There is something about mustering cattle that gets into your bones. The steady clop of hoofs, crisp winter mornings, the joy of working with animals and being out in the bush. Of course the romanticism can wear off pretty quickly when the temperture is at freezing level and a nasty southerly is ripping around your face but by mid-morning and that all important caffeine hit the dawn woes don’t seem so bad.

For the last few weeks we’ve been bringing mobs of cows and calves into the main yards at the homestead. Each mob is drafted, big calfs are removed to be weaned and then backlined and walked to an oats crop.

The mothers usually hang around the yards pining for their kids for a day or so, but they soon settle down and are then walked back to their paddocks.

This year we’ve been mustering with a combination of bikes and horses. Four crew members is usually enough for the bigger paddocks on our place. It’s not like the territory or northern Queensland where we are. The land here is more productive and consequently our stocking rates are higher and our paddocks smaller.

That said we have open areas of up to 5,000 acres to muster and most years we use a chopper to assist in the bigger, heavier wooded spots.