Kroombit Park

21-22 February 2010

What an amazing 24 hours! Arrived at Lochenbar Station in Kroombit Park feeling filthy and exhausted after just a few hours of sleep and an eleven hour bus journey, but there was no time to be tired. The ranch was amazing, just the sort of place I have wanted to stay at ever since I read Nancy Turner's These is My Words. Everything felt authentic, from the log cabin dormitories to the huge wooden table constructed from tree trunks where we ate a delicious meal of chicken broth followed by roast deer, potatoes, vegetables and rich gravy. Even the tables around the makeshift bar were carved from tree stumps!

Had a great night riding the bucking bronco and learning how to crack a whip (I managed it on my first attempt - confirmation that I have missed my vocation as a cowgirl)! After that, we started on the giggle juice (cheap fizzy wine) and played drinking games in the dark surrounded by nothing but fields and animals for miles and miles.

The next morning, we were up bright and early for the goat rodeo where we learnt to throw a lasso (a very useful life skill) before heading off to do our very first goat muster on horseback. My horse Shanty was either stubborn or lazy (or both!) - can't say I blame her having to carry me around in that heat. Still loved every second of it though; I won't be held back by a less-than-enthusiastic horse! Besides, she got into the swing of it in the end and even managed a little trot! We wandered out along a rough dirt track to where the goats were grazing. We then had to round them up on horseback and drive them to new pasture, all the time shouting at the top of our lungs and making sure none of them amanged to sneak away! It was so much fun.

I just love the countryside here - such uninterrupted and untamed grasslands stretching as far as the eye can see, rolling hills of green punctured with tress, shrubbery and rocky outcrops. A stark contract to the perfectly proportioned and manicured fields of rural England.

Once our work was done and the goats were where they needed to be, it was back on the bus for another long journey to Rainbow Beach...