Date: 28th July 2011

Place: Kroombit Cattle Station

Weather: Sunny and a decent temperature

Had to wake up early again and sneak out; it seems to be routine now. Jumped on the computers and booked my flight home and emailed people to let them know I was still alive. Then got back on the bus with Yute.

We stopped at Rockhampton where we swapped buses to go to the cattle station. As soon as we got there we had a BBQed steak which was obviously freshly cut that morning. Then the activities began which started with goat mustering on horse back. My horse was a little b***** and wouldn't keep up with everyone and kept on wanting to eat. Then when I started stopping letting him and was more firm he got moody and decided to pull in the opposite direction when I wanted him to turn a certain way.

When he stopped for a wee a girl called Hannah told me to hit him on the side of the neck whilst kicking and he started trotting which shocked me a bit; I don't know how people do jumps on them! It turned out Hannah, who works on the cattle station at the moment, comes from Sixfields and we have 4 mutual friends on Facebook J. Small world.

When we eventually found the goats we had to herd them all up by shouting at them and staying behind them. There were a couple of dutch kids who were really good at it. We got them all into their pen and then it was time for the rodeo! We were taught how to Lasso and then put into teams of three; one person lassoed the goat, one straddled it and one pretended to brand it. Our team name was the Horny Ropers Billy Groapers since it fitted the task pretty well.

My team was first up and we didn't realise it was a time trial. I was the brander but the Lassoer was really good and got a goat straight away. We did it all in about 40 seconds I think and came second out of the three groups.

Just before dinner was ready we had bush nibbles which we found out later was goat. Its actually very nice, a bit like stewed beef. Apparently goat is the meat most consumed in the world. After sitting around the campfire to warm up and having a bit of goat we head to the restaurant where we had dinner. We were then given a talk by Al the owner who said there were spaces available for volunteers who want to earn their 2nd year visa. I was sooooo gutted that I had booked my flight home that morning because I really really would have loved to stay and work their.

Then it was time for whip cracking! I could do it pretty easily with the shorter whips but they upgraded me to the really long one and then it just kept hitting the floor. Hannah and Al were so good at it and they made it so loud! Next up was the rodeo bull which was hard! It was a lot harder than the one in Thailand because it just went so far forward I kept falling off the front before I got into the rhythm of it. Some of the girls were really good at it though.

We spent the rest of the night sat around the campfire keeping warm. I was the last backpacker up and spent most of the night chatting with the staff. It was awesome like proper Australia, I so so wish I could have stayed.