Busy is the new Happy
Host: Myroodah Station
Written by Pam Daniell – Manager, Myroodah Station.
Backyard Sunrise.
As dawn breaks on Saturday morning, I reflect on what has been another hectic week here on Myroodah Station in the west Kimberley.
It’s June and it’s our busiest month of the year. The cattle mustering program is in full swing with numerous other activities going on at the station just to keep us on our toes.
There is a cattle boat travelling out of Broome in the coming week so the Manager has been busy coordinating the logistics of supplying cattle for it, including helicopters to muster them, hay to feed them whilst waiting in our yards, and trucks to transport them safely to town. By the end of the week our team have loaded ten triple-road-trains of sale cattle bound for the boat in Broome.
Myroodah sale cattle ready to truck to Broome.
This week we have also been host to several local work experience students. These school kids are all boarding in Broome and completing year 10, and they are also all from our local aboriginal community of Looma. The Indigenous Land Corporation which operates Myroodah offers traineeships to indigenous men and women and what better location to start a career in station work, hospitality, or bookkeeping than on their own country. The students arrived during a particularly busy week of work, so were able to get involved in processing cattle and yard work, trucking, butchering a beast, and assisting with the bore run.
Myroodah Station Manager Chris Daniell with Looma work experience students.
It was a fitting way to finish off a big week with a staff BBQ and an annual visit from our travelling Saddlers from south-east Queensland, Helen and Lyle Kent of Kent Saddlery. And when a “shop” comes to the station selling everything from rodeo gear, work clothes to expertly made quality leather goods, the staff get understandably enthusiastic to go shopping under lights after dinner.
Kent Saddlery sets up shop under lights.
Meanwhile our amazing station cook takes all the extra activities in her stride. Whether she has an extra few chopper pilots or truckies to feed on top of our staff of around 20, or an extra 10 mouths to cater for, she seems to adapt with remarkable ease and always greets everyone with a big smile. We have an ever-updating weekly visitor schedule and she often comments that if the weekly schedule was ever bare, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself.
I recently saw a sign which read – Busy is the new Happy – this definitely reflects our lives here at the moment!
We look forward to sharing stories regarding Myroodah and our crew over the following week.