep – surely Australia was famous for its sheep! Apparently here in the north the grass is not suitable for sheep – it is sharp and cuts their underbellies and legs, and they cannot survive in the drought conditions. Apparently we will see more in New South Wales and Victoria as there are millions of sheep in the country. Wool used to be the main export of the country. Now it is the third biggest export, behind coal and minerals and is followed by wheat in fourth place.. But sheep still provide a considerable input into the national economy, earning about A$5 million per year. Coal earns between A$180 and A200 million per year, with Japan the biggest buyer (who only take washed coal – no dust). Australia exports about 90% of what is mined, compared to about 10% by the US and 20% by most other exporting nations.

We watched a video about Sidney Kitman, who owned the largest cattle station in the outback early in the twentieth century, and successfully managed to move his herds around from waterhole to waterhole over his estate. He became very famous for his tenacity, and very rich, and an Australian song was written about him.

We stopped at Tooloomba for lunch, a roadside café, which has been run by the same two ladies for years and years. Inside there were lots of photographs of coach tour leaders and their groups and in one we saw Paul, our driver on the last tour, pictured beside his coach and party. Having enjoyed the short break, we were soon on our way again. We passed Capricorn Caves, the only location in the country where all sixty varieties of bats resident in Australia are found in one place. This includes the ghost bat, which is almost transparent and flies by sight like a bird, instead of the sonic method used by most bats. Bats eat half their body weight each day, and if they are pregnant, can eat as much as their total body weight. If they happen to be pregnant when it is time to hibernate, they can hold the embryo dormant during that period, and continue with the pregnancy later. Bats usually produce twins and despite the myth, they are not blind, just have poor eyesight.

The landscape had changed again this afternoon, to flat open fields, now supporting herds of cattle and we continued on to Henderson Park, a cattle station – or more correctly a beef producing station. Annika, the Henderson’s daughter, guided us around the station. The first thing we saw was a stand of completely dead trees looking eerily like tall, white ghostly spikes in the middle of a field. She explained that these trees had died because the trees on the higher ground were cut down in the 1920s and 1930s, and when the artesian water level rose in the 1940s, it swamped the root systems and they ingested too much salt and died.

The station here is about 5,500 acres supporting around 750 – 800 cattle, with about 350 breeding cows. The soil is red volcanic earth covered by a thick scrub pasture, not suitable for growing crops. In the 1960’s they changed the herd from solely European red/brown Herefords to include pure white Indian Brahmins and crossbreeds between the two known as Brahmfords (half and half) and Droughtmasters (three quarters Brahmin, which are much shorter and more stocky than true Brahmins), and a few black Aberdeens (these crossbreeds are known as Brangus). The Brahims naturally have a hump at the back of their heads, which fills with water and serves as a supply in times of drought, which makes them ideal for this part of the country. They also used to have horns, but interbreeding with the European cattle, has reduced these to small stumps. All the cattle here have large “briskets”, a flap of skin, under the chin, containing lots of blood vessels, which flaps and cools the animals as they move around in the hot weather.

The cattle have a nine month gestation programme, similar to humans, and from the age of two, cows are expected to calve every year – if they don’t, its meat market time! The station is EU registered which means almost all of the meat ends up in Europe, so there are strict guidelines to follow – the cattle must be fire-branded with the station logo, the month and year of birth and identification number, and they must also be ear-tagged. The cattle here are all completely grass-fed (some stations grow sorghum as a supplement feed which enables more animals to be kept per acre, but the price per kilo of meat is considerably lower). The non-breeding cows and bulls are now slaughtered around the age of two years as 30 months is the age limit set for imports by the EU, following the outbreak of mad cow disease. The breeding cows are usually kept until about 10 years old when they are slaughtered and the bulls are used until around seven years old. The best of this older meat goes to the US and the rest to the south east Asian markets. If the cows fail to produce a calf annually, or the calf is defective in any way, they will be slaughtered earlier. The Brahmin cattle used to suffer from eye cancer quite badly, when the pink pigment at the side of the eye became infected. They have now been able to breed a dark ring around the eye, which prevents this disease in most cattle.

The water here is supplied from the local creek, raised by windmills, which have to be replaced about every ten years when the wooden bearings (made from red spotted gum trees) wear out. It costs about A$10,000 to replace a windmill. But there is always sufficient water on this ranch.

We were introduced to Mr and Mrs Henderson, a couple in their early fifties. Mr Henderson has lived all his life on this station, and Annika is the fifth generation of Hendersons to farm here. She expects to take over the station when her parents retire. The Hendersons have two other children, a son currently teaching in Brunei and a daughter who is a designer/architect working between Rockhampton and Hamilton Island. We also met a group of five bulls, who live in the paddock near the homestead, mostly hand reared, a couple of the dogs (more pets than work dogs) and a stray wild pig, which had attached itself to one of the calves being hand reared at present. Apparently the big old black bull, Clive, now about eleven years old and a bit special, lost his mate a few months ago, at the same time as one of the geese lost her partner, so they became friends and look after each other – who says there’s no sentimentality on the ranch?

We saw the main house belonging to the parents, the grandparents house nearby, now belonging to Annika, and the great grandparents home, on the other side of the paddock, which is currently used by Kelly and Ryan, the other workers on the station. Two of our party were staying overnight in one of the cabin facilities here, that supplement the income of the station – we hadn’t known about booking this option before we left, but it seemed a great way to learn more about cattle stations in Australia.

We only had time to spend an hour here, and would definitely liked to have stayed longer - maybe a horse ride out across the fields to see the cattle and country beyond the homestead – now I am such an experienced rider! We were only an hour outside Rockhampton, our destination for the night, and by the time we arrived in town, it was already 17.00. Colin and I decided to skip the visit to the Botanical Gardens – it would be too rushed (the gardens were about half the size of Kew Gardens and closed in less than an hour, with a small zoo, which closed as we arrived – there had been some suggestion that we visit these gardens tomorrow morning when there would be a little more time, but Jenn and Tom decided on today – so we went straight to the hotel to publish some blogs and catch up with emails. The hotel was an eight storey building with one slow lift – thank goodness we were on the second floor and could use the stairs. We had been warned it was clean, but basic, but to us, who had stayed in huts in the jungle and motels in the outback, this was fine – it had all the facilities we expected and as a bonus, the windows faced west, so that we saw a glorious sunset – a big orange ball of fire, slipping slowly behind the trees – and rooftops close by.

Dinner was another set meal – this was basic, but edible and the staff were very friendly. APT have been using this hotel for many years and have had many complaints about it, hence the warnings beforehand – but it has recently been taken over by the Travelodge group, and so are hoping it will improve. We were told there were no 4* or above hotels in town, but we did spy a couple which looked hopeful. Rockhampton is a fairly large town, the beef capital of Queensland, as all the beef exported from Queensland goes through this town and the Beef Marketing Board situated here. To acknowledge this status, twenty seven statues of white Brahmin cattle are scattered around the town, at junctions, on central reservations and in parks.

Rockhampton is spread out widely along the Fitzroy River, with most of the houses raised off the ground, by “open cellars” or stilts. The houses looked affluent with nicely manicured gardens with many trees and flowers. We actually saw a game of croquet taking place on a large lawn near the centre of town – hoops, mallets and red balls and several people dressed in white – reminscent of long lost England. The city has a really relaxed atmosphere – we were arriving at “rush hour” time and there was scarcely any traffic to be seen. Across the road from the hotel was the river, with a tow path that would have been very pleasant to explore – but the computer took priority, as we seem to have very little spare time (thank goodness for the coach journeys, when I can write the blog entries) to keep up to date.

After dinner and a chat to some of our tour party, we returned to the room, to post the blogs and download more photos. We will need to download to disks again soon – that’s the trouble with digital, you just keep snapping away – there will be a lot of editing to do when we get home.

Tomorrow we are traveling to Fraser Island, a more ecological area, we hope. One of the APT “options” for the day was a half-day visit a ship wreck on one of the beaches – a highlight of the island we are told – but it needed twenty people to run the trip, out of the 24 we now have left on board. So most of us have chosen the all day visit to Lake Mackenzie and the shipwreck, a public tour, in the hope that we will see more wildlife. There will also be an opportunity for bird walks in the early morning and evening safaris to see some nocturnal life. The hectic pace continues.