chipmunk, lavendar, grapes ripening, by Steph
david yarns
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CHAPTER THREE
DAVID: Australia
We flew into Timor with great excitement. We were in Asia and well and truly on the road. Stephanie has written about Timor and I will only add that we decided to not push through the Flores on small fishing boats as the stories of rapes and pirates were offputting.
We decided to retreat to Australia, Alice Springs in particular. We quickly found jobs. Stephanie was running a motel and I worked as a welders mate for a guy who had a contract to build three permanent branding pens for a rancher ( Bob Wing ) who had a novel idea about pens, wild cattle and aboriginal cowboys. I worked for 3 months helping to build these pens and it was good fun. Alice in the winter is just fine. Warm days and cool nights. No clouds and no rain.
When the panels for these pens were completed they were shipped north to the ranch. The station was up near the Gulf of Carpinteria. A long way from just about everywhere. The contractor was a German guy, Hans Kretchmer. He asked me if I would be interested in going with him to assemble the pens. I jumped at the offer. It was quite a disaster on one hand, but a great opportunity to experience the deep Aussie outback on the other.
We drove 1000 kilometers north, found the ranch, got the details and directions and set off to erect these pens. Each pen had 120 panels. Each panel had three rails and two strands of heavy wire. The vertical posts had to go half a meter into the ground and then be cemented in place. Every third panel had a post eight inches in diameter that went a meter into the ground. It hadn’t rained for two years and the ground was like a rock. Hans had no equipment other than two picks and two shovels. I won’t go into any more detail, but you can get the picture. There was a deep water bore at each site. We started to dig a hole and then filled it with water, then dug out what we could. It took two weeks to put up each pen. Filling holes with water and then digging out a few inches of dirt. Painstakingly slow and very hard work.
We slept on the back of a truck. Aboriginal cowboys brought us fresh food every two days. We cooked on a campfire and worked from dawn until dusk and then slept. Day after day after day.The cowboys sometimes shot a beast. The gins ( Aboriginal women ) would butcher it and corn the chunks of beef on low hammocks and eucalyptus leaves. Brilliant.
After seven weeks we had completed the task. The pens were ready to go. Concreted into place and I must say they looked quite handsome. The cocky thought so too. So Hans and I headed back to Alice Springs. I had lost a lot of weight and I was bronze and fit. Stephanie hardly recognized me. It turned out that Hans had no money to pay me. He promised he would send money to my English bank, but he never did. Seven weeks in the outback doing backbreaking work for nothing. You could make a case for that being a bad deal, but for me it was the experience of a lifetime and the money wasn’t such a big deal.
The story doesn’t quite end there though. I heard later that the first time they herded those feral animals into the permanent pens, they crushed them and smashed them like matchsticks. Another experiment which would have cost Bob Wing a lot of money. So, should I complain?
We decided to retreat to Australia, Alice Springs in particular. We quickly found jobs. Stephanie was running a motel and I worked as a welders mate for a guy who had a contract to build three permanent branding pens for a rancher ( Bob Wing ) who had a novel idea about pens, wild cattle and aboriginal cowboys. I worked for 3 months helping to build these pens and it was good fun. Alice in the winter is just fine. Warm days and cool nights. No clouds and no rain.
When the panels for these pens were completed they were shipped north to the ranch. The station was up near the Gulf of Carpinteria. A long way from just about everywhere. The contractor was a German guy, Hans Kretchmer. He asked me if I would be interested in going with him to assemble the pens. I jumped at the offer. It was quite a disaster on one hand, but a great opportunity to experience the deep Aussie outback on the other.
We drove 1000 kilometers north, found the ranch, got the details and directions and set off to erect these pens. Each pen had 120 panels. Each panel had three rails and two strands of heavy wire. The vertical posts had to go half a meter into the ground and then be cemented in place. Every third panel had a post eight inches in diameter that went a meter into the ground. It hadn’t rained for two years and the ground was like a rock. Hans had no equipment other than two picks and two shovels. I won’t go into any more detail, but you can get the picture. There was a deep water bore at each site. We started to dig a hole and then filled it with water, then dug out what we could. It took two weeks to put up each pen. Filling holes with water and then digging out a few inches of dirt. Painstakingly slow and very hard work.
We slept on the back of a truck. Aboriginal cowboys brought us fresh food every two days. We cooked on a campfire and worked from dawn until dusk and then slept. Day after day after day.The cowboys sometimes shot a beast. The gins ( Aboriginal women ) would butcher it and corn the chunks of beef on low hammocks and eucalyptus leaves. Brilliant.
After seven weeks we had completed the task. The pens were ready to go. Concreted into place and I must say they looked quite handsome. The cocky thought so too. So Hans and I headed back to Alice Springs. I had lost a lot of weight and I was bronze and fit. Stephanie hardly recognized me. It turned out that Hans had no money to pay me. He promised he would send money to my English bank, but he never did. Seven weeks in the outback doing backbreaking work for nothing. You could make a case for that being a bad deal, but for me it was the experience of a lifetime and the money wasn’t such a big deal.
The story doesn’t quite end there though. I heard later that the first time they herded those feral animals into the permanent pens, they crushed them and smashed them like matchsticks. Another experiment which would have cost Bob Wing a lot of money. So, should I complain?
David Work philosophy
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Aussie friend Lesley. Lesley married Frank Cole. We went to her 70th in 2016 in Vernon. Heidi and Heath deliver her cake. David with and Hannah.
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Tom. Sydney. 1994