Part-time cow fan, part-time sausage roller

There's a lot to love about cows. Sadly it's part of my job to turn them into sausages. Life at the station is getting more bizarre every day. I'm a cleaning lady who feeds calves and then bibbidi-bobbidi-boo magically turns their mom into a bundle of sausages. 

Look at these cute things! They have the talent to make the most bitter, cynical human being's heart melt to liquid.

            

Oh and this one, a little baby:

She actually thought I was her mommy for a while. I adopted her when I found out her biological mom was on an endless holiday in cow heaven (our freezer).

My heart sunk to my stomach and my head felt dizzy. I escaped reality and entered my own dreamlike state where I made colourful shapes with Play-Doh. Pushing clay through a tube to make toy sausages. my childish brain is strong enough to keep me going like that for a long time. After a day the mommy looked like this:

I was a vegetarian for many years and this job would have given the old me the creeps. Now I live in the outback with the world's most tightly trousered cowboys who live on meat and beer, I tend to man up. I grew me a pair of balls and got used to the smell of dead cow. When the job was done, I washed the pieces of meat and blood off my clothes, put on my long dress, got a castration and watched P.S. I Love You while eating chocolate cake. 

Station Life, the musical

What I like most about my job as a domestic is being able to work outside. because outside it's socially acceptable to break out in '80s classics. I'm teaching the calves everything they need to know to perform Grease, the musical. Sometimes I find myself sitting next to the flowers, yodeling away. Until one day I was gardening (making mud pies and covering myself in soil) and I saw this:

                 

That shut me right up.

Desperate stationwife

While I was flipping baby burgers and busting out my finest dance moves at the Darwin Festival, I got a phone call from a lady who offered me a job on a cattle station. I would get free food and accommodation, a salary and the opportunity to apply for my second year visa. She had me at free food. I pictured myself throwing a lasso in the air and galloping on the red sand like a real cowgirl. I'm wearing funky boots and a long white (wedding)dress. Oh and a tiara. My horse is my best friend, we laugh and eat cake together and we chase dingos in the Outback. On Saturdays we would just lay in the grass, gazing at the sky and inventing cloud creatures.

Yiiiiihaaaaa I could not wait! As I arrived at the station - situated behind the second tree on the left in the middle of friggin' nowhere - I got a bucket full of cleaning products and a list of chores. Aha. So actually I'm the cleaning lady. Who also cooks and feeds the calves. A desperate housewife surrounded by cows instead of screaming kids. The cowgirl inside of me committed suicide but the ever positive Joke just kept on doing her daily happy dances. You call it cleaning, I call it eating peanut butter cookies all day long while walking around the station and making things shiny. Plus I get to hang out with cool cows like Sally, I'm wearing a cowboy hat and I have a dog who celebrates the end of a day filled with cleaning by throwing dirt all over the place.