Well it's definitely been quite an eventful couple of weeks since the last update I gave you! The biggest thing that's happened was a slight incident with a horse at the beggining of this week. After only letting me ride 2 slow, quiet horses beforehand Bruce finally decided to let me ride a more forward going horse (actually an ex race horse...) and I thought everything was going fine. However after only 20 minutes on her I was trotting in a paddock by myself to get some cattle in when she reared at an ant mound and I went flying in the other direction. I was completely fine (I have built in padding!) except for the fact that I held onto the reins for 2 long in an effort not to loose her, meaning that I got pretty bad rope burn on 6 fingers, rendering them pretty much useless for a few days! It wasn't the fact that I fell off that was so annoying, it was more that I don't like not being useful and that I'm sure Bruce now doesn't trust me at all to ride anything other than the quietest of horse. But oh well, I'm sure I'll get over it!

I'm not the only one to have received injuries over the last couple of weeks. Last week we were walking in a paddock when the dogs got a bit too worked up, and one of them, Val, somehow managed to stake hersfl on a pretty large stick. It looked really bad but Bruce wasn't going to call the vet as it costs at least $300 dollars just to get them out to the station! He just left the wound, didn't even wash it out actually! I think he did give her a shot of penecillin actually, and looking at her yesterday it seems to have healed up miraculously quickly, so that's good at least! As well as the dog, one of the horses has an infection in a hoof and so he's been living in the house yard, see the photos!

We've been doing a lot of the work in the cattle yards recently. The weaners have just been split from their mothers, and for the first few days they were VERY noisy, you could hear them whilst trying to get to sleep at night! They are also a bit mental, as they haven't learnt what gates are yet and so quite often get themselves into a panic and get their heads stuck in between rails, having thought that they would be able to squeeze through a few inches of space! I'm now getting used to all the lingo for different types of cattle - there are bulls, heifers, steeres, weaners, potties, mickeys etc etc!

This weekend we're in town for the May day celebrations, which Barcaldine seems to make a massive deal over. Apparently yesterday they filled the main street with 200 sheep and sheared them, but we weren't here in time to see that. In the evening the main road was still shut off, and they had food stalls, live music etc. The whole town seemed to be there. Bruce is attempting to trying and get rid of my shyness, and so he just abandoned me and said 'meet at least 5 people'! I wasn't impressed to begin but after a little dutch courage started to talk to some of the locals and actually had a pretty good night. Today they had something called Revfest, which was basically lots of cars and motorbikes having drag races (it's easy to tell I'm not a petrolhead!)

Over and out, hope everyone's well! Don't forget to look at the extra photos I've added xx