Cattle Station Life Vol # 2

Life is Good! July has been mostly just Kel & I, on our own and surrounded by 1 million acres of silence!

Exploring a Spring on the Station

We absolutely love being on our own and having that distance from people, though it does make you think when you're just doing your daily routine how remote you really are!

Because there is just the two of us here caretaking for a bit, we have to be vigilant about where we are going, who knows where we are, when we'll be back and taking extra precautions. We carry 2way radios, a Zoleo communicator, extra water, the battery pack and a little bug-out-bag if we go anywhere on the station. I also use a couple of different map apps on my phone to track me, just in case we get a lil' lost. It is just a realisation that we are so so far from help if shit goes bad. It has made me realise also that I need to stock up my first aid kit for future journeys and have ordered a snake bite kit and a torniquet to be a little more prepared.

The owners and the Ringers have all been away mustering and processing cattle on the neighboring station which they also own. We have done a few jobs here and there, fixing fences, running out Lick (extra nutrients for the cattle) to certain paddocks, checking water troughs, feeding Woodies (young cattle that have stunted growth, so we put them in a smaller paddock and feed them up to give them a better start) and also a bit of gardening.

The vege patch is slowly getting bigger but the insects have been a little annoying. We have lots and lots of green cherry tomatoes but nothing ready yet! hopefully soon!!

Zucchini's have Flowered!!

Zucchini's have also started to take off and flowering so I'm hopeful that the bugs stay away so we can harvest a few 🤞🏻

We did a couple of trips out to some water springs to get into some fishing and explore around the station and also went to another spring on a Station about 200km away. Both were unreal spots! Tyre Springs is on our Station, and we mentioned it last month's Blog, but we went back there a bit more prepared and trekked further downstream to find some different water holes. It's an amazing place in our own backyard, only 13km from Homestead! The other spot is called Bessie Springs, which is also on private property. It had been damaged a fair bit from the cyclone many months ago but is still a lovely spot and holds some good freshwater fishing.

A nice Sooty Grunter from Bessie Springs

I have got into a few pigs but have had a bad run over the last month missing a few. I was on a pretty good streak and then kooked it for like 4 pigs in a row over numerous days... happens to the best of us! We had more pigs come in close to the back of our caravan during the day and also during the night. I managed to pick off a decent sized boar only about 20m from our van at 1am in my Pj's! At least this time he wasn't in my vege patch!

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Other news which I wasn't going to share as it might not be very interesting to some is that we sold and settled one of our houses on 22nd July! We had been talking about finding the right time to eventually sell the bigger of the two houses that we have as rentals, as we had no desire to live in it again, if we could sell the house for an amount that would pay off all our mortgages and be completely debt free. The projection for the last couple of years has been in late 2025 we would put the house on the market to see if that dream could become reality, but it all happened 18 months early! We crunched some numbers with our accountant prior to putting it on the market, after a phone call to our real estate agent indicated that the market was looking like we could get a value that would get us over the line. Skip forward a few weeks, we got an offer and settled!

Good Times!!

As a 2nd year apprentice nearly 25yrs ago, I bought a block of land and 6 years later we built a house on it. Since that time, we lived in it off and on, but it has mostly been a rental. The funny thing is that I made one of the best financial decisions of my life when I was young and dumb and had no idea what I was doing. But we have held onto it through tough times knowing that one day, it would give us back what we need when we are older and (a little) wiser. My point is also to say that nothing comes to you quick and easy, it's about having discipline and making sacrifices over a long period of time.

From here on, it will make our journey just that little bit easier. We'll now be making a small wage from the rental return from our little house we OWN and also not having a few more monthly expenses like loan repayments that we all love... We'll have that bit more financial freedom which also opens up a lot more options for the future. In the past, we have worked around half the year, saved our wages but then have to live off all that savings to keep our heads above water until we get to the next job. But with a small rental income and no interest to pay, we'll have the ability to put a little aside for future upgrades here and there in the years to come and also gives us that choice to not have to seek out certain work and more options. Anyway, it's bloody exciting for us and a milestone I'm sure every person who has a mortgage or debt hopes to get to.