Following on from our stay in the town of 1770 we got on a
2am bus to Gympie. We arrived there at 9am the following morning where we had a
delightful breakfast in a small café whilst we waited for Carl to come and
collect us to take us back to his farm 2 hours inland.
The Rackemann farm has been in Carl’s family for many
generations and today it consists of cattle, barley and peanuts. Despite
farming being the family profession Carl spent his professional career playing
cricket for the Queensland Bulls and for Australia. After retiring Carl became
a coach before buying the farm from his father, although his parents remained
living and working on the property for the rest of their lives. Carl moved back
to the Rackemann farm, situated about 30km from Kingaroy, with his wife Louise
whom he had met whilst playing cricket in England.
Carl and Louise have since built their own property on the
farm, yet Alex and I have been staying in the original farmhouse where Carl’s
parents lived and where Carl grew up. It is clear that the property has
definitely been well loved through many generations; it is completely jammed
full of things, mainly crazy ornaments covering the sides, the walls and
hanging from the ceiling, in particular slightly strange frog ornaments seem to
have been collected. There are also hundreds of family photos and the odd few
dried snake and lizard skins scattered around, kindly in unexpected places.
Carl and Louise have 2 children, Maddie who is 12 and
already acting like a teenager through and through, and Tommy who is 8 and
adorable. Tommy sets Alex Star Wars homework each evening.
Since we have been here our tasks have included taking and
picking up the children from school, they both attend school in Kingaroy, which
as I have stated is 30km away. We are allowed to drive their 4wd vehicles (some
very old and tricky to drive and some very new) both on the farm and into
Kingaroy, which is pretty exciting and thankfully we are beginning to get our
bearings. We have also been dismantling old fences and building new ones,
herding cattle to be weighed and preg tested by the vet. Alex had the pleasant
job of cleaning out the cow poo in the cattle truck and he also did multiple
moisture tests on the barley with Carl (apparently the moisture levels of
barley have to be below 12.5% before it can be harvested and consequently
sold).
We also took part in Kingaroy’s annual charity event, Relay
for Life. This event has over 40 teams and each team must keep their individual
baton moving around the track from 3pm on Saturday afternoon until 9am on
Sunday morning. We joined a local youth orchestra team, as they were short on
numbers, and Alex played saxophone along side them at different times
throughout the evening. A photo of Alex playing alongside 2 young girls in
fancy dress made it into the South Bernett Times the following day. Our main
walking slot was from 3am-5am as I think the children’s enthusiasm had tired by
this point. Overall the event raised over 100K for a cancer charity.
Totally exhausted we returned to the farmhouse the following
day to find a foot long lizard living in our room. Alex squealed loudly whilst
I named it Lucy. As neither of us were brave enough to remove Lucy from our
bedroom we having been sleeping beside her ever since, although secretly I
suspect that Alex sleeps with one eye open.
[Photos to follow in the next post due to further camera issues, shock!]
No comments:
Post a Comment