5:45 am the phone rings. Everyone expects graziers to be up by then. We weren’t.
Our neighbour had a few of our cows ready to be collected. They had escaped over the fence in search of scarce feed.
I was pleased. It was a chance to give my new beast – the Navara ute – some work to do. It should be a quick trip to Currajong and back. But then I should have learnt by now that Chris has always been really, really good at under-estimating work effort…
When we got there, Chris was a little tentative about loading all the beasts in one go but the manager Phil, for all the right reasons, convinced us to take them in one load. So we set off with five cows and three calves bearing down in our two tonne trailer. The cows were in pretty good condition and probably weighed about 500 kilos each; a heavy load at the limit of both the trailer and the vehicle.
Chris was taking the drive easy when we rolled onto the bitumen. We had probably only gone a couple of kilometers when Chris yelled, “Uh oh!” as he peered into the rear vision mirror. Smoke was billowing from one of the trailer wheels.
Stop? Yes, that is what we needed to do. But we couldn’t pull over. The burning tyre would set the long grass on fire. Neither could we just stop in the middle of the road as we had just come over the crest of a hill – no visibility for upcoming traffic. Eeek!
Eventually, thankfully, Chris found a safe place to gingerly pull off the road before the wheel burst into flames.
A quick inspection revealed the cows were weighing the trailer down so much; the mud guard was sitting on the tyre. You could see the paint burning on the top of mudguard. There was no way we could get them home like this.
Should we get some help? No, of course not! Chris would never ask for help. He is way too independent. (And I thought the General Managers at Virgin Blue could be difficult at times.)
We had to find some way to lever the mud guard off the tyre so the wheel could move freely. A stick? A rock? We tried whatever we could find. The blistering heat didn’t help, neither did the distressed cows stamping and chafing in a rather alarming fashion around in the trailer.
Not sure how long it would have taken if I hadn’t had a brilliant idea to use the bar of the car jack (though I don’t like to mention that it took me some time to find the bloody thing in my new car - reading the manual is always challenging without your glasses!). Once I had my hands on it though, it was small and strong enough to do the trick. With it we managed to lever the mud guard away sufficiently to resume our trip. A red faced irritable Chris finally clambered back into the Navara cab. But of course I couldn’t offer him a drink. We didn’t have any water.
All this wouldn’t have been so bad if the last time we had retrieved some cows from Currajong (most probably the same naughty ones) we had had similar misfortune. The clutch cable broke in the Patrol and we were stranded 14 kilometers from home…with no water and a trailer full of cows.
But we managed to survive both times unscathed though rather thirsty. You will be pleased to know those naughty cows never left the yards the second time. They have gone to sale – good riddance I say!
