Tanamera Cattle Station - week two

Week two at Tanamera dawned bright after a wet weekend, with 50cm of rainfall. The tracks were very wet and Wally had warned us against driving on these muddy tracks as it was so easy to get bogged, we definitely didn’t need to be told twice after the sand pit episode, and there certainly was a lot of standing water out there. So it was going to be a day for walking, and as it turned out, most of week two was about walking, which is a bit of a slog through sticky, slippy mud. Positive point though is that Sandy and I have much better toned thighs and buttocks by the week’s end, see always a silver lining.

Just as the tracks were drying, out heavy storms arriving on Wednesday with a further 44cm of rain in two hours, Sandy and I were not having too much joy in getting out in the ute to do the bore run, over the week we had three aborted attempts. Even on different routes it was the same problem, either the tracks were under water, or there was heaps of sticky mud.

So it was that Sandy and I had to content ourselves with the gardening at the main house and looking after the animals. We also had to do a bit of little cattle mustering and fence fixing, as the herd from one of the paddocks had found its way over the main house.

Friday saw Sandy and I trying to do a bore run, again to no avail, ah well there is always next week; let’s hope for a dry weekend.

Saturday dawned bright with a good breeze. We noted that the water tank for the main house was not filling from house dam. It is important to note here that there is no mains water out at the cattle station, not only do we have to make sure that the cattle have water at their troughs from the dams and bores, but that the three residences also have water. This water is rain water either caught in small dams on the property or Rain Water Tanks attached to the drains of the houses. However to make sure this water is available to use in the house you have to keep an eye on the irrigation pipes and pumps. Pumps with airlocks, leaking pipes and joints will mean that water does not get into the water tanks. So the tank not filling at the main house was an urgent problem which needed to be fixed. This can mean bleeding the airlocks from the pumps, walking the kilometres of pipes to find the leak or putting in new joints. Needless to say Sandy and I are becoming experts at this now, in week two we had found two leaking pipes, one to the main house and one to the woolshed. So we were not sure what the problem was this Saturday morning. As it turned out a joint had blown and had to be replaced, the good news was for the first day in many we were able to dry the ute to the problem as the ground was now starting to dry out.

So with the work jobs done for the morning it was onto our own chores. Sandy took a ride into Longreach to do the shopping and I set to on the washing and cleaning. Sunday I made my first batch of drop scones, beautiful even though I say so myself.