Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia
Dairy Diaries
I’ve been on the farm for two weeks now and I’m slowly getting used to th idea of getting up at 3am and having a herd of 700 cows trying to kick you in the head as you attempt to milk them. They haven’t had any grain in the dairy up until a few days ago so they were getting a little cranky! It is calving season now so every day there are 2-8 calves born and that means their mothers go back into the milking herd which is growing bigger by the day. As well as milking I get to feed the calves which at first was a novelty, and still is really good fun, but now the younger ones are learning that I bring food, every time I go into the calf shed I get attacked by a pack of ravenous hoards of hungry cows. They may be small but they can really give you a good head butting! I have also learnt how to tube a new born calf to get the collostrum inside it as soon as possible. It was pretty scary the first time I did it. Andrea just handed me a bottle with a long tube on the end and told me how to hold the calf and mentioned that out of the thousands of calves she’d tubed over the years she had only ever drowned three. No pressure then. I was so nervous about putting the tube down the calves wind pipe and into its lungs and trying to put a tube down a calves throat whilst holding it in between your legs as its wriggling and kicking and squirming is really difficult at first!! I have since tubed 8 calves and all are still standing so thats an achievement.
As well as looking after calves we recently found a litter of kittens in the dairy belonging to the resident cat. They dont take much looking after now as the cat is a good mum but we have to keep an eye out for Jocelyn who wants to get rid of the cats before they grow up to be ferrel and kill all the birds. There are four of them and Andrea and Andrew are taking one so thats only three left to worry about. They are about two weeks old now and live in a dark hole in a cupboard so hopefully Joc wont be able to find them!
I have also been out on the little boat. The first time we went fishing. I sadly caught nothing but everyone else did! They put out a long line and left it for a couple of hours and they had caught sting ray, shark and lots of fish. The second time we went out on the boat we went diving. Well I didnt, because my wet suit was too buoyant I couldnt go down and I didnt want to wear a weight belt in case i sunk! But i snorkled around in the water, the first place we went to was so choppy. I was just sat in the boat putting my flippers on and looking at the sea with complete dread, when John and Andrew just jumped off the boat and left me! No words of advice, comfort or encouragement - off they went to dive for cray fish. After a while watching them go under water for lengthy periods of time I finally got the courage to join them. I am such a wimp but I am scared of the sea so was pretty chuffed I actually got in the water! Had a mooch around, saw some fishys and the most enormous seaweed ever. King Island is apparently famous for its production of Kelp, I saw why. Eventually got so cold and tired I ventured back to the boat and spent a good quarter of an hour trying to pul myself ever so gracefully back into it. Successful diving trip anyway, as they caught 13 cray fish and some abaloni which is an ugly mushroom looking shell fish. I got to keep the shell and then we went back home to cook them all up! I have to admit lobster legs are pretty good but the abaloni was amazing. I could have eaten a whole sea full of them. So my first Australian BBQ was some hotch potch invention where they used the BBQ to boil a huge container of water to put the lobster in. Not so conventional but i think it still counts.
SO my vegetarian days are through it would seem, and it wasnt even a bacon butty that converted me but a disgusting smelly sea creature.
45 of the most powerful photos from 2011
Amazing photos of how utterly hopeless our world has become
The Beach Hut, King Island
The Beach Hut is by the harbour in Currie, King Island. It is owned by the local ceramsist, who uses the hut as an open gallery for anyone wishing to display art and has an honesty box for anyone wishing to purchase it. It is also a place locals can use for parties, barbeques and picnics for free as it has tables, chairs, a barbeque, books and an old gramphone with records. Such a nice idea, and a really cute little place for the community to get together.
The Dairy Diaries
In at the deep end is a bit of an understatement to describe my first day on the farm. I went to learn how to feed the calves in the morning (all 400 of them!) with Andrea. She pretty much did everything for me but after we had finished she announced that she couldnt feed them again that night as she had a wedding party to go to. SO it was down to me on my own to feed them.
Before the evening feed i went down to learn how things work in the dairy. It is a 44 rotary milking parlour and the platform just goes round and round all the time and you have to put the cups on 700 cows and keep up with the platform. It looks easy but when your as weak and feeble as i am it takes some effort! I started by working with someone else but after about half an hour he gave up and said he was going home. So i was left to milk the rest of the herd on my own on my first day! It was so tiring but I did it (I just missed out the cows that tried to kick me in the head). Milking cows is hard work and you get so full of cow muck all up your arms and in your hair and on your face and everywhere!
As soon as I had finished I rushed up to the calf shed to feed the little ones. This is a fun job. They have the calves spilt into three herds - small medium and large. and you have to feed them separately so with the help of the two dogs, Stella and Crusty (rusty) I drove each herd into separate pens, yelling “push em up!” and “bring em back!”. I felt like a proper farmer! Then I had to bottle feed two newly born calves. One of them was born prematurely and could hardly lift his head so I sat with him for ages trying to get him to drink (he had only been tubed before) and after a while he did manage to drink half the bottle so I had hope that he would make it. But a few days later he still hadnt been able to stand up on his own and wasnt making any progress. Andrea shot him! I understand that they are just putting money into something that wont make any return by feeding him but its such a harsh life for a cow!
SO an eventful first day on the farm. I am learning lots. Mostly that I have muscles where I didnt know I had any!
The Dairy Diaries
After only two days in Melbourne I received an email from a family dairy farm asking if I wanted a job. The farm is on King Island, a tiny island off the coast of Tasmania which I had never heard of. But before I had time to think about it David, the owner of the farm, tolf me he was flying into Melbourne that day and that I could get a ride with him rather than paying the airfare myself (this is the only way to reach the island). So off I went to meet David at Torquay Airport.
When I got there all I found was a large field with people sky diving all aroud me! I waited for a while, watching these mentalists throwing themselves from tiny little planes, while it slowly dawned onme that I would have go in one these tiny planes too! David arrived about an hour later than he had arranged (typical Oz) in his tiny little four seater plane.
Once we got up into the sky it wasnt so bad as David flew down the coast for a while so I could see the Great Ocean Road which was pretty specatcular. It wasnt until we headed south into the open sea and David told me he had no GPS system that I started to worry. After about half an hour of silence he then asked me if I liked swimming! No!
We flew over King Island after about an hour and we flew over his farm (below). He said he had an air strip on the farm but the cows has shit it all up so we had to land at the airport. The farm is huge. huge huge. They have roughly 1600 cows, though when i asked David he just said, “the buggers are everywhere!”. I got a tour of the farm which took a good hour to see it all as it is so huge, then went back to the farm house to meet everyone and have a lovely home cooked meal.
