When I first started planning our trip to Australia I saw something about staying on a working farm, it was something I thought it’d be a ton of fun, like a dude ranch in the Southwest. Luckily, staying at Myella Farm fit into our schedule, so I booked three days for us there. Our overnight bus into Rockhampton arrived late, as we have come to expect from Greyhound Australia, so Shane, the guy from Myella who came to pick us up, and all the other people arriving for the day had to wait almost 2 hours for us. No one complained though, and once we got there, we headed off on the one and a half hour drive to Myella. Once we got to the farm we realized that being late just meant we got to get on the horses right away. We quickly ate breakfast, grabbed some farm clothes and boots, and went up to the stables, where the horses were already saddled for us. Shane gave us a quick lesson for the beginners, and then we got right up on our horses for our ride for the day. On the first day, I got to ride McCafferty, who was a giant slow poke. I had to give him at least 5 kicks before he even started walking. And his walking was more like plod. But it was still fun to be horseback riding, it was even more fun for me because I’m used to trail riding, and at Myella we got to ride wherever we wanted as long as we were going in the right general direction.
Myella is located on 2600 acres, which compared to the surrounding farms, is quite small. They raise only 400 beef cattle, and then they have other cattle that they charge for farmers to raise on their property, but otherwise the land is wide open. On our first day, we rode out to one of the paddocks to count cattle, because they were some of the cattle being raised on the property, and the owner was arriving in the next couple days to pick them up. Apparently one of their neighbors on the farm has been stealing cattle but no one can catch him doing it, so Trevor (our guide once we started riding) was trying to keep a close count on the numbers. We rode for about two hours and then headed back for lunch. In the afternoon, they did a motorbike lesson, but I was too tired from our overnight bus so I took a nap in the hammock while the rest of the group rode the bikes. (It turned out the people who could ride the motorbikes also had to use them to round up the horses in the mornings.) Later on in the afternoon, we got to milk cows! Somehow I had to be the first one of the group to try it, and I have to say, I’m not very good at it. It feels quite weird to be doing. Trevor gave everyone a chance to try drinking the milk straight from the udder, which Jaz did, and said it tasted good. After that, we had a chance to freshen up, and then dinnertime, which I must say was quite tasty. I’m always impressed by people who can cook for large quantities of people and still make interesting and appetizing dishes. Myella also has a couple of resident birds, two rescued pink cockatoos, Pink Floyd and Juliet, and a poor naked yellow cockatoo, Harry Belafonte. The rescued birds were both hit by cars, and Juliet just arrived at the farm after having surgery to remove her wing, which she continually made unhappy noises about. It was a little like having a 2 year old child around. Harry had some kind of disease where his feathers fall out and his beak grows too long, so his lifespan is only 8 to 10 years instead of the usual 80 years. All of them could talk, so they were quite amusing to have around.
Around 1 in the morning, I was woken up by Jaz, who insisted I needed to get up for some special surprise. I didn’t really want to get up, but I changed into my farm clothes to go outside. Once outside, Jaz told me that there was a meteor shower happening that night (and the night before as well but we were on the bus), and that its peak activity would be between 1 and 2 in the morning. We wandered away from the main house a bit to try and get away from the lights to see the night sky, but the moon was exceptionally bright, so there weren’t many stars on display. We lay down on the grass down the road a bit and set our gaze upon the sky for meteors. We saw at least 20 meteors before deciding it was time to go back inside. That’s when Jaz got down on one knee and proposed!
After calling a few people in the morning to share the news, I ended up being the last one to eat breakfast; Jaz and the other boys went off to corral the horses on their motorbikes. Lyn, the manager at Myella, was the only one still in the dining area cleaning up the dishes and her first comment to me was “Is that sparkle I see? Were you wearing that yesterday??” Once we swapped engagement stories (she had gotten engaged over the summer), Lyn informed me that she loved news and she was going to tell everyone. She wasn’t kidding, everyone at the farm knew by lunch time! Obviously talking got me a little behind schedule, so once I got up to the horse area, all the horses were already in separate stalls, so we mixed a wheelbarrow full of feed and distributed it amongst them. Since McCafferty was a little slow for my liking the first day, I got Floss to ride for the second. Jaz’s horse from the first day, Bundy, was a little high-spirited and kept wanting to trot, so he got McCafferty from me for the second day. We had to saddle the horses ourselves, which I haven’t done since horse riding camp in elementary school, so I had to have a bit of help on looping the straps so it was tight enough. The second day of riding was much like the first, we didn’t go anywhere new, just off to double check the number of cattle in the paddock. Jaz and I both had sore bums from the first day of riding so it was good to take it slow and just enjoy the scenery. After lunch, we got to learn the art of whip cracking and lassoing. Thanks to my grandma and the whip she has for decoration, I had a head start on the whip cracking, and soon beat everyone with my cracks. Trevor even taught me a couple ways to wave the whip over your head to crack it. Lassoing however, I was not so good at. Actually, none of the people in our group were very good. I could lasso the traffic cone from maybe 20 feet away, but not with any sort of regularity. After our afternoon lesson, we fed the chickens and milked the cows again before we had down time prior to dinner. One of the nice parts about the farm is that you don’t have to participate in any activities unless you want to, and in the rest of the time you could do whatever you wanted, which for me usually ended up being relaxing.
On our last day almost everyone decided they were done with horseback riding except for me and Rin (one of the Dutch guys), so after the horses were corralled, fed and saddled, the couple of us riding went off with Shane. After we headed off, Shane asked if we’d be interested in herding cattle that day, to which we of course said yes. We went a completely different direction than the previous days, over to one of the other cattle paddocks. Shane let us trot the horses on the way to the cows, and Floss decided that she really wanted to run and be in front of all the other horses. From then on for the rest of the day she kept pulling and trying to dash out in front of the group. When we got to the paddock where the first group of cattle were, luckily the majority of them were already congregated in a bunch. It took a little bit to get used to getting a cow to go the direction you wanted, but once we got the stragglers into the herd, it was fairly easy to keep them going one direction. My biggest problem was keeping Floss from running out into the front of the herd, because you are always supposed to stay just behind the cattle. Their vision is at a 45 degree angle from the front of their head, so Shane told us to try and stay just in their line of sight to keep them moving. Once you are in front of the cattle they don’t know which way to go and start to scatter and then you have to round them up again. Once we moved the cattle into the next paddock on the way to the roadway, Shane sent me off to ride the edge of the paddock to check that no cows got out of the bunch. Once Floss was given more rein she proceeded to try and run flat out straight into a tree. Twice. So after she scared me I gave her no slack, and then Shane let me have the job of leading the cattle so Floss could be out front. My job was to go at a slow pace and keep the cattle from starting off at a run down the road to the paddock. After leading the first bunch of 50ish cattle into the paddock, we got to help bring in another bunch before it was time to head back in for lunch. The bus to drive us back to Rockhampton was supposed to leave at 4 pm, so the rest of the afternoon we just relaxed and enjoyed the farm. It was sad leaving the farm after spending time with all the people there, but we had some fabulous experiences during the couple of days we were at Myella.
STOP BY FOR POT PIE 