Lots of horse work, plus some animals we saw on the farm!

On the first day, it was very misty as we drove out.  We saw a few animals, but nothing I could get a picture of – these were more just quick glimpses through the fog shrouding everything.  A few kangaroos and rabbits, and even a hare that ran alongside the car for a while.

When we got to the farm, everything was cold and eerie, shadows of cows and horses and buildings looming through the mist.  It started clearing up quickly once we started working though.

First, I thought I should show you guys a picture of Nipper – the horse I usually ride.  His bottom lip hangs loose, making him look like he’s constantly wearing a dopey grin on his face.  I got a pretty good picture of it:

He’s old and he takes some work to get going (and goes nuts if he has to leave the other horses), but he’s basically a good horse.

On the way back home, after a full day of working with the horses, Aunty Sandy and I spotted a black lamb on someone else’s property.  We pulled over and I took some photos:

In the second picture, you can see it has a little white spot on its forehead, but the rest of it is all black.  Weird, because the mother doesn’t even have black patches.

On the second day, we rewarded the horses after some hard work by taking them into the house yard and letting them feed on the long grass inside.  We learned that Nipper likes eating young thistles for some reason – it didn’t matter that they were spiky, he seemed to love them.

This is me with Nipper and Flash, getting their reward:

On the way back, we spotted an echidna by the side of the road:

It was digging into an anthill, so we never saw its face.  I did get a short video of it digging, though:

 

It just looks like a breathing ball of spines.

The third day was very exciting.  Aunty Sandy had work in the morning, but in the afternoon we went mustering!  We pushed the cows and calves from one of the front paddocks all the way to one of the back paddocks (and even managed to round up a calf that went through a fence along the way).

Aunty Sandy took a picture of me on Nipper, mustering the cows:

It was actually a lot of hard work, and the horses weren’t the only ones exhausted by the time we were finished.