Plenty of……

Here on the Plenty Highway they say there is plenty of corrugations, plenty of rocks and plenty of bull dust. They fail to mention that there is also plenty of natural beauty and plenty of fun.

As I write this I am sitting in the hottest corner of the Rec Room with an old rickety pedestal fan whirring to my left and a small window where I can look over the main homestead and lawns to my right. I have spent all morning in the kitchen since 5 am to be exact. I have cooked breakfast (not a regular thing I have heard) and two cakes a golden syrup sponge with whipped cream and marmalade and a pineapple upside down cake. Both have not turned out perfect but I am sure they will be eaten. Things never look like they do in pictures.

Tomorrow is my first night at cooking dinner. There is no set menu at all it is completely at my discretion the only two things I have to include is vegies and meat. Tomorrow as there is a mammoth thirty mouths to feed mostly young, hard-working men I am making macaroni cheese with ground beef and vegies. It sounds easy enough but we’ll see. I have spent most of my days in sheer terror of task of cooking for all these people.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon all nicely planned so we could utilise the Sunday off to unpack and settle in. WRONG!!! Arriving at 2.30pm after finding the road in quite good condition and not as far away from our major town centre – Mount Isa (only three hours or so) we found not a person in sight. Lucky our new boss was prepared for this being the case and left a voicemail with some general directions. Find the block of dongas, it’s the one on the end if there is stuff in the room it’s not yours! With this information we pretty much found our room first go.The room is no bigger than a double bed really but it’s clean. At first we were a bit worried but after cramming everything in it is fine. We only sleep in there anyway and the air con works.

Anyway, the workers started rocking back to the homestead and me met our first other co-workers. It was daunting being the new couple and trying to remember all the names but I’m sure we’ll get there. Pretty much the first thing the manager said to us was if we were right to work the following day (SUNDAY) of course we were!!

It was straight to the cattle yards for us. Up at five and with all the other workers piled into the work utes and headed to the yards about 15, 20 mins away (depends who is driving) Shaun and I were with the weaners, he was tailing them and I was vaccinating. Eeek both thrown in the deep end but all in all really enjoyed it. We spent the afternoon helping with drafting and saw our first muster brought in the yards including one GIANT camel.

The next day Shaun got to see a big chuck of the property (Keeping in mind that it is 1.48 million acres) He went on the bore run with the bore runner (a total of 400km) while I was in the kitchen helping the outgoing cook.

At the moment everything is going great guns. We are having plenty of fun!

Ps. We haven’t had time for photos. Hopefully we will have Sunday off and can get out and about.