Yee Hah!

Cattle Ranch

On the way to my Whitsundays Island Boat cruise, Oz Experience had one last surprise for us. An overnight stop at a genuine Australian farm/ Cattle Ranch! We could choose from a range of cool cowboy activities. Clay pigeon shooting with a Shotgun, Goat hearding on horseback, Goat Branding - (catching goat in a ring, flipping and touching for 3 secs with fake brander) Learning to swing a Lasso, learning to crack a real whip, and My Favourite of the whole day- Mechanical Bull Riding Competition!

Now most of those activities had a price tag attatched to them so most people didnt do them all, maybe only one or two. You've read my blogs, is it really like me to miss out on a good thing, hell no! So I did them all!

Goat hearding first on horseback. Now something I actually left out of my blog before happened back in Thailand on Krabi beach, I left It out due to concerning parents being over worried! I actually had an incredibly frightening ordeal with a horse on the beach. I was with Debs and Louise on these horses wen mine got incredibly spooked, and spooked the other 2 horses sending them gaga! So we're galloping out of control towards a 6ft wall with no signs of slowing down or direction change just centimetres away from Louise and her horse. All of a sudden both horses leapt 6ft in the air and completely cleared this concrete wall! I think Debs had slowed her horse by now. Both hanging on for dear life our horses were running wild into tree branches only estimating for their own bodies not our heads! I had to keep ducking down on this rampaging fireball of power, horse. It was so hard to hang on, absolutely impossible almost. It then completely swithched direction again and headed back towards the 6ft drop again to the beach. This I thought was it, game over, we had been struggling out of control for like 5 mins now with no help from the Thai horse guide whatsoever, I was getting tired of holding on and fighting this horse, beginning to slip, this could end up with me having an identical accident and outcome as my once great favourite Superhero Christopher Reeves.... as the two horses lept with Louises slighty ahead I saw in slow motion Louise come off the back of her horse with her head towards the ground, before I even saw her hit the ground I turned my head back to where I was going and grabbed the reigns harder than ever before and hugged with my legs for dear life, in mid air disaster struck, my right foot came clean out of the stirrup and left me completely off balance. The horse and I both got to the ground together and In one final effort I grabbed whatever I could to pull myself back onto the horse fully and shouted at the top of my voice whilst yanking the reigns and squeezing soo hard that the horse slowed its gallop down for jus 2 secs, in which time I threw myself sideways off the horse and landed with two feet on the sweet sweet sandy ground. I was ok. That was the scariest moment of my life, the only time I genuinly thought I could potentially die or be become paralysed for life. Thats why I didnt think telling Mum about this was a good idea until she knew I was completey unharmed.

Louise came walking up after saying she had hit her head but was fine, thank God! Debs also caught up and manged to get off her horse safely. When I said unharmed however, on closer inspection, absolutely shouting at the Thai guide, Louise noticed some blood through my t-shirt, it turned out I had a nasty gash on my left arm all the way from my shoulder to forearm. It wasnt serious, I can only assume it came from one of the million branches I was hurtled into. Louise and I went to the hospital for Legal reasons all covered by the tour insurance. We were given a clean and some painkillers and that was that!

Anyway back to Kroombit cattle station! So I was a little wary of getting on another horse but wanted to do it so I could get over the last experience properly. We managed to heard between 5 of us- 500 goats from acres of random farm land. It was great with no probs. The next stage was for the farm workers to show us how to brand a goat, letting only one in the ring from the pen of 500 at a time. Then it was our turn and they timed it. Before a few people had gone and it was funny and entertaining to see them running after this small goat. On our go, this goat wasnt small! It was Goatzilla! Its horns were as high as my neck! Everyone laughed wen they let it in! Of course I was nominated to catch it out of our three group members. So i went towards it and it ran and jumped against the fence like a matrix goat above my head, it was incredible, I had no idea goats were such good jumpers and as quick!? Anyway i wasnt taking no crap from a goat, so I grabbed it by the horns and dragged it in the circle whilst it was fighting me. We eventually flipped it and branded it with cold metal poker. We didnt win but it was good fun.

Shot gun next. I wasnt wearing my glasses and traditionanally at aiming I am not exactly a crack shot,  so I wasnt holding out much hope of hitting these clay plates. Not many people were getting them either. I missed the first two and smashed the 3rd to smitherines. I also chipped the forth plate but it didnt smash. I was quite happy with that!

We learnt the lasso which i was naturally good at, I manged to lasso the pole almost everytime. Cracking the whip was very difficult to me on the other hand. The technique is not easy. Eventually I got it so was pleased.

Now on with the main event! The Mechanical bull comp had started. It was soo funny to watch, u always knew wen someone was going and wen they actually did it was hilarious! I had made some good friends here too which made it great fun. The bull starts off very aggressively, not slowly like in the movies. So u can come off very quickly. The average was about 8 secs. At 8 secs thats wen it begins to spin. Some of the guys managed a very impressive 13 secs as it went on. When it came to my go I had no idea if I was gonna be any good or not. There was 2 ways it could have gone- My lack of coordination and balance was sure to be a disability, but my talent for finding and using rythm in dance may have been a help!? I dont know so I jus got on with it! I got the first buck really wrong and it pelted my body forward and totally out of balance and sync. Thats the part I mentioned earlier about knowing wen someone has lost it and is coming off!

But no! I made a great recovery and comeback with immediately finding the the rythm and manged to stay on to the milestone of 8 secs wen it began to spin! And then past 13 secs, then 16, then 18, then 20! The crowd were going crazy with cheers and applause, I had already beaten the record so far! By this point by man hood was beginning to hurt. I managed to carry on until the pain became unbearable and I was worried for the sake of being able to ever have children and decided to dismount off with class and elegance after 28 seconds! I could have gone longer but not without some kind of protection!!! So I won a free beer from the bar and a lot of respect from friends! The video will be loaded soon! Watch out for it!

That wasnt the end of the night tho, I still had half of our bus still to try. A few tried and failed around the average of 8 secs again. But then a girl got on looking very awkward on this thing and with the second buck it threw her very amusingly to the floor. Everyone was laughing so much because it was the quickest to fall off so far. Until a loud shreik of pain went through everyones ears. It turned out she had dislocated her arm and damaged her neck. We were in the middle of nowhere! It took an hour for the ambulance to arrive and then rushed her off to hospital. So that was the end of the bull riding!

We left next morning for Airly Beach, Whitsundays!