Nothing to report this time. My time in Aramac ends in the slow lane. Merv took my on another motorbike ride, which nicely bookended my time here, I think.
It's good we're (Axelle & I) leaving, I think, because several men, young and old, have taken to knocking on our door/trying to get in at night. They're harmless, but we nevertheless barricade ourselves in and draw the curtains tight. Sigh. It's such a burden to be so coveted. I'm joking, it's not a burden. (I'm joking about that too).
We had another breakfast on Sunday-- Judy made us omelettes with lots of vegetables that I never usually like (ie mushrooms and cooked tomatoes), but it was delicious. My body sang Hallelujah at the nutrients it was receving. I had also mentioned that I had a sweet tooth, so Judy surprised me with a banana coconut cake (I am allergic to coconut) (and also I hate it). Obviously I ate tons of it anyway...rough.
I could go on, but I don't want to bore you with these trivialties that only I find interesting. Have a Happy Thanksgiving and eat extra portions for me. I'll celebrate with a king-sized Snickers bar, maybe cutting it Seinfeld style to make it seem more special.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
10 Days Left
My time in Aramac is winding down, which is sad because I'll never see these people again, but in all honesty my chief emotion is excitement at seeing Julia and Shana again and finally heading to the Great Barrier Reef. I received letters from both Shana and Julia in the same day (which left me smiling for hours) and they seem to be feeling the exact same thing. The plan is for me to Greyhound it for three hours to Tambo on the 29th, where I'll spend the night at Julia's Club Hotel, then we'll continue on the Brisbane and meet Shana on the 1st-- a very glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle.
Obviously this past week has been pretty tame, since I spent my opening paragraph carefully itemizing my future plans. The highlight was that Axelle made Judy and me breakfast on Sunday, and we spent a leisurely hour sipping coffee, eating banana pancakes, and gossipping. It was the closest I've been to sitting in a cafe in weeks, and I loved it. The other major occurence was the arrival of my Christmas gifts from Mom & Dad-- hooray! hooray! How wonderful! Regretably, customs seized the enclosed popcorn-- I suspect they just wanted it for themselves. I opened the box in the pub, and since the three people in there were curious, I gave each of them a couple of the treasured Goldfish crackers Mom stuck in there. I walked away to throw away the box, and when I came back 30 seconds later, Ampy has run over to the Goldfish and is about to stick his grimy, unwashed hand in to grab more! I hope you are all as shocked as I, placing his actions in the same unforgiveable category as murder. Needless to say, I am done with Ampy. I used to be a little nice to him (since he's in the pub 9 hours a day), but lately he's been saying weirder and creepier stuff, and this stunt with the Goldfish is the last straw.
Looking back on this post, I now realize that it was pretty unnecessary. But I also realize that your thirst for news about my life is unceasing, and is it not my duty to quench it? (hahaha, you like that line?) Even though this entry is mind-numbingly boring, I've got a lot of time on my hands and will make some additions to the cast of characters:
Dude (pronounced "Duuuuuuude!": young guy who has a really bad stutter and gets wasted off of 2 shots. Asked me on a date...I think. I declined, so he put Shaggy's "Angel" on the Jukebox and serenaded me- "Baby you're my angel, you're my darling angel, closer than my peeps you are to me" (insert stutters). For the finale, he jumped on the bar and tried to kiss my cheek. I countered this by kicking him out, and I haven't seen him since.
Mary Anne: Bitch who owns the only cafe in town. One of those people that you'll say hello to and she'll look away and not reply. She has started being really nice to me, which I can't figure out, but still hates Axelle. Her mother is the exact same way.
Luke: Nice guy around 29, one of my favorite people here, probably because he's the only sarcastic person in town.
Ella & Teagan: Two teachers from Brisbane who have a 3-year contract in Aramac. I made friends with them and found out that they hate it here, can't wait to leave. I guess after you go shearing and all that, the novelty can wear off pretty quickly.
Georgie: My best friend, Greg's dog. I take her for walks a lot, and she loves me.
Yank, America, Good Girl, You Look Really Good: A sampling of my nicknames.
Sweet Tits: Axelle's nickname....she has large breasts.
Obviously this past week has been pretty tame, since I spent my opening paragraph carefully itemizing my future plans. The highlight was that Axelle made Judy and me breakfast on Sunday, and we spent a leisurely hour sipping coffee, eating banana pancakes, and gossipping. It was the closest I've been to sitting in a cafe in weeks, and I loved it. The other major occurence was the arrival of my Christmas gifts from Mom & Dad-- hooray! hooray! How wonderful! Regretably, customs seized the enclosed popcorn-- I suspect they just wanted it for themselves. I opened the box in the pub, and since the three people in there were curious, I gave each of them a couple of the treasured Goldfish crackers Mom stuck in there. I walked away to throw away the box, and when I came back 30 seconds later, Ampy has run over to the Goldfish and is about to stick his grimy, unwashed hand in to grab more! I hope you are all as shocked as I, placing his actions in the same unforgiveable category as murder. Needless to say, I am done with Ampy. I used to be a little nice to him (since he's in the pub 9 hours a day), but lately he's been saying weirder and creepier stuff, and this stunt with the Goldfish is the last straw.
Looking back on this post, I now realize that it was pretty unnecessary. But I also realize that your thirst for news about my life is unceasing, and is it not my duty to quench it? (hahaha, you like that line?) Even though this entry is mind-numbingly boring, I've got a lot of time on my hands and will make some additions to the cast of characters:
Dude (pronounced "Duuuuuuude!": young guy who has a really bad stutter and gets wasted off of 2 shots. Asked me on a date...I think. I declined, so he put Shaggy's "Angel" on the Jukebox and serenaded me- "Baby you're my angel, you're my darling angel, closer than my peeps you are to me" (insert stutters). For the finale, he jumped on the bar and tried to kiss my cheek. I countered this by kicking him out, and I haven't seen him since.
Mary Anne: Bitch who owns the only cafe in town. One of those people that you'll say hello to and she'll look away and not reply. She has started being really nice to me, which I can't figure out, but still hates Axelle. Her mother is the exact same way.
Luke: Nice guy around 29, one of my favorite people here, probably because he's the only sarcastic person in town.
Ella & Teagan: Two teachers from Brisbane who have a 3-year contract in Aramac. I made friends with them and found out that they hate it here, can't wait to leave. I guess after you go shearing and all that, the novelty can wear off pretty quickly.
Georgie: My best friend, Greg's dog. I take her for walks a lot, and she loves me.
Yank, America, Good Girl, You Look Really Good: A sampling of my nicknames.
Sweet Tits: Axelle's nickname....she has large breasts.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Branding and Mulesing and Shearing, oh my!
What a week! After incessantly pestering all the cowboys to take me along, three of them finally relented, giving me three full days of adventures.
Day 1: Branding. I woke up at 4:30am, and by 5:15, I was waving a big plastic stick and yelling "Yi-hep! Woop woop!" in my deepest, most intimidating voice, herding the 400 cattle from pen to pen. It was kind of scary to be surrounded by enormous, two hundred pound animals, but apparently they can sense fear and will consequently start bullying you. Hence the deep loud voice/bravado.
The calves are shoved, one by one, into a contraption that flips them sideways and pins them so all the their legs are in the air, allowing the cowboys to do what they need to do. It's hard to explain, but I'll upload a video soon. Anyway, once they're rendered helpless, a cowboy steps up with basically a large hole-punch and rips a few pieces out of their ears and shoves a tag in. Another takes a small, sharp blade and quickly cut off the balls, tossing them aside for the dogs, or, in one instance, to land neatly on my sneaker. Then comes the branding, and finally, somebody takes a big blade and slices off the horns (so they don't bruise the other calves, rendering their meat worthless.) Throughout all of this, the calf is snorting and and mooing in pain, and all of the other calves in line are stamping and flipping out, seeing what's in store for them. Finally, with blood dripping from their head and nether-regions, it stumbles around, bamboozled, not knowing anything except that he's less of a man than he was 45 seconds ago. I had no idea all of this was involved, and I almost threw up the first time I saw it. Nevertheless, I branded about 20-30-- it's pretty easy, actually, and I told myself that it probably didn't hurt too much. Then, so I didn't look like a wimp, I tried cutting off the balls...but I could only do one, and then a cowboy named Luke grabbed my hand and finished the job. I also tagged an ear. We had steak sandwiches for lunch, and I very nearly became a vegetarian. Then I remembered that it was 3pm and we'd been working for about 10 hours, so I dug in with renewed carnivoric gusto. Mom has already told me that I sicken and disgust her. "Don't worry," I said. "I'll never do anything like that again." But oops, lo and behold...
Day 2: Mulesing. The process is much simpler and quicker than branding, though no less gruesome. The sheep are shoved into little metal traps on their backs, with their legs bent back to their heads, exposing their tail/ass region. A man comes and snips off their tail, then cuts off the skin around the anus. Blood spurts everywhere. They do this to prevent against the blowfly, which causes maggots to devour the sheep from the inside out-- a very slow, painful death. Yes, I did this too. Yes, it was horrific and I was covered in blood. I only did it once and spent the rest of the day running around, catching runaway sheep, which, although I was essentially delivering them to torture, felt more humane to me.
Day 3: Shearing. Much less horrific, much less to explain. Just like giving it a haircut, except harder to do because I couldn't tell where the skin was. I nicked one and it bled everywhere. Axelle came with me to this one, and and I thought she was going to cry (vegetarian, remember?). I, however, am now an emotionless monster and didn't blink an eye.
Those are the highlights of the past week. The rest is the same old stuff. November 4 was the Melbourne Cup, "the race that stops a nation." Literally. Everything in town was closed except for, of course, the pub. People came out of the woodwork to place hundreds of dollars in bets and spend hundreds of dollars more on alcohol. I placed a $15 dollar bet, just so I could play along, and won $15, even though I don't know anything about horseracing. It's hard to watch some of these people. They probably spend $1000 a week in the pub, betting, drinking, and complaining about their financial woes. Oh well, they seem happy, I guess, so whatever floats your boat.
Finally, huzzah for Obama! I was thrilled to discover that Australia was as interested in the election as I was. However, many of the hillbillies in the pub are alarmingly racist, saying things like, "How could you vote for that n****r? I bet he's assassinated within a month." I would try to explain to them how ignorant they sound, but I was terribly outnumbered. Oh well. Go America!
Day 1: Branding. I woke up at 4:30am, and by 5:15, I was waving a big plastic stick and yelling "Yi-hep! Woop woop!" in my deepest, most intimidating voice, herding the 400 cattle from pen to pen. It was kind of scary to be surrounded by enormous, two hundred pound animals, but apparently they can sense fear and will consequently start bullying you. Hence the deep loud voice/bravado.
The calves are shoved, one by one, into a contraption that flips them sideways and pins them so all the their legs are in the air, allowing the cowboys to do what they need to do. It's hard to explain, but I'll upload a video soon. Anyway, once they're rendered helpless, a cowboy steps up with basically a large hole-punch and rips a few pieces out of their ears and shoves a tag in. Another takes a small, sharp blade and quickly cut off the balls, tossing them aside for the dogs, or, in one instance, to land neatly on my sneaker. Then comes the branding, and finally, somebody takes a big blade and slices off the horns (so they don't bruise the other calves, rendering their meat worthless.) Throughout all of this, the calf is snorting and and mooing in pain, and all of the other calves in line are stamping and flipping out, seeing what's in store for them. Finally, with blood dripping from their head and nether-regions, it stumbles around, bamboozled, not knowing anything except that he's less of a man than he was 45 seconds ago. I had no idea all of this was involved, and I almost threw up the first time I saw it. Nevertheless, I branded about 20-30-- it's pretty easy, actually, and I told myself that it probably didn't hurt too much. Then, so I didn't look like a wimp, I tried cutting off the balls...but I could only do one, and then a cowboy named Luke grabbed my hand and finished the job. I also tagged an ear. We had steak sandwiches for lunch, and I very nearly became a vegetarian. Then I remembered that it was 3pm and we'd been working for about 10 hours, so I dug in with renewed carnivoric gusto. Mom has already told me that I sicken and disgust her. "Don't worry," I said. "I'll never do anything like that again." But oops, lo and behold...
Day 2: Mulesing. The process is much simpler and quicker than branding, though no less gruesome. The sheep are shoved into little metal traps on their backs, with their legs bent back to their heads, exposing their tail/ass region. A man comes and snips off their tail, then cuts off the skin around the anus. Blood spurts everywhere. They do this to prevent against the blowfly, which causes maggots to devour the sheep from the inside out-- a very slow, painful death. Yes, I did this too. Yes, it was horrific and I was covered in blood. I only did it once and spent the rest of the day running around, catching runaway sheep, which, although I was essentially delivering them to torture, felt more humane to me.
Day 3: Shearing. Much less horrific, much less to explain. Just like giving it a haircut, except harder to do because I couldn't tell where the skin was. I nicked one and it bled everywhere. Axelle came with me to this one, and and I thought she was going to cry (vegetarian, remember?). I, however, am now an emotionless monster and didn't blink an eye.
Those are the highlights of the past week. The rest is the same old stuff. November 4 was the Melbourne Cup, "the race that stops a nation." Literally. Everything in town was closed except for, of course, the pub. People came out of the woodwork to place hundreds of dollars in bets and spend hundreds of dollars more on alcohol. I placed a $15 dollar bet, just so I could play along, and won $15, even though I don't know anything about horseracing. It's hard to watch some of these people. They probably spend $1000 a week in the pub, betting, drinking, and complaining about their financial woes. Oh well, they seem happy, I guess, so whatever floats your boat.
Finally, huzzah for Obama! I was thrilled to discover that Australia was as interested in the election as I was. However, many of the hillbillies in the pub are alarmingly racist, saying things like, "How could you vote for that n****r? I bet he's assassinated within a month." I would try to explain to them how ignorant they sound, but I was terribly outnumbered. Oh well. Go America!
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