Notes on some time spent traveling: Alright, now it gets interesting

Sydney, Australia

So now Im in Sydney.  I’ve spent the last three weeks here arranging visas for Russia and China.  Not the simplest of tasks.  The plan from here on out is to travel overland through SE Asia, starting in Singapore all the way to China where I’ll pick up the Trans Siberian Railway via Beijing, through Mongolia and across Russia to Moscow.  The China-Mongolia-Russia leg of the trip will be done in January and February.  Winter.  If I make it that far, I’ll cross Europe in some fashion and then back to the U.S.  I’ve tied all my loose ends securely to the wind and by the time this gets read I’ll be in Singapore.  I have a feeling Im not prepared.  I’ve obtained the most difficult visas before hand so thats good.  I don’t speak any of the languages, I don’t have a good idea of what I want to see and there has been major flooding in a lot of the areas I hope to travel through.  Its not ideal but it should be fun to watch.

They have an event in Australia during local carnivals and fairs where an amateur boxing promoter sets up a tent and invites volunteers to step into the ring and fight each other for three rounds and no money. It really is quite a show. The fighters are almost always in varying states of drunkenness though I don't see how that matters. I caught this show in Katherine, NT. I took a job for two days working with the carnies at the carnival. Carnies are a fascinating group of people indeed.

The brothers Norse: Patrick on the left and Jean Phillip on the right. I met them at the last station I worked on and caught a ride to the east coast with them when we left the station. They painted the van themselves and have been nearly a year traveling the world from Norway, headed to South America next. Cool dudes. Great van.

So, you can go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

My projected route over the next few months excluding eastern Russia.

Notes on some time spent traveling: Burleigh

Burleigh Station, Richmond, Queensland

This is about 1000 head of cattle headed to the yards where some will be separated from their testicles and all will be branded. I was lucky enough while on Australia to get to ride in helicopters a couple of times. A lot of people pay money to ride around the Outback on horses and four wheelers. I got paid to do it.

While traveling with the convoy I met a group of cattlemen from Queensland that were traveling together.  I sat down with them for lunch one afternoon while on the road and they asked me what I was going to do after I left Canberra.  Again I didn’t have a good plan and made a joke about which one of them was going to give me a job on one of their places.  I wasn’t serious and hadn’t planned on working any more and didn’t think anything about it.  On the last day of the protest one of them told me there was a job for me with a guy named Allister and that I’d be wise to take it.  I spoke to Allister and he said I was welcome to ride back with him to Queensland and work on his station. Alright, I grabbed my bags and off I went, to someplace that I don’t know where it was with people that I didn’t really know who they were..  There were for of them in a Ford extended cab that was pulling a 20 foot gooseneck trailer.  Wasn’t much room in the truck for a  skinny, long-haired hitch hiker who talked funny.  So I spent most of the 36 hour drive from Canberra to central Queensland asleep in the gooseneck.  It was still pretty great.  I was headed to Burleigh Station, some 400,000 acres north of Richmond.  I signed on for a month.  They were mustering cattle every week so there was plenty of work.  I befriended a Norwegian carpenter who had arrived at the station two months earlier and who’s contract would be up the same time as mine.  I was a short month but epic none the less.  There were 20,000 head of cattle on this property and a good two hours from boundary to boundary.  We would spend the weeks castrating and branding calves, driving cattle on horseback and fixing windmills.  One morning we spent 4 hours cutting up horse meat to use for dingo bait.  You soak the meat in a bucket of 1080 poison, then Allister flies his plane around the property while someone drops the bait from an open window in the back of the plane.  That was something new.

Burleigh homestead. Again, notice the nothing in the distance.

 

Notes on some time spent traveling: No confidence

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

I spent three months on Lakefield station, from mid May to mid August.  I was only hired for six weeks but just never left.  The work was starting to slow down and I was ready to move on.  I didn’t have much of a plan for after leaving the station but I had been keeping an eye on something.  I had heard of a possible convoy of truckers that would driving from all across Australia and meeting up in the capital of Canberra to protest the national government and try push for an election of a new Prime Minister.  It was called the “Convoy of No Confidence”, referring to the public’s lack of confidence in the Federal Government.  Its not a foreign idea in any society.  The journey for some vehicles would be 8 days driving across Australia and ending with a two day protest at the capital.  The idea was to collect participants and vehicles in each city the convoy would pass through, camping each night in towns along the way.  Upon arrival in Canberra the convoy would descend upon Parliament House and circle the building, horns-a-blaring, lights-a-flashing and middle fingers extended 90 degrees at arms length.

The idea of this appealed to me.  I had no previous interest in Australian politics but the thought of a throng of angry Australians circling Parliament House in protest interested me.  I took a bus to Katherine, about an hour North of Mataranka, and found out where the group was camped and thought I’d try and hitch a ride.  I turned up at the camp not knowing anyone, with a backpack, a camera and an accent.  I was obviously not from around the area.  I found out who was in charge of the thing and introduced myself.  I asked if I could ride along and photograph the whole thing and in exchange they could have copies of the photos, I just wanted a seat.  Luckily they had an extra, in fact, only one.  We covered 2,250 miles across Australia over the next four days, meeting people at every stop, listening to stories, collecting petitions,  and for me, sleeping beneath the stars in the Outback.

It wasn't a particularly disorderly protest, it was in-fact quite orderly, though the point was no less made.

For two full days, from the time we left Katherine, we were only three vehicles.  A professional truck driver, a beekeeper and his wife and two station owners.  It was going to take more than six of us to overthrow the government.  But, there were more.  At the same time we were traveling south, 7 other convoys were traveling towards Canberra from all directions.  The whole way down we heard rumors about how many vehicles were actually going to converge on the capital.  It depended on who you asked though.  Some said 1,000 maybe up to 5,000.  Others said 100 tops.  After the third day it seemed like the later would be the most accurate.

The opposition leader Tony Abbott made an appearance one night to answer questions. He would be the top candidate for PM if it was decided there would be an an election. Guess which one he is.

I never heard what the numbers actually were.  On the day of the main protest, my group drove around Parliament House at about 6:30 am.  I stayed on the lawn of the capital to cover the protests and when the next wave came through, there were trucks circling the Parliament, covered in banners and paint and honking for a solid hour and a half.  It was one of the most impressive things I had ever seen.  I could only imagine what it would be like to see 2,000 protesters driving around the U.S. Capitol Building, honking their horns, flashing their lights, hanging banners out their windows.

When we stopped to camp each night we were always greeted by folks who were supporting the convoy but could not join. They fed us great meals at night and even better breakfast. People went out of there way to do what they could to help. I could tell that it was a very important thing that was happening, if for no one else than the people in rural areas who wanted to see something like this happen for a long time. It was the best possible way to see Australia.

Notes on some time spent traveling: The Never Never

Mataranka, Northern Territory, Australia

I arrive in Mataranka in the dark. I get off the bus at a roadhouse with the intentions of meeting a station owner with whom I am supposed to start work for the following day. I don’t know exactly where I am. The bus driver goes inside for coffee and on his way out he asks “Are you meeting someone here?” I say “I think so.” He gets back in the bus and continues south. There is no one here, my phone doesn’t work and the only sounds I hear are of the aborigines yelling at each other in the bushes. I see an old cattle truck parked up the street so I walk towards it, drop my bags next to the tires and sit under the street light and wait. I think this the truck. I see a large shadow, in a large cowboy hat, move slowly towards me from the trees and into the light. I stand up, “Are you Garry?” I ask. “Yep.” He says. I picked the right truck.

Welcome to the Never Never

Lakefield cattle yards, 135,000 acres in northern Australia

My time in Australia would revolve primarily around a somewhat remote cattle station in the far north of the Northern Territory of Australia. Lakefield Station, located roughly six and a half hours by bus south of Darwin, near the small town of Mataranka, lies in an area of the Northern Territory referred to locally as “The Never Never”. I asked around and the best story I could get was that the first European explorers were told by the local aborigines that the land could “Never ever support a proper settlement.”

From left: Garry de-horning calves, an old cow we butchered on my second day and ate at least once everyday for about 8 weeks after, and branding.

 It was supposed to be a quick look around Australia, a month maybe. After a week in Sydney and further inspection of my funds, I decided that it might be best to work for a couple of weeks and earn some extra cash, then head to Asia. I Traveled to Darwin and replied to a job posted on a hostel notice board, “Station hand required, must be keen to work, call Garry.” I called Garry. He offered me the job that night on the phone, best I could tell, because I had, at minimum, previously seen cows and had driven a tractor. So when he asked me to meet him in Mataranka the next day I said “Yep!” Great, what’s a Mataranka? A quick glance at a map revealed no Mataranka. Get a better map. I locate Mataranka, south of Darwin. Darwin, Australia, for reference, is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney.

Playing guitar one night after work with Arthur, the 76 year old road grader driver and Katja from Germany.

I have greatly under estimated the size of Australia. The Northern Territory is two and a half times as big as Texas and has fewer than 200,000 residents. It is vast place and still relatively wild. Its cattle country and the cattlemen here produce beef not for Australia but for live export, primarily, to Indonesia. Given the vastness of the area and the sparse population, the people here must be relatively self-sufficient. Lakefield is off the grid. They pump their own water, produce their own electricity as well as the majority of their own food. After all, when you live amongst 8000 head of cattle you don’t go grocery shopping toting a Visa card and a wobbly-wheeled push cart, you go to the paddock, armed with a satchel full of knives and a truck bed full of leaves. I’ve gained a lot of respect for food over the past few years and when circumstance causes you to have to physically cut it from the bones of a beast and eat it a few hours later, you tend to pay more attention to not only how much you eat, but how much you waste.

Northern end of Lakefield Station. Notice the lack of anything in the distance, from here its over an hour to the nearest neighbors.

From left: Kirra and Bubbala the orphaned wallaby that lived in the house. Garry, Dillion and Carl during morning tea. Everyday, no matter where we were, at about 10:30 every morning we would sit and have tea.