My travels next took me up into the Outback of Queensland, to Pindari Station. Brandon and I flew to Emerald on March 7, where we were picked up by our host John Watkins.
I met John and his wife Debbie when I was staying at Kauri Glen Farms, near Matamata NZ. Pete and Dulcey Barton have known the Watkins for years, and when I had mentioned that I wanted to see the Outback of Aussie, Pete, Dulcey and Tony offered to get me into contact with John. It is amazing who you can meet while traveling, you never know where it will take you! I have been so fortunate to have met such amazing people during my travels, and I know I have met lifelong friends.
Anyways, getting back to the story. John picked us up at the airport in his ute, complete with an extraordinarily large spider clinging on to the air intake, and we began our journey to Pindari. We stopped in Springsure for tea, where Debbie lives and works. After some delicious Aussie beef, we headed out to the station in the moonlight, seeing the odd rabbit and pretty faced wallaby, as well as far too many Cane toads (which, by the way, are massive and absolutely horrible creatures).
Pindari is fairly "close" to town, just 46 km south of Springsure, located in some mountain ranges. The station is 50,000 ac and runs 2000 head of breeder cows, mainly Droughtmaster with Limosin and Brahman influence. During our time there, we helped muster cattle, in order to administer pour-on onto the cows, and brand and process calves that were born in the spring. I fell in love with the true Aussie cattle, the Droughtmasters, which come from the cross of Shorthorn and Santa Getrudis breeds. Not only are they hardy cows, but they are excellent mothers and they have beautiful udders. Droughties take a little bit to get used to, mainly just the look of them is quite a bit different than our Canadian cattle, but they sure grew on me. A hardy breed of cattle for a hardy country!
It was interesting to see the difference in Canadian and Australian management on a beef operation, basically just because of different problems that need to be addressed. For example, in Australia, cattle need to be heat tolerant and be efficient on larger expanses of land, because they may need to walk a long ways to find good grass or water. Ticks and buffalo flies are a major problem, and cattle need to have pour-on administered every few weeks throughout the entire year for tick control.
We learned quite a bit about the Australian beef industry during our time at Pindari, and about where Aussie beef gets marketed internationally. One hot topic was the recent Gillard government's, to put it lightly, near-sighted ban of live Australian cattle exports to Indonesia, which completely turn the Northern Territory's beef market upside down in a day. It is too much background to put into my blog, but if you would like to Google "Aussie live cattle export ban Indonesia", I'm sure you could get a few articles to give you a background on the situation.
John also took us over to Arcturus Downs, a 20,000 acre farm that grows cotton, sorghum, wheat, corn, sunflowers amongst other crops. In Queensland, there is 2 cropping seasons, and farms are able to plant winter and summer crops. Summer is the wet season, and winter is dry. It was very interesting to see the flood irrigation systems they use, as well as the massive reservoir ponds they use to hold water for the dry season. The most exciting part of our tour (well I thought so, haha) was seeing my first fields of cotton and sorghum! The cotton that had just been desiccated, just a couple weeks away from harvest. Pretty neat!
On Saturday, we got the chance to go to the St. Patrick's Day Races in Springsure. I don't think I got the memo, but apparently in Australia the point of going to the races is to dress the fanciest that you can. I was amazed! Debbie had lent me. Beautiful black dress for the day, and I thought I was quite dressed up for the event, turns out, I had no flipping clue! I saw the most beautiful ladies in fancy dresses, hats and fascinators, as well as some very well dressed men! I'm not going to lie, as good as the thoroughbreds were to watch, the people watching was even better! Definitely a trend that I wish would catch on at home - getting fancied up to go to the races!
I had an absolutely amazing few days at Pindari, and we are so fortunate to have been able to see the Outback. To me, it was a true Aussie Outback experience as soon as I saw a kangaroo hopping alongside my horse as I herded cattle through the bush. Also getting to experience some true Aussie pig hunting made the trip! Unreal!
Pindari is certainly a beautiful place, I love it!
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