CONGRATULATIONS AND OPEN DAY

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Congratulations Murray on getting a job offer from Scottish Widows. Fantastic news!! So pleased for you. To update you all Murray has been offered an Graduate Actuarial position with Scottish Widows in Edinburgh and he can start in January! He also has 1 and possible 2 more interviews for other companies next week as well so fingers crossed he can have a choice as to what company to work for. Well done again with your offer.

Also, congratulations to David Robertson on the news about the little one due in June! Really, what is it with the Deveron water! I'm going to have to throw away all my clothes and fill my rucksack with baby clothes at this rate! Congratulations again, you'll make a great dad. Hope everything goes well. Keep me up-dated!

Longreach Agricultural College Open Day and Graduation.

Yesterday we left Jundah at 5am to drive to Longreach for Tom's Graduation Day. The college had an open day from 8am-noon where they were giving displays of all the work they have done so we went along to see what it was all about!

The first display was the horse section. Here we saw 2 different competitions, the first was the Semester 2 Horsebreakers Challenge and the second was a freestyle competition. The horsebreakers challenge consisted of a course that the students had to complete on horses that they had broken in themselves. Each competitor has broken in 2 horses this semester and they got to choose which horse they could use to compete on. There were 10 competitors 8 of which were on 2 year old horses and 2 were 3 year old horses. All the horses had only been broken in for between 6 weeks to 3 months. Below is a description of the course and some photos to show what they did. I was well impressed with how quiet the horses were and what they were capable of! All the horses that were competed yesterday will be sold by this time next year and the geldings will sell for about $5000 (approx. 2,000 pounds). The majority of the horses competed yesterday were bred at the college. Although they break the horses in quite young, stock horses do tend to only be of any use up until they are about 12years old.

Below is a photo of the competitors:

The course they did was as follows. The numbers in the brackets are the points that can be scored for that movement.

1. Enter at walk (5 points)

2. Crack whip (5 points). For this movement they had to crack a whip while sitting on their horses back. The judge is looking for the horse to stay quiet and not get frightened:

3. Open and close gate right/left (10 points). Here they had to open and close the gate shown in the picture below and show their horse moving over sideways etc when going through the gate:

4. Carry coat over bridge (10 points). On the right of the photo above you can see a white barrel, they had to pick a jacket off this barrel and carry while they got the horse to go over a wooden board and then place the jacket on another barrel. During this they were flapping the jacket around to show how quiet their horse was.

5. Back through cones (10 points). from the photo below you can see the 3 cones laid out. The rider had to get the horse to bend through the cones backwards:

6. Trot over cavaletti (10 points). This was a jump about a foot high that they had to get the horse to pop over.

7. Trot 1/2 circle left (5 points). From the jump they then trotted a half circle to the left with a diameter of 20m. This was to finish between 2 cones in the middle of the arena.

8. Canter left circle 20m (10 points). From the cones they then cantered a 20m circle to the left.

9. Simple change (5 points). When passing back through the cones they had to change the canter lead by coming back to trot.

10. Canter right (10 points). They then cantered a 20m circle to the right.

11. Halt (10 points). When passing back through the cones they had to halt their horse from canter.

12. Back three paces (15 points). Here they had to get their horses to walk backwards 3 paces in a straight line.

13. Left rollback (15 points).

14. Right rollback (15 points).

A rollback is where you get the horse to turn on it's back legs, i.e. the back legs stay in the ground and the front legs move round in the direction the rollover says so that they are facing back the way they came. For 13 and 14 they had 30 seconds to do as many rollbacks as they liked and the best 2 were counted for the points. In between each rollback they either trotted or cantered at least 20m.

15. Dismount, walk away and leave unattended (10 points). Here they had to get off their horse and be able to walk away from the horse and the horse should stay standing.

16. Leg handling (5 points). The rider had to show that they could pick up their horses feet and be able to hold them in the positions required for getting their feet trimmed and shod.

17. Lead at trot to judge (5 points). Here the rider just had to trot the horse straight to the judge.

18. Judge presentation (10 points). The horse had to be stood up in front of the judge as though in the show ring.

19. Lead on bike to truck (10 points). This one the rider had to drive or sit on the back of a motorbike while holding their horse and take it over to the truck. The truck is in the background of the photo where the whip is being cracked.

20. Lead on truck (10 points). Here they had to lead the horse straight onto the truck and then off again.

The competition was won by Danielle Sims who did a very impressive round. Her horse was one of the ones that had only been broken in for 6 weeks!

There were 4 competitors who took part in the freestyle competition. Here they had 2mins 30secs to show what else their horse could do. Danielle won this by first showing that her horse was being trained to camp draft (explanation below) and then she got her horse to lie on it's side while she stood with one foot on the ground and one on the saddle while she cracked a whip twice. She then sat on the horses back while it stood up again. Camp drafting is when you have a herd of cattle and you go in with the horse and separate one beast from the rest. The first stages of teaching this involves a person carrying a bag which has something in it that makes a noise and gets the horse to follow and watch the bag. The other competitors in this competition did things that included standing on their horses backs and cracking whips. It was amazing to see what these horses could do.

After the horse display we were shown round the cattle yard where they had their registered Santa Gertrudis Cattle. We were then shown their sheep and some sheep dogs out working with the sheep. We finished off with seeing goats, the sheering sheds and work shops. The college breed their own cattle, sheep, horses and goats. Although they have had to buy in more to meet the demands of the increasing number of students. It was all really interesting and I learnt a lot.

Below is a photo of one of the sheep dogs working. The student was getting the dog to get the sheep to go round him either to the left or right. All the commands were given my simple arm movements and voice, although the voice was very quiet and used mainly if the dog wasn't paying attention to the arm. Opening your right arm got the dog to move the sheep around to your left and then opening your left arm got the dog to turn the sheep round to your right. Holding the arm straight up got the dog to stop. Well that is what I guess the commands were from how all the dogs reacted!

After a barbeque lunch, Tom and Sarah got their hair cut and then we had a quiet afternoon before the graduation ceremony at night.

I am running out of time and this has ended up quite long so I will come back to graduation tomorrow or at the weekend - whenever I can get back in here! Saw rain last night though for the first time since I came to the outback! If it wasn't for the fact I was standing beside an outdoor bar and swimming pool (thankfully there was a canopy over the bar) then I would have felt at home, it was rather cold and very heavy rain! Before anybody complains, I know it wasn't as cold as it is at home at the moment! ;) Anyway, hope you are all wrapping up well and keeping warm. I have tried to send some of this heat home but by the sounds of it I can't blow hard enough! hehe.

Miss you all

xxxx