Baaahh, Baaaaahh! – Pt. 12

Finally, this is how I imagined working in Down Under. Hard work, sand gnashing between my teeth and stunning wastelands around me.

Packed with diesel and supplies in Brisbane, I set off into the outback.

The further inland I got, the more I felt like I was driving through a frying pan: Completely level ground and unbearable heat dulled my drive. (Also my A/C Compressor is still missing it’s drive belt because of a damaged tensioner fuel economy)

Those Containers would be my home for the next two weeks. Airconditioned, roomy bliss after living in an improvised Campervan or ramshackle prison huts for four months.

For the first week I was cleaning the shearing shed,…

clearing and repairing fences… Hang in there, bud.

And last but not least taxiing runaway floofs back home.

And suddenly, suffocating amounts of sheep and dust were rolling in on my freshly sweeped shearing shed.

Amazing to watch the shearers do their work, but sadly I still had my own job to do.

That being having to spray the sheep with anti-lice treatment at the end of each block. The shearers worked in two-hour-blocks, I would usually spend 45min to an hour on the so called ‘backlining’ of the sheep.

Which in turn meant that I had ample time to read a book and listen to podcasts. But to be fair, on other days some sheep escaped me untreated and I could be seen running circles in the blistering heat to get them back in.

Here on the left you can see lazy Daisy, my herding assistant. With the combined power of my inability to connect to animals and Daisy’s overambitiousness, we threw up tons of dust and achieved little.

Well, Daisy ain’t nothing compared to a windhose blowing over.

I also had the questionable honor to catch lambs to get their tail and parts of their wool producing skin around their breeches cut off. The reasoning behind this is to avoid drawing blowflies due to shitstains on the wool. Animal Rights activists have got a problem with that, which is why the farmer was a bit sensitive about me taking photos of the process. Because apparently a clean, desinfected cut is much worse than slowly succumbing to blowfly larvae eating you alive later on..? It doesn’t feel good to harm such innocent animals, but I also understand that it is done to protect them from a far worse fate. The sheep are living quite close to nature out there, only getting mustered quarterly to twice a year to get their bum shaved or get vaccined. With 3000-odd sheep passing through my hands, I’m quite confident to say that nature is much more cruel, and with much less reason: Broken off horns from fighting making it possible to have a thorough look into the inside of the skull in some cases, cancer-riddled ears and noses on the older ones and I don’t even want to know how many starve to death getting hung up in a bush after running from their own shadow. I’ve seen one or two, just saying…

Edit: After further research, the stance of animal rights activists is that sheep were selectively bred to have a tail thousands of years ago to yield more wool on the extra skin, and nowadays they should be bred to lose their tail again if they will only be cut off and cause suffering. The farmer didn’t tell me the whole story there. If you want to read more, here is a wikipedia article about Mulesing, if you’re squeamish, do yourself a favour and don’t look for pictures or videos.

Well, bye sheep! Me wasn’t me if I wasn’t secretly scouting out possibilities to upgrade my car at least a little bit. Oh, and naturally break half the stuff I come across.

Sigh. And all that to try and fit something someone has already fitted before.

What I have just taken off is the EGR valve. Short for ‘Exhaust Gas Recirculation’. The idea is to somehow reduce emissions through this system by reburning exhaust gas. But what happens with over 20 years of goop in the system? The sensor gives wrong values to the computer, opening the valve at the wrong moment and directing an imperfect mixture to the intake. The result? Thick black smoke pluming out of the exhaust, very good for the environment, exactly what the EGR is supposed to do. The proven method to get the computer out of it’s confusion: Put a blanking plate into the EGR system so it doesn’t screw everything up. The EGR system is apparently only needed in Japan to meet emission standards, in Oz the rules are, well, we’ve got rules around here too. I think.

After killing my socket adapter trying to get the valve loose I had to realise that all of it was for nothing because someone had done the fix already. Consulting the forums about the black smoke clouds my car was still producing, I found out that defective-EGR-levels of smoke apparently make any kind of rearview mirror obsolete while my van supposedly is a “healthy diesel” given it’s age. Well, I never stop learning, eh? But then again Diesels will probably never be my cup of tea reading about how even the modern ones don’t manage to keep up to emission standards…

On to the next item on my todo-list: Everytime I closed the drivers side door, the body panel behind it would rattle as if the car was in danger of falling apart. A couple of rivets later, the sound of the door closing is much more satisfying.

My last night in my little accomodation, frantically trying to get as much done as possible.

Finally finished the frosting. The other windows will have to make do with curtains as I still want to be able to use them while driving. Enough work and repairs! Off to a little island vacation!

Prime spot I’m visiting judging by the overcrowded ferry…

Naahh, I’m visiting a family from my old hometown who moved to Russell Island just south of Brisbane. While I’m staying, I’m trying to get rid of all the red dust gathered up in my car, helping to finish their balcony, and getting obliterated by mozzies while trying to cram some more home improvement into my car.

Woo, safety sliders!

Hey, I’m confident that this shelf will hold my box of Q-Tips (and not a single gram more) with ease! Well, it’s made of scavenged supplies anyway, it’s not that I lost any money on it. That’s all from me for now, I’ll try to go on a little roadtrip soon, and hopefully I’m not getting hung up on another interesting job offer too early.