A ‘normal’ day at Warrawagine
Host: Warrawagine Station
Written by – Caitlin, Station Hand, Warrawagine Station.
I don’t think there is any such thing as a normal day on a station. One day, your rip roaring through the wattle after a scrubber and the next day your knee deep in leaves cleaning the pool . . . gotta have some luxuries.
Today I spent two and a half hours doing cattle work, that’s the least amount of time I’ve spent with a cow for about about seven months. I was up at 5am trying to send in my host description and first blog for Central Station, thanks to Telstra for the assistance on that one! By the time I sent through the last of the pictures it was time to go to work, didn’t even get breakfast, not the best start to the day, but that’s just one of the joys of satellite internet, I guess I shouldn’t complain, we are lucky enough to have internet.
Anyway, a few days ago we got a new truck load of hay, not your normal square bales though, we received 25kg small bales (or idiot squares as I like to call them) of export hay, in a large 24 bale cubes, shrink wrapped and strapped, why you may ask we bother? Because we could get 53tonne of hay instead of 25tonne, don’t get me wrong its lovely hay, just not when Ben bursts open 2 cubes when unloading it, and its my job first thing to pick them up and feed it to the sale steers in the yards. Thanks Ben.
“Idiot Squares” Hay bales.
Luckily I had Lacky’s assistance!
He did have a legitimate excuses as to why he couldn’t do it, he was preparing for the zombie apocalypse, just joking, he was two pack painting the rotors on Scott’s chopper before it goes to Newman tomorrow for a service, I can’t and don’t want to have that skill, I would rather pick up hay bales.
Ben preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
By the time I finished feeding the steers I had timed it perfectly, it was time for a cuppa, getting pretty good at that skill!
After a delicious smoko and two cups of tea I headed down to the garden shed to fire up the big green girl. She had no fuel, so after I fuelled it up I started mowing the lawns. This is up there with one of my favourite jobs as our lawn area is around an acre and it takes about four hours to mow it. The reason why I enjoy it is because it’s a rare chance to have some alone time, time to think, and time to bust out to some Shania Twain, plus the inner child comes out in me and I like to pretend I’m seeding a paddock, making sure I get all the headlands, I know probably shouldn’t have admitted that but I’m ok with it.
Big green girl mowing along.
At the moment the South African Mahogany’s are dropping their leaves everywhere, so after I finished strategically mowing them into the center of the lawn (inner child moment) I raked them all up, did a whole box trailer full, I am so glad I did this because two hours later a storm came through and blew leaves every where, and now it looks like I didn’t even make the effort! Oh well . . .
Messy again.
After unsuccessfully raking leaves I headed for home to write this blog addition, with my creative juices flowing or I may have just been hungry, either way I wanted to add a picture of the hay bales so there was a better visual of them. Just as I was leaving the house there was a flash and a immediate clap of thunder to follow, the dogs crapped them selves, anyway I started to make my way down to the hay shed and I spotted a fire in what I thought was one of the holding paddocks. I went back to the quarters and grabbed Ben, we headed out for a look, luckily the fire wasn’t in the holding paddock it was in the unfenced area, and was on top of a hill making it look closer than it was.
By this stage it was five to seven and seven is dinner time the house rules are be on time and have showers before so after bending one rule to please another we rocked up clean but slightly late.