Cambil Brahmans

Good Morning everyone!

It is day 3 at Cambil Brahmans and I've finally got my computer and internet working so let me catch you up to speed!  I am staying at the home of Bill and Tolma Camm which sits right in the middle of two seperate mountain ranges.  Let me just say that I have a pretty awesome view from my window!  Cambil Brahmans is roughly 3000 acres; mostly spread out among seperate properties.  Along with raising Brahman cattle, the Camm family are also sugarcane farmers.  According to Bill, about 1700 acres of their property is for sugarcane. 

On Monday, I woke up and went to the kitchen dressed for the day in jeans, a t-shirt and my LSU cap (basically what I've been wearing every day) before we left, Bill says "Ah Brooke you won't need that cap, we will get you an Aussie hat" and goes to his room and comes back with an Akubra.  So yep, I'm officially an Aussie and have been wearing the Akubra every day since.  We went for a drive around the property and helped to round up cattle for the Proserpine show which is this Friday and Saturday.  Along with the "led cattle" classes, there are also group classes such as: a pen of three steers not weighing more than 500 kilos, and so on.  All ready for this weekend!

Lawson, Bill and Tolma's son, also runs Cambil Brahmans; cool thing is, he came to the U.S. on the Hudgins Scholarship and stayed with various Brahman ranches about 16 years ago.  Now he is married to a lovely lady named Sophie and they have 5 children; Georga, Mitchell, Liam, Charlie, and James.  Georga is 13 and is taller than me! Mitchell is very into showing and will be showing at the show this weekend,  Charlie is dad's little helper, he even gets to drive the small tractor to feed the bulls!  Liam never wears shoes and is prettey much indestructable, and James is 3 and the cutest little kid I have ever seen, and not shy one bit! By the way, all of the kids have very thick Australian accents and say things like: "pardon" and "right-o" makes me laugh!

Tuesday, I was able to go to the sugarcane fields with Bill and see how they planted and prepared the land for the upcoming crop.  Driving through the endless cane fields, I definately felt like I was home in Louisiana.  I was able to see some pretty cool wildlife, these huge birds about 3 or 4 ft. tall were wondering around the paddocks when we drove up, they are called brolga's.  They are grey and red with massive claws and long beaks, they kind of reminded me of a small ostrich with less feathers.  On the way to check cattle at a different property, I saw about 30 wallabe's!  A wallabe is pretty much a mini kangaroo and are about 4 ft. tall; pretty cool! Sadly, the only kangaroo I have yet to see in Australia was a dead one on the side of the road yesterday morning...

Today, which is Wednesday, I was able to do some pretty cool things and get down and dirty.  We sorted and grouped the cattle going to the show and had to weigh and mouth them.  Then came the paint branding; for the show, the pen cattle classes have to be paint branded with the class number and exhibitor number on either side of their back.  We used red paint, so needless to say I was covered in red paint...  That was fun, but the best part about today was that I got to drive the Ute around the paddock and into town.  I was so nervous that I was going to ease onto the wrong side of the road!  Everything felt backwards, I had to drive a standard left handed, but I survived and the Ute is still in one piece!