Monday, April 19, 2010

Rodeo-tastic!

Sarah kindly extended an invitation to join her on the farm and visit Tumut for the Rodeo. And what a thrilling weekend was had by all!

Early morning on the farm


I'd never visited the farm before so I was amazed by how beautiful it is, how lush regional NSW is, what a great hostess Heather is and how cool Miles' collection of farm machinery is.

Driving up the hill


We made our way up the hill and helped Miles to light a fire, getting rid of some dead trees and blackberry bushes.

The boys have their Iwo Jima moment


And then the Rodeo! How cool is the rodeo. The events included bull riding, bareback horse riding and my favourite: the rope and tie. This was where the cowboy lassooed a calf and then jumped off his horse to tie up three of the calf's four legs. The best guys did it in less than 5 seconds! Terrific. One of the champions of the day was called Clay Bush. Classic.

Horses bucking at the Rodeo


The audience was awesome, pretty much 95% of the crowd wore flanelette shirts, boots, jeans and cowboy hats, including the 3-year-old kids.

We got home and once again lit a fire, toasting marshmallows until we were too close to the flames.

Roaring fire


The next day some of us got to try our hands at the heavy machinery before setting off back to Sydney. John, I'm told that this bit will excite you. So I operated a digger for the first time ever... and it was awesome! Such a sense of power, I ripped up a tree and flung it on to the smouldering embers of the fire... Peta had a go too, and between us we made short work of the tree.

Eek! This thing's in my hands!


Making short work of the tree


V stylish ladies in gumboots


On the way home we stopped at the Dog on the Tucker Box. Another Australian icon under my belt.

Some dog sitting on a food box


All lots of fun. Thank you Sarah for a great weekend!

I took a few more pics, they're all here in a set on flickr. Sarah took some more so hopefully she's got more of the actual Rodeo and can upload them.

cx

3 comments:

Jenny said...

Yee haw, what a great weekend!

Thanks so much to Sarah and all the Franklins for having us along, and thanks Carmel for posting up these great pics! While I'm at it (feel like I'm at the Oscars), thanks to Nick for driving us down there!

Sarah said...

Hey Carmel, you took some pretty great photos!

Carmel said...

Thanks Sarah! Seems you and Peta are v popular -- already had 70 views on my flickr photo of you in gumboots :-)