Our First Cattle Station Job

Dunbar Cattle station

The Jackaroo is fixed and running as well as it was and we where getting itchy for another location now we are mobile again.  Stookie has spent some time working for HONDA in Cairns but we where more looking for cattle station jobs to get the outback experience.

Stookie put an add on www.gumtree.com.au with a brief description of our abilities and enthusiasm for cattle station work. We also mentioned we are travelling as a family and where available to travel anywhere. We waited with anticipation on somebody contacting us. The website was full of backpackers looking to extend their work visa doing 3 month rural work to achieve it. We felt a bit disheartened that being a family would not work in our favour. Australian news was full of outback businesses complaining they could not find workers, yet here we are prepared to travel and even bring our own accommodation and still nothing after numerous applications. I thought that maybe the Rural Outback preferred immigrant workers due to the level of pay and the subsidising they got from the government.......how is an Aussie family meant to get on battling that ?

Within a week we did get a call from one of the largest family owned beef companies in Australia. Unfortunately for Stookie it was a cook they where after so Lil stepped up and within 4 days we had left Cairns and where on our way to Dunbar Station, 310 km North of Chillagoe.

We where invited as a family with all accommodation (3 bedroom house) food, electricity part of the salary package and a weekly wage would also be paid. 

We where ecstatic at the offer and keen to get out there and give it a shot.

We headed to Chillagoe and spent  2 nights in the caravan park in a cabin, I know a bit of spoiling was going on......no unpacking the CT again.

We spent a day exploring around the area looking at "the arches" and some ancient aboriginal wall paintings. We also took a look at the old smelting plant but due to uman existence being wrapped up in cotton wool now you couldn't get within 1/2 km of it.

The arches

Cave Paintings

The road from Chillagoe to Dunbar is all dirt with some decent washouts and rutted areas, not to mention the bulldust holes. Since we had the Mighty DR650 bike Stookie rode ahead and let us know of Road trains and Bulldust holes before we hit them. We often saw a massive puff of dust as stookie ploughed through a bull dust hole and then waited for the call on the radio to let us know which way to go, left or right of the track. Some of the scenery is spectacular as you get to a raised hill and look out over the savannah, its very beautiful.
The beauty is then disturbed by Stookie screaming on the radio......."GET OFF THE ROAD NOW.................ROAD TRAIN "
Travelling at 80kmph with 1500kg of trailer is not the easiest thing to slow down so getting a headsup of the road train was very helpful........the dust storm left behind is out of control, its post apocalyptic and creepy as the sun gets dull   and your breathing in the outback. These trucks are 3 carriages long and would need a LONG TIME to slow down so you need to get off the road and wait as you cant drive through the dust storm that follows as visibility is NIL.
We felt happy we where in the car as Stookie up front on the Motorbike copped it big time.........
After the first one passed we had just started to move then we get another call to get off the road as there was another one coming........3 in totals which gave us the chance to get a pee break for the kids.

Road Train

Tha Jackaroo train........no comparison !!!

 We soon came across our first causway crossing over the Walsh river. There was a little water on the causeway but nothing to be concerned about. the water is a welcome sight in the dry outback.
No stopping for a dip or a break as we have quite a distance to go.

Walsh River Crossing

 We got a call on the radio that Stookie had stopped on the bike as a Father and son out camping on the river had a flat battery. They had been playing the radio for days on end and running some 12v accessories and had no idea how they had flattened the battery. They didn't have jumper leads and had spent the morning walking to the main road in the hope a car would go past.
We unhitched the trailer and sat and had a picnic in the shade as Stookie took the Jack to help them get going again. The track to the river was rough, and there wasnt really a track for most of it.
The car got a good and proper workout and lots of new pinstripes. The Pajero was a diesel and the battery was buggered. It took Stookie 30 min to get enough charge into it to get the thing to crank. The father kept turning it over and draining what was being put in until Stookie ripped him a new one and told him to leave it alone until he fixed it. This father and son combo knew NOTHING about cars, batteries and would have been really in trouble had we not came along. A Scotsman helping 2 useless Aussies stuck in the bush out of sheer stupidity, generally its the other way around....... They got going again and where told to leave the car running and pack up and go home as they had been very lucky.

We hitched up the trailer and made tracks again arriving at Dunbar station in the later part of the afternoon. We where greeted by Peter and Debra Hagan and shown to our home for a few months.
We where happy to be here and with our own little part of paradise in the middle of the savannah country. We are the luckiest family to experience this station till the end of the season and we are sure to make many great memories here.

This is what its all about...........

Our new Home for a while

If you are looking for station work you can check out our facebook page for a comrehensive list of rural employment options.
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