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It’s probably fair to say I was slightly dubious about the “Outback” stay when I booked the trip way back when I was in Sydney. I didn’t really have much choice in the matter.; The cattle station in Kroombit was a mandatory stop-off for the bus. It breaks up the trip between Harvey Bay and Airlie beach (the gateway to the Whitsundays) but I was half-tempted to hop on an Overnight Greyhound bus instead\s, just to avoid it. Well, I’d dead glad that I didn’t.

An early start from Harvey Bay meant that we arrived at the Cattle station at about 2pm. A freshly slaughtered cow was already sizzling away on the BBQ when we arrived. And a big fat slice of it in a bun set me up nicely for the afternoon.

There were a number of activities on offer. I decided to go horse riding. I’d never been on a horse before. The closest I’d ever been was riding a camel in the Sahara dessert in Morocco. Whilst that was one of the most memorable experiences of my life, it was more like riding in a carriage on the “camel train”; I didn’t really have any control over the direction of the camel. So I was really looking forward to riding a horse.

After a quick lesson on “how to drive a horse”, I was dead excited to be doing the goat muster. I got put on a horse called Lambert. I loved Lambert. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get him to turn left. He just shrugged me off whenever I tried. I soon learnt though that a left turn could be achieved by spinning him 270 degrees right, so to all intents and purposes, he was fully functional.

From The Outback

With the late afternoon sun low in the sky, the long shadows and deep orange and blue colours made for a pretty spectacular hour on horseback. It felt like Brokeback mountain except I had to wear a silly riding helmet rather than a cool Stetson. Oh and without the gayness.

From The Outback

From The Outback

From The Outback

Once we’d mustered all of the goats, we stepped off our horses in preparartion for the goat rodeo. In teams of 3, we had to catch a goat let loose in a ring (the role of the catcher), flip the goat on it’s side (the role of the flipper) and dummy brand the goat (the role of the brander) in the fastest possible time. The team before us “Goat Busters” took nearly 3 minutes trying to catch the goat.

I conceived the name for our team “goat in 60 seconds” and I was determined to live up to our name.

I was asked “what kind of goat would you like?”.
“A slow one”, I replied.
“Yeah I bet you do! large or small”
“An old one”, I said.
“OK, I’ve got the perfect goat for you”.

The goat that the put in the ring, oblisously as a joke was the tiniest cutest little thing you’ve ever seen, but it hadn’t developed horns yet, so there was no way you would catch the little bastard. They changed our goat to a generic looking “Ford Focus” kind of goat. It didn’t look that quick, but you never really knew what was under the hood.

Anyway, our catcher caught the goat by the horns really quickly, I then flipped it (or more accurately body-slammed it) on it’s side in style and as the brander made his mark, the clock stopped at 21 seconds. Needless to say we won the Goat rodeo.

After dinner (which was naturally more beef), there was a mechanical bull contest. I scored a pretty respectable 19 bucks. The winning girl scored 22 bucks, so my score was pretty respectable. Did I say that already? In any case, I faired much better than the last time I did it a few years back. It must have been my new ski seasoned thighs that provided me with the extra leg-gripping strength.

A couple of beers later, we played a few games around the fire that I won’t describe in detail here, but if you’ve watched my “Moments in Australia” video, you’ll get an idea of the tone of them!

I really enjoyed the time at the cattle station and after Byron Bay and Fraser Island, it was nice to just spend a day without being covered in sand.