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Ferg recounts some experiences: In Johnny’s first few weeks of station work he was thrown from his horse, trampled by a cow in the yards and knocked over and concussed in the back of the cattle truck. He was having the time of his life. We met Johnny when he came to visit his aunt, Sally, our host on the first station we visited. He’d recently started work on a nearby station and the barely-suppressed delight with which he related his stories was worth the price of admission. So who are we and how did we come to be entertained by a trainee rouseabout somewhere in outback Queensland? I’m Ferg (it’s a clan thing; all the men in my family are Ferg). My wife, Andrea, and I spent most of 2005 living our dream: we packed our three kids (Lizzie, Rachel and Samuel) into the 4WD and travelled around Australia. By the time we met Sally we’d been living in our camper trailer for five months and had travelled nearly 19,000km since leaving home in Adelaide. Andrea is a speech pathologist. She’d contacted Frontier Services a couple of months earlier asking if there was any way we could help as we travelled through the outback. Coincidentally, Noela Schloss was just in the process of setting up the Outback Links programme so we ended up becoming guinea pigs. Noela had organised for us to meet some people and we all hoped it was going to work out alright. I felt a bit like an imposter. Andrea at least had some obvious skills to share. I’m a writer and I couldn’t really see much need in the outback for advice on hyphenation. The first station we visited was “only” 100 km off the main road. By main road, of course, I mean the single lane of bitumen you share with oncoming traffic except during those hairy moments when you abandon it altogether to keep out the way of a 40-tonne road train. Sally had told us the road was “pretty good” and it was although we had to dodge cattle, wild deer and occasional stretches of bitumen (they had deteriorated so much it was actually safer to stay off them). Incidentally, cattle are much smarter than deer. They’ll get out of the way. Take a pencil and draw a line on your map from Townsville to Mt Isa. This first station was somewhere along that line a bit north west of Charters Towers. Our first introduction to station life was being met at the house gate by Sally and her 12 year old son who walked up, shook hands and said “Hello, my name is Jack. I’m pleased to meet you.” Our kids were a bit non-plussed. I don’t think anyone had ever shaken their hands before. Certainly no-one under the age of 50. His younger brother, Matthew, was less outgoing and quite difficult to understand. Jack often took on the role of translator. While we were there Andrea spent some time assessing his speech and language and chatting with Sally about some strategies she can use to help him succeed. Meanwhile, the kids fed the “poddy calves” (the ones that had been orphaned or abandoned for whatever reason), rode on the quad bike, played soccer and invented games to explore the place. And admitted they didn’t know who Slim Dusty was. Jack introduced us to emu apples and acted as our tourguide through the old homestead. We met Johnny when he came over that night to see Sally’s husband, Tom, who was actually away mustering on a neighbouring property (his boss owns several stations in the area). We never did get to meet him. Johnny stayed for tea because Sally was worried he wasn’t eating properly. We sat on the back verandah swapping yarns and laughing into the night. We headed off to Hughendon where Andrea joined in with a RAFS Playgroup that was happening in conjuction with an “outschool” where the teachers from the School of the Air travel out to a regional centre and the kids in their “class” come in to have some face-to-face schooling for a couple of days. Our kids were invited to join in with the School of the Air kids for the morning and so had their first taste of formal school for the year. They ended up having so much fun we decided to stay the whole day. At morning tea time (it’s quite surreal hearing pre-schoolers refer to it as “smoko”) I initiated a culture exchange with some of the boys: I taught them how to handpass a football and they taught me how to throw it (AFL is still a fairly foreign concept in rural Queensland). Andrea chatted to numerous parents and handed out information about normal speech and language development. The playgroup in Richmond the next day was quite different. This time we hung around with the pre-schoolers but the weather was cold and miserable. Sam built things with Meccano™ and Rachel and Lizzie played mum with the little kids while Andrea chatted with mums and a governess. Our final visit was to another station north of Cloncurry where RAFS were running a playgroup that doubled as a Space-themed birthday party. Afterward, the mum said most of the kids forgot to dress up. Lizzie thought one of the boys was dressed as a cowboy but those turned out to be his normal clothes. During our time with Outback Links Andrea got to assess several kids and provide feedback to their parents and carers as well as having numerous other valuable conversations. I installed some software and fixed up some virus and other computer problems. Oh, and opened and closed a heap of gates while helping rescue some stray cattle. And our kids got to experience life in a different world. I may not have been thrown from a horse but I think my grin is almost as wide as Johnny’s. We certainly received more than we gave. Note: Some names in this story have been changed for privacy reasons. Ferg is currently working on a book about their
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