Jillaroo-ing at Garrawilla

Back from Bingara! I successfully completed the 2-week Jillaroo course without falling off a horse or any other (major) injuries. What a couple of weeks it was! Let’s start from the beginning:

The course takes place at a farm called Garrawilla, which is about a 20-minute drive outside of a tiny town called Bingara. Bingara is quite small, only about 1300 people. It has one street with stores. That’s it. Pretty rural. I took a 6-hour train ride from Sydney to Tamworth, and then a 2-hour bus ride from Tamworth to Bingara. We all stayed at the Sportsman’s Hotel in Bingara for the night, before meeting our host/teacher the following morning to get started. I’ve been trying to think over the past couple of weeks how I was going to tackle this entry, since there is just SO much to cover, so instead of giving you all the daily play by play, I’ll just cover things in categories instead. How does that sound to everyone? Good! Not like you had a choice anyway… J

1)   John & Cathy: They were our hosts for the 2 weeks. They actually live in Bingara, and have the Garrawilla farm for most of their animals and to hold the course. John was with us all the time, and Cathy popped in from time to time, mostly to cook dinner. John was a lot of fun, very patient with those of us who didn’t know squat about anything, and was really quite the character. Not sure how else to describe him, he was wildly entertaining. He’s been working with horses forever, and I was quite amazed at not only how much he knew about everything (obviously a horseman is going to know his stuff), but at how he knew who all the horses were and who their parents were. Impressive stuff.

2)   The Farm: Garrawilla sits on about 3,000 acres in the New South Wales countryside. It’s as far north as I’ve been thus far, not too far away from the southern border of Queensland. You have to take a dirt road to get to the farm, and there’s no Internet or mobile service. The farmhouse itself is pretty nice though, one section has 3 dorm-style bedrooms and a living room and den (complete with a stash of old celebrity gossip magazines!), a separate building connected by a verandah houses the kitchen and 2 bathrooms, and then there is an outdoor bathroom & smaller external cabins. The verandah is huge, and overlooks one of the paddocks. A lot of the backland is hilly, untamed bush. You could get lost on their property and not find your way back out again. There is a saddle shed for the horse gear, and a yard to get them all tacked up, but there are no stables. The horses, when not being ridden, just hang out in on of the many fields. John said that paddock horses are friendlier and less kooky than stable horses.

3)   The Trucks: There were two of them, with enough space for the driver and two extra people to very tightly squeeze in on the passenger side. Everyone else had to ride in the flatbed part, hillbilly style! Riding around in the back of the trucks was actually a lot of fun. When you’ve got one of the coveted standing positions (sitting sucked and was responsible for quite of few of my bumps and bruises) and you’re off-roading through the bush at high speeds, it feels like flying.  I loved every second of it. That was one unexpected plus of the 2 weeks. Riding around in the truck everywhere. It was phenomenal! Best off road adventures I’ve ever been on by far. Here’s a picture I took, during a 4 hour excursion out into the bush one day:

4)   The Animals: Well, what would a farm be without animals? Garrawilla, in addition to being the Jackaroo/Jillaroo school, is also a horse breeding facility, so there are hundreds of horses around. Lots of foals as well! New ones popped out during our 2 weeks too, although I didn’t get to see any actually being born. The newborns are so funny looking. They are literally all leg. Horses are born with nearly fully sized legs, so it’s just the bodies and heads that are super small and oddly proportioned. They are quite gangly looking. Some of the horses on the farm are saddle horses, who are the ones who get ridden the most. Some are the breeders, whose job is basically to bone to make more of them. There are some that just get “broken in” (they learn how to be ridden) and then are sold off. Quite a few of them get sold to the Northern Territory. Then there are others that are “bush horses,” and they hang out in the hills doing their own thing, and sometimes aren’t spotted for months at a time. None of the horses have shoes, and they aren’t pampered an excessively groomed like the ones at Cornell were.

John also has quite a collection of cattle, including a GIANT white bull who doesn’t belong to him. The bull hopped a neighbor’s fence one day, and decided to set up shop with John’s cattle instead. I nicknamed the bull “Balls.” This should be pretty self-explanatory as to why.

Sheep! There were lots of sheep. They are pretty cute, especially the little lambs. But they are painful to pet, since their wool is all full of burs that they pick up from walking around in the fields.

Piggies! John has 3 grown pigs I think, and two sets of piglets. We spent 2 weeks trying to catch the piglets, but no one succeeded. They may have short legs, but those things run FAST. John finally caught one for us on the last day, which was an exciting moment. The pigs ate up all of our scrap food too. Any leftover food or peels or anything went into the “pig bucket,” which then got dumped into the paddock once a day. Pigs really do eat anything. I felt bad when we fed them the leftover bacon though, that just seemed wrong. Watching them happily crunch on eggshells was also a little gross.

The dogs. There were 18 I think. There were two pets, Bella and Ruby. Ruby is about 6 months old, and does not stop barking. Nonstop talking. Cute dog, very friendly, but she’s a bit of a menace with the constant chatter. Bella, on the other hand, was the strong, silent type. She has breast cancer though, so her teats hang down and waddle back and forth when she walks. John called her Titty. She’s still going strong though, and is such a smart dog. She’ll even walk all by herself from the farm to John & Cathy’s house in Bingara, which is about 14 miles. Even after a few trips in and out of town, I still would get lost if I had to walk it! And she never gets into the car with any neighbors who pass her on the road. She just keeps going, unless John or Cathy goes out to pick her up. The rest of the dogs were the working dogs, all kelpies. They lived in cages for the most part, although sometimes they’d spend the night out on the verandah. They scared me a bit at first, but they are actually all amazingly friendly and super desperate for love and affection. I had to distract one of them during sheep herding one day, since he was being a bit detrimental to the process, and even though it’s in his nature to round them up and go after them, he was happily distracted when I picked him up and carried him like a little prince until we got back to the farm. Here’s a picture of Ruby wrestling around with 3 of the kelpies:

A few of the dogs usually came with us on horse rides, typically Ruby and Bella and one or two of the kelpies. They would also follow the truck whenever we rode around. Once or twice there I thought one went under the wheels, but they’re pretty good at dodging the tires. Scared the crap out of me though.

5)   Willy!: Willy was my horse. I rode him every time. Willy was a good beginner horse, because he was old, and therefore slow. He was happy to follow what everyone else was doing, so I didn’t need to direct him much. He usually cantered when all of the other horses started cantering as well, but as soon as he saw the lead horse slow down, Willy was more than happy to take it back down to a trot and then walk. I think he actually did jump over something at one point though. We were going pretty fast through the bush, and there was some sort of branch on the ground. We may have gotten a bit of airtime, but I’m not 100% sure on that. Here is Willy and I:

I liked Willy, he reminded me a bit of Eeyore, in that his head was always down and he always looked a bit sad. He sometimes got a bit cranky with the other horses (he tried to take a chunk out of a few of them…) but he was always nice to people. I bought Willy some apples and carrots as treats when we went into town in between week 1 and 2, which he happily munched on. My only problem with Willy was the very last day. He was in no mood to be ridden, and it took about a half hour and then help of one of the trucks to catch him.  I wanted to leave him alone since he obviously didn’t want to go, but John didn’t want him to “win” the battle. Right before we left the farm at the end of the day, I ran about a half mile down the road to where Willy was grazing to give him one last apple, and he was still in no mood for people and ran away from me. That was sad. I did not get to have a proper goodbye! But he was a character though. Here is Willy enjoying the sprinkler on a particularly hot day:

6)   The Tasks: We did a lot of different things that I’d never even seen done before. We worked on breaking in horses, which is taking a young horse who has never been ridden, and teaching him to, well, be ridden. Some horses are easier than others, depending on their natural temperament. The horse we worked on the first week was a maniac, while the two from the next week were pretty calm and were being ridden well by the end of the week. We also worked on drenching, which is putting a tube up the horse’s nose directly into the stomach, and then feeding them de-worming medication. John did this to the ones who he was selling, as no one wants a wormy horse. I administered some of the medication into the tube with a syringe. I’m practically a doctor!!

We also worked with the foals. John likes to capture them when they are young and stick a bridle-like thing on their face, that way when they are older, they have already had experience being touched and having something on their face like that. Capturing them is tough stuff though, they do NOT enjoy it. Once caught, they get tied up and are released once they stop trying to tear the bridle off their face. Some foals get it quickly, and others are a bit dumb and take more time to grasp concepts.  Another aspect of dealing with the foals was, uh, shooting them when necessary. We killed one the second week. He wasn’t a foal really, he was more like a teenager, but he was born with a cockeyed neck and wouldn’t ever be useful, so he got shot. I closed my eyes when the shot was fired, because I didn’t want to see the poor thing go down, but I opened them just in time to see John slicing the neck to make sure he was dead. Lovely. I won’t go into too much detail about this part. Anyone out there remember what happened to Drew Barrymore in the opening scene of Scream? Yeah, it kinda went something like that. I did take pictures, which won’t be going up on the blog or on facebook because they really are quite gruesome, but if anyone is interested then send me an email and I’ll pass them along.

Other horse work included separating them in the pen for various things (I was not good at that), bringing them oats and grains out in the fields, and castrating the males who weren’t going to be used for breeding. Ouch. Ever wonder though, what happens to a horse’s balls when they get chopped off? The ones at Garrawilla become a snack for someone...

Bella loved them. She always waited so impatiently until John handed them over. Once he put them in his own mouth, partially to tease the dog, and partially just to completely gross us out.

Of course the horses were also used to muster cattle. Ever mustered cattle on horseback? It’s kind of interesting, heading out into the bush on your horse, the dogs trailing behind, off in search of cattle to bring back on home. The cattle aren’t too bad to gather though, they basically follow each other once you get them moving in the right direction. We also did a bit of calf branding, ear marking, and de-horning. That was tough to watch. That’s a lot of pain for a baby animal to go though all in one shot. Especially if it’s a male calf, because then he gets castrated too.

Sheep shearing was another task on the list, although we used the dogs for that most of the time. At one point myself and another girl had to get out of the truck and chase them ourselves though. Sheep are sneaky things, tough to corral. They aren’t like the cattle, they just run every which way. Here is me surrounded by a bunch of sheep that we caught:

One day we needed to catch one specific sheep, since she had maggots and needed to be sheared in order to get rid of them. One of the dogs got a bit too tough, and bit a hole in her face right down to the bone. She had also just had a newborn lamb that morning. The poor thing was gushing blood the whole ride back. She was sheared though, and hopefully she’ll be okay. I heard a rumor that the lamb had gotten trampled on by a horse though. It’s a tough world out there sometimes for livestock.

7)   The Stuff on the Side: It wasn’t all work work work of course. We did some random stuff too, just for fun. I fired a weapon! Look, photographic evidence:

We all took a shot at a rock maybe 80-90 feet away. I think I grazed it, although I didn’t hit it head on. I did keep the shell from the bullet, or whatever you call it, as a souvenir. We also sat on one of the bulls that was caught during a cattle muster:

I rode a real bull! Sort of. He was tied up, and I did hold on to the fence in case he went bananas on me. But a real bull! Not like the silly mechanical ones that they have at bars! I attempted to learn how to crack a whip as well, but on my very first attempt I accidentally hit myself in the face, which stung a fair bit, so I retired early from whip-cracking. My career was over before it even began J And driving. I MUST mention driving:

This part deserves all caps I think I’ll bold it as well: THAT IS A PHOTO OF I, DARA LYNN EPSTEIN, DRIVING A STICK SHIFT CAR WITH THE STEERING WHEEL ON THE RIGHT SIDE. Please everyone, take a moment and re-read that sentence, just so it sinks in. Not only was I driving on the wrong damn side of the road, but that was a MANUAL car. I had to use the clutch and shift gears and the whole sha-bang. Amazing stuff! Vide to be posted on facebook as well, probably when I get back to Sydney.

There were also a few rides to the river to cool off. The ride to the river itself is nice, beautiful countryside to canter through, but stripping off the saddle and riding the horse bareback is pretty neat too:

8)   I’m getting old. Seriously: I had 2 injuries during the course of the 14 days. Now there were of course minor cuts and bumps and bruises, along with a couple of mosquito bites, but I had 2 actual problems. One was my right ankle, which was just an accident. I got off the horse and landed wrong, so I crunched it a bit. I then did the same thing again about an hour later, and really crunched it that time. It only swelled up a teeny tiny bit, but I had to be careful on it for a few days, and sometimes going up or down stairs I’d lose stability in it. It’s all healed up now though (I think). The real major issue thought was my left knee. As soon as I got up on the saddle on day one, the left knee got tender, and riding hurt for the rest of my time at Garrawilla. I was really worried about it after the first ride, because the pain was quite sharp and my knee stayed quite tender for the rest of the night, but was fine the next morning. However as soon as I started riding again the pain came back. It was very confusing. I think it might be some sort of pinched nerve, and something about the angle of my leg while riding or the specific pressure on it sets off the pain. It always started within 1-2 minutes of riding, but other than the first day, I was usually able to walk it off within a half hour or so. Getting off the horse was tough though, I couldn’t get off on my right leg because my ankle couldn’t take the weight, and I couldn’t get off on my left leg because my knee wasn’t ready yet to take the impact. Good times! So while my confidence on a horse improved greatly, I didn’t get to hone my riding skills at all, which was disappointing. Once the pain started, I needed to keep my knee as immobile is possible, so little things like posting while trotting, kicking the horse to make him move, and asking him to turn was all painful, and downright near impossible once I was on the horse for an extended period of time. Good thing Willy was a follower, so I didn’t really have to direct him much. But sometimes some of the girls would leave the group and go after stray horses or cattle, and I could never try that because I couldn’t physically ask the horse to leave the pack. Once I get back to the real world, and have a job with insurance and all that, I will most certainly have a doctor look at this funny knee of mine. 20 bucks says he tells me I’m insane and there’s nothing wrong with it.

9)   The people: One of the major things that sucks about travelling is that as soon as you make friends, it’s time to pack up and leave them. Some of the girls I met at Garrawilla I know I will see again, but others, who knows? I had 2 wonderful roommates, Rosemarie and Britta, and I even learned some German at them farm, since Rosemarie is from Austria and Britta is from Germany. Britta taught us a German kiddy song, which I made myself memorize, and proceeded to drive everyone nuts with singing non-stop for the duration of the trip. Both the week 1 group and week 2 group (about half of us stayed the full 2 weeks) were wonderful, and in addition to having so many wonderful farm experiences, I am grateful to have met so many cool new people.

So that was that! We spent our last night together in Bingara, at the Sportsman’s Hotel again, and a few of us just had a grand ol’ time chatting away in the room. I even got a free massage, just for sharing my Internet access! While I certainly won’t miss 7 am (and sometimes 6 am) wake ups, fucking flies EVERYWHERE, and constantly having my shoes covered in poop, I had an amazing time at Jillaroo school, and was very happy with my decision to do it. It was so nice to be surrounded by so many animals. Such a cool experience, and I’ve got 500+ photos to remember it forever and always!

It’s off to Byron Bay now for the weekend, which is a hippie beach town of about 20,000 an hour south of the Queensland border. It’s sort of an Ithaca-by-the sea type place, only with more backpackers and nightclubs. After my weekend of Internet catch up in Byron, it’s off to surf camp! I’m starting in Byron Bay, and will surf my way down the coast back down to Sydney over the course of the week. For those of you out there who seem to be fixated on the idea of me getting eaten by a shark (you know who you are) this is ACTUALLY the first time where I’ll ask you to say a little prayer for me J

I’ll finish off with the quote of the trip, that only my fellow Jillaroo-ers who stumble across this will giggle at: piss off, dickhead!