We arrived at Rockhampton at 6.30am to discover our travel agent had booked us on the wrong day for our farm stay. After a traumatic time where we thought we may have to spend the day in hilly-billy-rockhampton-ville we were picked up.

We arrived at Myella, a working cattle farm near the town of Banana (actually its name!), for 9am and made ourselves toast and tea over the fire. We then went out for a horse ride – Mel on Whiskey (the horse) and Stu on Bobbie (an ex race horse who still holds some records in Oz but who now can hardly walk!) It was lovely to go through the red rock outback and see kangaroos in the wild. After a 3 hour ride we came back for a lovely salad lunch cooked by Olive. This afternoon we were taught how to ride motorbikes so that we can herd the horses tomorrow morning. Although it started being vaguely reminiscent of trying to learn to drive a car at 17 Mel eventually got the hang of it and we drove around the huge farm. Stu now wants to get a motorbike but only when he is out of the 18-25years risk age bracket – cos I am sure that makes it safe! We then had to herd the cows in for milking – which took a lot longer than we would have thought – and included stu being charged at! Mel then milked the cow (which had horrible cut teets which were bleeding everywhere due to an infection and so I don’t think either of them enjoyed it!) LOL! Mel then went in the ute to feed the horses before we both rode up the hill to watch the sunset.

Dinner was served with home made beer and with good company, tree frogs and complete peace and quite - what more could you want!

After a short nights sleep, a very long day we must go to bed before we have to be up to milk/feed/rustle and so it goes on!