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Arnold & Edna -VOLUNTEERING ANOTHER WAY: Arnold read an appeal advertisement in Frontier News wanting volunteers for Outback Links, a new initiative of the Uniting Church Frontier Services lending a hand to people in the outback who are doing it tough, and especially during this drought. He and Edna made an application and July 2006 they headed for St George. From a list of possibly fifty requests we chose St George area in south west Queensland. Help was needed with building new metal cattle yards, extending the cattle ramp, helping with the animals, approximately 1000 cattle and approximately 1200 sheep, and help in the home and in the garden. The property is 52 kms past St George on the Carnarvon Highway, with a 5 1/2 Km driveway to the Homestead; the property is over 31,000 acres. We were housed in the shearers' quarters which consisted of four individual 'bedrooms'; the front two had much loved innersprings; the back two had fold-up stretchers; we were the first, so we chose the front ones. They had direct access to the living room and kitchen, which had a refrigerator, freezer, a 'much loved' stove and a micro wave. We had a shearer with us for a couple of nights, some mice and a frog for company. The 'three way' corrugated iron amenities block was 30 feet out the back door. The quarters were 7-8 minutes walk from the homestead, which we walked morning, noon and night. Arnold took the seven year old child from the property to the school bus each morning, leaving at 7.00am; then meeting her at about 4.15. On Wednesdays the four year old would also go to preschool. There was plenty of work for Arnold, helping in mustering both sheep and cattle, sorting those for the carriers and loading them; also delivering supplement feed to the feeding bays, checking troughs. The property owner sheared about three dozen sheep left after the shearers had clipped their 500. It was an experience for Arnold to pull the skirting off containing burrs and daggs. There were small electrical jobs and other handyman type things that a busy man on a big property just cannot spare the time to do. Two days were spent disassembling a 30 foot Telstra tower, given to the property when Telstra upgraded their facility with a lighter and more efficient model. With four littlies, the two girls, and also two younger boys, the station wife had her hands full, as was the washing machine every day. Edna filled her time washing and hanging clothes, washing curtains, cleaning the oven, cupboards, kitchen drawers, two fridges and defrosting, and re-packing a big freezer. Arnold helped with the freezer. There was also cooking some meat dishes, biscuits, cakes and scones for the freezer. (Some of them made it there!) Also, there was some baby sitting while end of the year financial issues were attended to. There was gardening, and just being around for conversation to a mother with her hands full. We loved being stand-in grandparents, too. The real
ones live 600-700 Km in opposite directions. We were invited to be 'Grans'
on Grandparents Day for the older child, but she developed Chicken Pox,
so we were 'superficial to requirements', and left Wednesday earlier than
we had initially planned. Those much loved innersprings were fit for a king to sleep on by 9.00 pm. We were very fortunate with our family; they were just fantastic, salt of the earth, real Aussies in their mid-thirties. What an experience, words are completely inadequate to describe it, but we have tried! |
