Quo Vadis - Zwei Himmelhunde auf dem Weg: July 2011

What we did the last seven weeks - part VI - we said goodbye to Springsure

Lyn was cleaning all the cabins of the caravan park. She is a "sunshine" lady from Tasmania.

That was a saying on the caravan of Lyn and Dess. I think this speaks for itself.

Mr. Homebrew alias Dess the husband of Lyn.

Jake and Nicole a couple from the Gold Coast. He started to work in a mine near Emerald and lives at the moment in the caravan park. She is studying and will be soon a teacher.

Good bye Springsure! All in all it was a nice time with great people around!

What we did the last seven weeks - part V - our work as a station cook

Besides our work at the roadhouse we started after two weeks also a second work as a station cook on the Meteor Downs Station. What does that mean? One day Eva and one day Jo was driving to a big property that was 40kms away from Springsure to prepare the dinner for the family and their employees. We started there at around 2pm and finished at 7.30pm. We had to cook basic food with a lot of meat! Everyday meat!!! And this means 80% beef from their own beasts. A special breed named Wagyu.

The last week we were working there fulltime. Eva as Nanny and cookie cook and Jo as lawn keeper and a little bit as Jackaroo (working with the cows and steers)

The workshop shed.

The fathers and...

...and some of their daughters and sons. On the property were 10.000 beasts on 40.000ha.

Not only good for humans: An oats field for the Wagyus.

We in front of a windmill somewhere on the property.

Jack and Olivia, the kids of Margot and Glenn.

Olivia...

Kathrin an Irish backpacker our successor together with Jo in the station kitchen.

Eva and Jo at work.

Jo, Margot, Glenn, one of the Jackaroos Brandon, Jack, Eva and Olivia.

It was a great time on the property! We will never forget this time!!!! Thank you again for everything!

Sam another Jackaroo was training a wild horse.

Isn´t such a job the dream of every little boy?! And such a guy the dream of some girls?

What we did the last seven weeks - part IV - Jo´s last shift in the roadhouse

Jo at the counter was waiting for customers.

Jo´s last shift was with Kayleigh. For all friends in Germany: Kayleigh is (a little bit) like Isi.

And on my last afternoon shift there was an order for a sausage brekky:

"Yummy"

The work was nice, the colleagues were nice, the customers were nice, everything was nice besides...

... our bosses. After some days it was obvious that our bosses were r. p. i. t. a.. (Comment from Jo: The boss of our boss (Anna) was much worse). But this picture says a lot about them:

"Their character is like the beauty of this paddock."

What we did the last seven weeks - part III - Baking pizza and watch trains

To say thank you for everything the EPC guys did for us we made Pizza at Meteor Downs Station (more about that in the next post) and brought it for a lunch surprise to their construction site.

All together!

And after this surprise the boss of the EPC guys took us out for a tour the coal mine. And what we saw there was just gigantic!!! Have a look:

Two trains per day... And that is only one mine of 100 of mines.

Loading on the run!

What we did the last seven weeks - part II - Making more new friends

Jo together with Verena, a German backpacker who worked also in the roadhouse.

Irmi (another German backpacker) together with Amar (an Indian bloke) at the counter of the roadhouse.

Verena, Jo, Irmi, Trevor and Eva.

Trevor... We all want to be like him when we are 86! Yes he was 86 and yes he was drinking and smoking every day and yes he made party like a young guy especially with young girls and yes he was working every day and yes he was drinking so much that he was lying in his bed with all his clothes on and yes he is traveling more than 1500kms to the Kimberleys in his own car! An amazing old fellow!

What we did the last seven weeks - part I - visiting the EPC guys

That is the reason why we ended up in Springsure: Coal! Everything in this area is driven by the coal industry. There are gigantic coal mines in this area of Queensland, every coalmine has a own railway line that is necessary to transports the coal to the harbors, every railway line needs access roads, if a access road gets flooded it needs a repair, for the repair you need some workers and the workers have to sleep somewhere. In this case the workers were sleeping in the caravan park that belongs to the roadhouse we were working in. Yeah and with those workers we got real close friends during our time in the roadhouse. And that is the reason why we visited them on their construction site and why a special bloke named Bob the grader driver showed us around. Thank you again for that!

A "small" truck.

One thing we have to explain: EPC stands for Earth working and Pet Care. ;-)

Jo together with "Pepper" Peter. Why "Pepper" Peter? He had every night for tea a medium rare rib fillet with pepper sauce and salad.

Jo with KG ähhh no with Nick.

Bob in his grader. Bob was a great guy that gave us two cartons of imported German beer from Rockhampton and that showed us around for a couple of hours on the construction site.