Sabrina vs Wild dans les Porongurup

Ca fait deja plusieurs semaines que j'ai fait la connaissance du merveilleux Bear Gryllz dans son emission Man vs Wild a la tele les lundis soirs. Quel homme! Il nous met en garde contre les perils les plus extremes, nous montrent comment survivre aux environnements les plus inhospitaliers et la semaine derniere il me parlait personnellement je pense, en retrospective, quand il expliquait de ne surtout pas grimper dans des endroits d'ou on ne peut redescendre. hum hum.

Dimanche dernier, je suis allee explorer la chaine de montagnes des Porongurup, a environ 75 kms au sud-est de Frankland River, la ou je travaille depuis environ 2 mois dans un vignoble. Un peu de bushwalking me ferait du bien me dis-je, attaquant l'ascension de la Devil's Slide, 6kms serpentant entre les formations granitiques.

Tout allait bien au debut, magnifiques panoramas sur les champs dores, les Stirling Ranges, pourpres, au loin. Sans parler des fleurs sauvages a chaque detour. Tres picturesque en effet.

Ca s'est corse quand je n'ai pas vu le chemin, tout trace, vers la droite et que j'ai decide de grimper. Mauvaise decision. Je me suis retrouvee pas mal haut, pas mal toute seule et pas mal stressee. Eventuellement, j'ai arrete de monter pour trouver un chemin qui me permettrait de redescendre sans que j'ai a mourir. Plusieurs faux pas, sueurs froides et mon dieu maman mon dieu maman, oh non oh non et oh non plus tard, j'ai finalement abouti dans un bosquet en contrebas, plutot serpenteux selon moi, mais en contrebas sont les deux mots cles ici. Je me suis degagee des bosquets serpenteux et j'ai retrouve le chemin. Ten points Sab, ten points.

Une fois en haut, la vue etait splendide et un aigle etait occupe a tournoyer avec son bebe juste en haut de ma tete. Rien de trop beau pour un Working Holiday Visa !

Une fois retournee a Bertha, je me met en route pour Frankland, il est tard, j'ai faim, et surprise, sur la route avant Mt. Barker, un resto thai est cache dans le bush. Bertha prend le detour et longe de droles d'animaux... Mes yeux fatigues pensaient que c'etaient des vaches... mais des grosses vaches et oh mon dieu, a cote de Bertha, pas de cloture... ca se trouvait a etre des yaks finalement, des gors yaks cornus avec du poil devant les yeux. Apres le meilleur bol de Tom yum ka de ma vie, je me sentis remise de toutes mes emotions et prete pour une autre semaine au vignoble.

Experience no 156 : Shearing sheep

After the party saturday night, we woke up sometimes early morning, a bit hangover. The fire was still going, beer cans and food everywhere, bertha's matress was cold and damp... in short, the aftermath of a great party. The lovely Fay offers to cook breakfast and her kindness makes me feel all of a sudden very homesick. Her daughters and grandaughters wake up, Colin the tough cookie grabs a beer and the sun in the kitchen announces another great day in Frankland. Kelvin starts unwrapping his gifts; the highlight is a laptop for when he's off working on the mine. He has a job exploding stuff for Barrack Gold. Quite cool :) But when Kelvin's home on the farm, there is stuff to do, even on Sundays... Nate and himself will shear sheeps today and I can watch and help. I am thrilled, I just can't wait to see it all in action. Well, I can wait a bit, enough to eat good eggs and homemade sausages and bacon and toast and 3 coffees !



When I finally get there, the shearing shed is boiling hot and it's not even noon... The guys are already at it and they are the hardest working people I have ever met. Nate explains that on average and on an average day (Sunday not being one of those), a sheep gets sheared every 2 minutes... The fleece has to get picked up and set on a table, cleaned off around the edges and sorted and pressed. The ground has to be swept often and the belly pieces of wool thrown in a separate bin. Those last tasks are done by the rows'about (probably the wrong spelling, it's probably best to not take anything i say on this blog too seriously). So I try to help and do a bit of that. Tough job I soon find out and the guys have an endless reserve of patience with my clumsiness. It takes me ages to learn how to pick up the fleece and lay it properly on the table, but I manage to eventually(the very end of the day) get better. I also gave a go at actual shearing and... well, I was just not very assured. No natural talent there! It's very tricky.. You have to position your legs and feet and hands a certain way so the sheep can't kick and get away. You have to angle your wrists all the time to follow the contours of it's body and try not to butcher it too much with the scissors. They apparently feel about a tenth of the pain us humans feel, but still, no one, animal or human, likes to loose an ear or else. After 3 rounds of about 2 hours each, we are done for the day. In between, Fay and Nicole have been feeding us marrons (a local rock lobster) sandwiches... hard life indeed. Kelvin gets me and Imogen on the quad to go move more sheeps in close to the shearing shed for another day of work tomorrow. I'm going mustering! It's just awesome as well! We get Misty on the small trailer and off we go chasing sheep in the paddocks, with the sun slowly setting on the horizon. It's Australia in all it's beauty; with a cold beer in my hand on the back of the quad, I feel completely happy and at ease, thank you once more to some truly amazing people.

Bellies!

The shearing shed from outside

The sheeps who are about to get very naked.

I bacame the bread winner that day... Colin has been on beer and chit chat pretty much since. Ah those Geordies... Or is it the Hob Knobs...? Probably just the Big Magnet pet.

Power shearer Nathan

The table, the one and only table, recipient of my badly laid fleece so many times that day.

Fraudulous picture! I'm a pruner, not a shearer!

Merci mouton :)

The magic press who gets the fleece into bags.

An expert rowsabout! My guru really!

And a very good shearer as well.

Kelvin smashing it even at 51 and hungover. Impressive!

After the day, I was completely wasted, but god thaks Nate, that was a highlight of my trip in Australia.

Sheep Mustering (exactly like Hugh Jackman would have done it)

The lovely merinos, after a busy day

Misty the super dog

Just for u Marion, a tractor and an oversize!

Beautiful Imogen

Relaxing on a quad after a day of shearing or rowsabouting should I say

should I thank Julia Gillard?

Of the many many pictures Imogen took, here is one of me and a beer bottle, especially for you Maman ;)

Fay and Kelvin's Barbie

carnage

the always very photogenic Rob.

smaller doesn't mean less good ok! i just had my usual technical problems

Matt, before his hangover troubles started.

Gary holding on to something as usual

From left to right, Fay, Natha, Colin, Nicole, Matt

The b-day man, Kelvin and his wife and his cake.

The 2 grandaughters, Nicole's children

Nathan with a modest piece of meat

2 weeks ago, we got this invitation for one of Nathan's friend 50th b-day barbecue, sheep mechoui spit roast party. Kelvin and Fay live about 30 kms down the road to Kojonup, so relatively close to Alkoomi, but we still managed to get lost. I blame my copilot, Colin Cammiss, as everyone who knows me also knows about my outstanding navigation skills.

Neways, we eventually turn back after almost hitting a kangaroo. The road is very texas chainsaw massacre, there are tractors in the moonlit paddocks, doing god know what.... in short, we are looking forward to find the place and hopefully, not being the ones roasting on the spit. We finally locate the balloons on the side of the road and hear Nathan's war cry. After a dangerous u-turn (bertha is not exactly a narrow car, sorry ma belle), we pick-up our favorite sheep shearer who ran all the way from the house to the road, almost blinding himself on a branch. He can't believe we got lost, he even tried to find us with Drew, but had to give up. He looks a bit upset... we might end up on that spit, i can see the fire blazing out there... wolfcreek, shit!

But no no no! On the way to the house, we also pick-up Fay, our hostess, and she's way too nice to slaughter us. She welcomes us to the party and Nate welcomes us to his world-famous eski full of Emu Export. The sheep looks delicious, it's nearly 9pm, we are starving. The food is absolutely delicious,the atmosphere is relaxed, the sky is full of stars and the air filled with... the roaring sound of the Ford Falcon. The boys also made it and the party gets a bit louder. Matt shows us his skills of calage de biere (i don't know the english expression for puncturing a hole in a can of beer and drinking it as fast as you can) and Fay's lovely daughters take more pictures than a pair of japanese scholl girls :)

I do a bit of fast drinking as well, finally trying the fruitlexia i heard so much about (bad stuff). The white cask wine is not too bad. I mean, it is bad, so fruity it's like having apple juice, but it's not undrinkable, and in that field, believe me, I am now an expert.

We all get pretty tired and finish either in the falcon or on a matress near the still very hot coals. The night is beautiful and the expressions on our peaceful sleeping faces reflects the general state of grace we came to in Frankland River.