Day 139 - Tanumbirini Station

26/08/11

Left Daly Waters heading across the Carpentaria Highway towards Cape Crawford.  140km in we stopped at Tanumbirini Station to say hello to Judy MacFarlane whom Jude had met at Leonie's place in Katherine about 6 weeks ago.  Even though that was their first meeting they hit it off and Judy invited us to stop by.  Not sure what to expect we rang ahead from Daly Waters and were told to come on in.  On the 4km drive to the homestead spotted easily 500 head of cattle in these paddocks.



Met Judy who is home by herself - her husband Tim (Station Manager) has gone to Katherine with their mustering team as they have just completed muster - all via helicopter!  After greetings we were into a full chat with Judy and Johnno (the bore man) like we'd known each other for years.  Johnno proceeds to fill me in that the station is approx 1.2million acres, about 70km x 90km, and has approx 28,000 head of cattle - WOW!  The 500 we saw on the way in was a fraction of the 20,000 plus which are now in the home paddock ready to be sorted and shipped to another station owned by the the same guy 400km south at Barkley Homestead.  There they are fattened for market.

After a cuppa etc I had the privilege of going along with Jonno to check on 2 of the 28 bores on the property - the furthest being nearly 100km of rough road from the homestead.  The bores vary from being enclosed as in the first picture below to standing in the open as per the second (this one with a 44gall drum for fuel).  The amount of fuel required and hence the frequency of checking depends on the bore itself and it's rate of flow, the size of the tank and expected fill time as well as an estimate of how quickly the cattle will drain it - Jonno has many years under his belt doing this work so he can assess all these variables to keep things going.  While checking the bores he also runs a critical eye over the stock hanging around - looking for unbranded cattle, sick or dead animals etc.  Theoretically there should have been no cattle today cause they'd just finished mustering but when one considers the area and the number of beasts its understandable that some get missed.

We parked the van next to the chooks and the pigs.

We settled in to a great country dinner of steak butchered on site, and fresh veggies from a large veggie garden then Sean settled with Rosie and Dolly (7 week old pup born here).


The Campbells