It’s cold today. We were mustering this morning and it was two jumper plus jacket and glove weather. Dad and I moved some prime steers off a recently sown cultivation into an adjoining paddock. Steers can be ancy little beasts. One minute trotting along in the right direction, the next doing a jagged turn to bolt off into the distant scrub. This morning’s mob were no exception. They trotted amiably across the cultivation with me behind them on the bike, my head diped into a biting southerly and then presto. They were off. I skirted the flank trying to redirect but they were having nothing of it and soon I was tearing along the edge of the Whalan creek trying to turn them up the bank and away from a stand of belah trees. Of course they dashed past me. 450 kg plus animals crashing through bushland can be hard to slow. I lost my hat under a low lying branch, dodged saplings and fallen timber and ducked below sticky bush spiders strung patiently between branches. The creek twisted to the north just as I regained some control and five steers broke from the mob, rushing headlong into the water. I tried to turn them, ran out of clear navigable track and braked as I approached the water. Nothing happened. I looked at the gear change and realised the connection must have come loose for I was in fourth and I wasn’t slowing. With a tight turn of the handlebars I missed my morning swim, caught a flying stick to the face which fortunately ripped my jacket and not me and took off after them. Of course on the rise was Dad. Stockwhip in hand and a dogged look of determination as he cajoled some obedience into the mob. The pic was taken of Dad and I last year after a dusty day in the stock yards!