Next stop after the Whitsundays was Rainbow Beach, ready for Fraser Island. However its roughly a 12 hour drive so OZ Experience break it up with a stop off at a cattle ranch in the Queensland outback called Kroombit. Heard really good stories about it and you can do some really different and cool activities so was bang up for it!

We arrived around 5pm to be welcomed, and told ‘nibbles’ was at 6pm, dinner at 6:30. ‘Nibbles’ turnt out to be a dead, cooked animal. Chunks of meat were hacked off the carcass and dished out, although we weren’t told what it was until a few hours after. Id already eaten goat before so it wasn’t a new experience for me. Still tastes like beef. Dinner was a local cow, good too!

After dinner we learnt how to crack a whip followed by a game of tug of war between the two coaches (Northbound & Southbound). Obviously my gym membership was well worth the investment and proved to be the difference, as southbound won. Claiming the prize of a single bottle of giggle juice. The nastiest and cheapest fizzy champagne ever. Delightful.

It was then quite a boozy affair, sinking cans of XXXX and taking turns on the mechanical bull. The next morning before we left was activity morning. First learning how to lasso, before moving onto clay pigeon shooting. One of the lads had done it before and said it was well hard so I was up for the challenge. Again (seems to be a theme for the trip) no one wanted to go first, so I stepped up. 5 shots, lets have it.

After calling for the disc to be set up (which oddly was scrotum) I missed my first two. They were well close though according to the group leader. Next one. . . way off. Fourth one. . . even worse. Falling away like Liverpool in November now. Had to get it on the fifth. Shouted scrotum, lined her up, and BANG! Saved the day. Watching that disc obliterate over the field felt good. The other 3 lads followed, 2 also managed to blast a ‘pigeon’ , the other drew a blank.

The next activity was goat rodeo. Into teams of 3 (I was with Caroline and Caroline.) In the fastest time you had to catch and pretend to brand a goat. The first person had to lasso the goat, the second had to lift it up and pin it down, ready for the third person to ‘brand it’. Of course the girls didn’t want to touch the goat, so I had to do the dirty work.
Caroline didn’t manage to lasso our chosen goat (to be fair no team managed it) so it was left to person number two (i.e moi) to catch the goat, dump it on their back ready for a tattoo from Caroline number 2. We stunk of goats, were covered in dust and lucky for me the goat police weren’t about. Was a right laugh though. We came a respectable third.

Finally the last two hours involved either quad biking or horse riding. As id done quad biking already I opted for the gee gees. My horse, big red, was pretty good. All the latest mod cons, although at times he just couldn’t be bothered and was quite happy to just stand there, completely ignoring my clear instructions to get a bloody move on. Most of the time though we got on just fine and we (as a group with other horses) herded some goats and we had a trot about too.

After leaving Kroombit id lassoed, cracked a whip, ridden a horse, shot a pretend pigeon, ridden a pretend bull and body slammed a goat. A full on cowboy experience im sure you’ll agree.

My next update will be a about the largest sand island in the world! Hope your not working too hard.

Rob x (x x x)