Move em on, head em up...

After Airlie Beach the Oz Experience bus took us to a cattle station an hour or so into the bush, over the Great Dividing Range (the world's 2nd longest mountain range). It was called Kroombit and we had dinner, bed & breakfast there as a stop over on the way to Rainbow Beach.

It was a compulsory stop over so I wasn't expecting too much from it, but in the end it turned out to be loads of fun and I felt like a proper cowboy (no Brokeback Mountain jokes from you guys!).

After dinner we all gathered around the fire and the farm owner, Alan, spoke to us about the farm & the local area. Then he gave us a lesson in cracking a whip. As you probably know the crack is caused by the tip of the whip reaching about 330 metres per second, i.e. breaking the sound barrier. This is as difficult to achieve as it sounds! I did managing to crack one out after about 20 minutes of trying, but it wasn't easy.

After that we had turns on the mechanical bull. This wasn't easy either, and it really hurts your groin area!! I managed about 8 seconds which wasn't too bad compared to the others.

After that we all gathered again around the camp fire to drink and play silly games. Like 'suck-blow' which involves passing a playing card around the circle using only your mouth. And another game where in pairs (boy & girl) you had to burst a balloon between your bodies and the twist was that you had to do it in a sexual position. Lots of bonding and getting to know each other...

In the morning a few of us went for a walk up to a lookout over the cattle station. After that we all gathered around the paddock to learn how to lasso cattle and also I tried clay pigeon shooting.

Again I excelled and showed by credentials as a skilled outdoors man! Shotgun shooting was loads of fun and I got joint top score of 4/5 hits. After being taught the lasso technique I managed to rope a stationary target at the 3rd attempt. After that we were put into the paddock with real animals - just goats and not big old bulls, to avoid us getting mauled - and I managed to rope a goat in 7 seconds!!

We were lucky because our bus driver for this leg of the trip, Trigger, has grown up with horses and spent the last 4 years in North America working as a bull-fighter & rodeo clown and also teaches horse behaviour, bit of a horse whisperer! This meant he was very skilled with a rope and had all the lasso tricks and he was amazing at cracking the whip - he had 2 whips spinning above his head cracking one after the other, he sounded like fireworks night!

It was a lot of fun. I think I'm ready now for the wicky-wicked wild wild west (as Will Smith once called it)!!!

Cattle Station