What a busy start to the year!!

After spending New Years in Townsville with some family and friends, we came home to a rather dry ‘Bald Hills’. Even though we were concerned about our wet season not arriving yet, we were all excited to pick up Kerstin, who we met at the Chico Basin Ranch in Colorado last year. With Kerstin from Germany, the hot and humid weather wasn’t too kind, not only did she feel it, but we all suffered from the heat, especially when the first job on the list was fencing!! Kerstin has been helping us out with all stationhand duties from seeding paddocks right through to mustering.


Upon completion of splitting more paddocks up, we got stuck into our annual branding of calves, to be happily stopped half way through the muster with 16 ½ inches of rain in the second last week of January. The following week, we completed the branding and muster, and moved onto maintenance of machinery and shed clean up.



On Australia Day, we also welcomed Sarah to ‘Bald Hills’ to take on the HomeTutor/Teacher duties for Kurt who is in Grade 2 through Capricornia School of Distance Education. Sarah had a marathon drive from New South Wales during the midst of all the rain, but finally arriving safely a few days later than expected!!


The weekend just gone, we were lucky enough to host a BBQ for MLA (Meat and Livestock Australia). We were hosts to 8 chefs from the US to experience an Aussie BBQ. With the showers around from Thursday, it was a very wet BBQ on Saturday with the booked bus replaced with three four wheel drives!! It was such a unique experience that we will never forget, having amazing chefs preparing different cuts of Australian beef in our humble little kitchen. The meat was cooked to perfection on our newly purchased BBQ (didn’t want too much of an authentic Aussie BBQ!!) We also invited some cattle producers from around the area, who were more than happy to introduce our guests to Bundaberg Rum and also a feed of our local mud crab and prawns. We have never had so many people in the kitchen not only cooking but observing (even our four year old daughter Kayla, didn’t blink, watching their every move!) By the means of Lickity Fingers catering providing us with delicious salads and scrumptious desserts, everyone was so full of food by the end of the night, especially our son Beau who has a love of all food, devoured several desserts. We would like to personally thank Elissa, John and Jaimie (MLA), Dirk Flanigan (Chicago), Mourad Lahlou (San Francisco), Bill & Yvonne Kim (Chicago), Chandra Ram, Plate Magazine (Chicago), Kevin and Susan Ryan (Winter Park), Stephen Bulgarelli (Dallas/Fort Worth), Rick Wolf (Bethesda) – our BBQ and kitchen are waiting for your return!!!