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Marsden crawls out of the backblocks, ignores litte things like sustenance and makes straight for the true essential - the internet.
Hey, I've been offline since the time of my last post. That was shortly before 8am Tuesday morning.
Tuesday morning. Fly to Dunedin. Window seat, land side. Lovely view of the mountains. Picked up at Dunedin airport, 3 hour drive to Cromwell. (Had lunch en-route in a tearooms at "Teviot"). Checked into the "Golden Gate Lodge" (I later noted that it advertised itself as 3-star plus). Room has a bed. That's one of the two things I require in accomodation. Found our way to "Te Oma". Met the owner, many scrawny looking sheep. Afternoon was spent selecting 500-ish for the trial. With 1/2 hour of light left boss decided not to try tagging them tonight.
Boss asked about the earmarks. Apparently he'd never encountered the concept before. Was amusing to see him trying to chase the sheep - he looked like a little boy playing "seagull" and sounded like a constipated steam engine (not through exertion, through trying to mimic the shooing noises those of us with more experience were making).
Discovered that the room had the other essential - a shower with hot water and good pressure.
Ate at the Lodge resturaunt (all this going on the work visa). Ordered a "Crumbed Fish Basket" from the Specials menu. Turned out to mean a _battered__seafood_ basket. I'm sorry, I don't consider molluscs fish.
Ordered a chocolate cake with ice-cream for desert. The cake was OK, there was one very small scoop of icecream. Again, wasn't impressed. Retired, slept fitfully.
Wednesday. The cooked breakfast was pretty good. My hands nearly froze off recording the tags as they were put into the sheep. Boss decided to try his hand at tagging. Didn't do any worse than I would have. I've never been any good at sticking things into sheep. After a late smoko learnt how to count lice. There are 42 sites on each sheep that you have to count at. If there are more than 10, you call it 10+. This place has a louse problem - that's why we were there.
This place has the most docile sheep I have ever met. Once dragged out of the catching pen most of them were fairly content just to lie there while they were counted. Like most merinos, the flece was full of thistles and matagouri. I have many swollen spots on my hands where imbedded sharp things are slowly working their way out. Needless to say, bend/crouching/peering for long periods of time is not muscle-friendly. By the end of the day I could barely move from my lower back to the soles of my feet. My neck, dodgy before I went down, was refusing to turn.
I should mention the lunches. The boss got us cut-lunches from the lodge. They were workers lunches, large meat sandwiches, a muffin, fruit, musli bar, a bottle of drink, yoghurt. It sas something that I was hungry enough to eat the yoghurt. It also says something that on subsequent days the sandwhiches were so not-to-my taste that I left them but still ate the yoghurt.
Tried the chicken breast stuffed with apricot and brie for dinner. Much nicer. Skipped dessert. Went looking for an internet-terminal - the main sign on the road mentioned it. The staff didn't know what I meant. Gave up. Went to bed, slept soundly.
Thursday. Woke up aching. Spent the day counting. Guess the rest. By shorrtly after lunch my shoulders were also giving out. Started at 8am, finished about 7pm. Three of us counting - we did about 100 sheep. Fortunately it was decided this was all that was required. Had pork riblets (quite nice) followed by another chocolate cake dessert (nothing else looked very appetising). Collapsed to bed.
Friday. Breakfast at 7. Packed beforehand, checked out. No counting today (everyone else was at least a fragged as I was I suspect), just drafting the sheep into their trial groups and put them into the shed for the shearers, then applying the treatments as they came out of the shed. I claimed the sheep handling duties - partly to keep mobile and partly to distance myself from others as much as possible. My patience was fraying, and over the last three days I'd put up with a lot of repetitive discussion on what was going to be done next which I just didn't need to know to get my job done, and was wasting time to boot. Most of the aches subsided - but I suspect I will wake up stiff as a board tomorrow.
Was allowed to leave at 3:00 to make the 45 minute trip to Queenstown for which I had to be checked in by 3:45. Anyone else see the problem here? I arrived late, but fortunately I wasn't the only one and the airport was doing express checkins for us. The plane was a good 15 minutes late boarding and leaving anyway. I had a centre seat, so got to see a little of the scenery. I got on the right plane too - unlike some other people who were having trouble understanding why their seats were occupied. (Another plane heading in the same direction was boarding at the same time from the same gate).
Arrived in Chch. Caught Taxi. Work had supplied a chit. Got quite a shock at $20 for the (short) trip between the airport and here. Oh well, I'm not paying for it. The accomodation was costing $285/person before meals. There are stil four people down there, variously leaving Monday and Sunday, although two of the only came down Thursday afternoon (one other left Thursday afternoon).
It is now after almost 7pm Friday evening and I just finished wading through email and my friends page and writing this. Now I'm going to have a shower. Then food. Then the drinkies. I need _people_. My kind of people. I could use a good rubdown, but that's not likely to happen anytime soon.
Hey, I've been offline since the time of my last post. That was shortly before 8am Tuesday morning.
Tuesday morning. Fly to Dunedin. Window seat, land side. Lovely view of the mountains. Picked up at Dunedin airport, 3 hour drive to Cromwell. (Had lunch en-route in a tearooms at "Teviot"). Checked into the "Golden Gate Lodge" (I later noted that it advertised itself as 3-star plus). Room has a bed. That's one of the two things I require in accomodation. Found our way to "Te Oma". Met the owner, many scrawny looking sheep. Afternoon was spent selecting 500-ish for the trial. With 1/2 hour of light left boss decided not to try tagging them tonight.
Boss asked about the earmarks. Apparently he'd never encountered the concept before. Was amusing to see him trying to chase the sheep - he looked like a little boy playing "seagull" and sounded like a constipated steam engine (not through exertion, through trying to mimic the shooing noises those of us with more experience were making).
Discovered that the room had the other essential - a shower with hot water and good pressure.
Ate at the Lodge resturaunt (all this going on the work visa). Ordered a "Crumbed Fish Basket" from the Specials menu. Turned out to mean a _battered__seafood_ basket. I'm sorry, I don't consider molluscs fish.
Ordered a chocolate cake with ice-cream for desert. The cake was OK, there was one very small scoop of icecream. Again, wasn't impressed. Retired, slept fitfully.
Wednesday. The cooked breakfast was pretty good. My hands nearly froze off recording the tags as they were put into the sheep. Boss decided to try his hand at tagging. Didn't do any worse than I would have. I've never been any good at sticking things into sheep. After a late smoko learnt how to count lice. There are 42 sites on each sheep that you have to count at. If there are more than 10, you call it 10+. This place has a louse problem - that's why we were there.
This place has the most docile sheep I have ever met. Once dragged out of the catching pen most of them were fairly content just to lie there while they were counted. Like most merinos, the flece was full of thistles and matagouri. I have many swollen spots on my hands where imbedded sharp things are slowly working their way out. Needless to say, bend/crouching/peering for long periods of time is not muscle-friendly. By the end of the day I could barely move from my lower back to the soles of my feet. My neck, dodgy before I went down, was refusing to turn.
I should mention the lunches. The boss got us cut-lunches from the lodge. They were workers lunches, large meat sandwiches, a muffin, fruit, musli bar, a bottle of drink, yoghurt. It sas something that I was hungry enough to eat the yoghurt. It also says something that on subsequent days the sandwhiches were so not-to-my taste that I left them but still ate the yoghurt.
Tried the chicken breast stuffed with apricot and brie for dinner. Much nicer. Skipped dessert. Went looking for an internet-terminal - the main sign on the road mentioned it. The staff didn't know what I meant. Gave up. Went to bed, slept soundly.
Thursday. Woke up aching. Spent the day counting. Guess the rest. By shorrtly after lunch my shoulders were also giving out. Started at 8am, finished about 7pm. Three of us counting - we did about 100 sheep. Fortunately it was decided this was all that was required. Had pork riblets (quite nice) followed by another chocolate cake dessert (nothing else looked very appetising). Collapsed to bed.
Friday. Breakfast at 7. Packed beforehand, checked out. No counting today (everyone else was at least a fragged as I was I suspect), just drafting the sheep into their trial groups and put them into the shed for the shearers, then applying the treatments as they came out of the shed. I claimed the sheep handling duties - partly to keep mobile and partly to distance myself from others as much as possible. My patience was fraying, and over the last three days I'd put up with a lot of repetitive discussion on what was going to be done next which I just didn't need to know to get my job done, and was wasting time to boot. Most of the aches subsided - but I suspect I will wake up stiff as a board tomorrow.
Was allowed to leave at 3:00 to make the 45 minute trip to Queenstown for which I had to be checked in by 3:45. Anyone else see the problem here? I arrived late, but fortunately I wasn't the only one and the airport was doing express checkins for us. The plane was a good 15 minutes late boarding and leaving anyway. I had a centre seat, so got to see a little of the scenery. I got on the right plane too - unlike some other people who were having trouble understanding why their seats were occupied. (Another plane heading in the same direction was boarding at the same time from the same gate).
Arrived in Chch. Caught Taxi. Work had supplied a chit. Got quite a shock at $20 for the (short) trip between the airport and here. Oh well, I'm not paying for it. The accomodation was costing $285/person before meals. There are stil four people down there, variously leaving Monday and Sunday, although two of the only came down Thursday afternoon (one other left Thursday afternoon).
It is now after almost 7pm Friday evening and I just finished wading through email and my friends page and writing this. Now I'm going to have a shower. Then food. Then the drinkies. I need _people_. My kind of people. I could use a good rubdown, but that's not likely to happen anytime soon.
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Date: 2003-08-28 11:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2003-08-29 02:44 am (UTC)From:Very true
Date: 2003-08-29 03:49 am (UTC)From: