Cattle Mustering Down Under

Having lived almost half of my Arran life in the South End I thought I had some idea of what farms look like. But that was before visiting Australia. In that extraordinarily vast country farms cover thousands of acres and cattle are herded by helicopter!

We didn’t experience that but we did visit a friend’s farm near Canberra which was 4000 acres – small by his neighbour’s standards – and were invited to help muster his cattle. A modest herd of 250 head.

It meant an early start and a substantial breakfast before boarding the battered, work-horse of a pick up truck, standing on the back, bumping along the dirt track roads holding on for dear life to the roll bar above the cab until we arrived at the mustering point, the metal yards, which we would call pens. From the yards, as far as we could see in every direction was the land belonging to our friend and here we could see a few hundred yards distant, in the near paddocks (fields to us) the farm manager, Kevin and his grandson, Toby who were already bringing in with quad bikes the first of the herd – beautiful sleek black Aberdeen Angus cows. (What must it have been like in the days of horses?)