#floodirrigation

Dear readers,

before I'm going to write a new chapter about my travels in Australia (#australia) I'd like to tell you about the last time at Lorraine Station, my departure and finally the arrival at the new work place.

Irrigation and carting hay

After I got back to Lorraine from Cairns at midnight I started working again the next morning (#farmwork). In the last weeks I kept irrigating and spraying the fields (#floodirrigation) that Katja, George and I had cultivated, fertilized, planted and irrigated. It was good to see that the sorghum (#sorghum) we had sowed was breaking through the soil. Obviously the wallabies and kangaroos enjoyed that as well (see photo). Furthermore I had to get the sorghum hay off the fields again (#hayharvest) using the Mack-Truck (#macktruck) (#mack).

New work place

My work mate George had already given me new contacts for a new job. I had also sent numerous job applications to have more jobs to choose from. I finally decided for the job as a feeder in a cattle feedlot (#feedlot) between Charters Towers and Townsville.

Farewell from Lorraine Station and Departure

On the 20th May I said goodbye to Michael, Hannah and all the other people at Lorraine Station and drove through the outback (#queenslandoutback) (#outbackqueensland) again. This time I drove on the Wills Developmental Road through Julia Creek and stayed one night in the caravan-park in Richmond (#richmond). One day after my departure I finally got to the feedlot. I was welcomed kindly, showed my quarters and started working the next morning. The experiences I made there and the people I got to know had a significant impact onto the next months. You can read about this in a new report.

Until then...

Hello you all,

after you last read about our short holiday trip we’re now writing about our last period of working together at Lorraine Station.

As usual our workaday life was hot, humid and demanding. We still irrigated fields, mowed sorghum for hay production and collected spare syphons.

Since the Leichhardt-River (#leichhardtriver), which winds its way past Lorraine Station through Northwest-Queensland (#northwestqueensland), still carried water I was partly in charge to keep an eye at the river pump. This included the regular check of the coolant temperature, the oil pressure, the engine revolutions and the charge current.

We preferably collected and loaded the spare syphons along the head ditches of the fields in the morning hours as the sun hadn’t heated the black plastic pipes too much then. Usually this task continued into the early afternoon hours. For that reason we had to wear leather gloves to avoid burning our hands. One of the most demanding jobs was the correction of the field dividers on the irrigated fields. As you might have read in previous reports the fields at Lorraine Station are flood irrigated (#floodirrigation). When growing sorghum you don’t have to have beds for planting (as opposed to the seed beds for potatoes or irrigated corn). That means sorghum is planted into flat ground. When they set up the farm at Lorraine Station they used cultivation equipment with GPS and laser level technology to create a slight artificial fall. When irrigating those fields the water flows back into the drain at the bottom end of the field as soon as the soil is saturated with water. Some of those fields are divided into smaller rectangles (by field dividers) to ensure the water flows controlled and evenly. Unfortunately, the artificial fall of the majority of those fields had been destroyed due to years of cultivation and erosion (which means a costly laser levelling is necessary again). Now, our job was to make sure that the water would spread evenly over the fields we watered. Due to the problem I just described we had to “help” the water to get to the dry spots of the fields as well. That meant walking through calf deep mud with a spade at 35+°C to make sure the seed would come up evenly. Of course there were also spots where the water backed up on the fields. In this case we had to drain the water off these spots to ensure the seed wouldn’t suffocate. The little walls at the bottom end of the fields that caused the water to back up (for a short time only) before draining it back to the dams had also to be broken once the fields were irrigated evenly. In the short amount of time we had we decided that Katja had to learn how to ride a motor bike too. Since I’m “infected” with the motor bike virus it was my pleasure to show her how to do it. Kindly, Michael provided one of the smaller work bikes. After a short introduction Katja went for her first drive by herself on a 230-ccm Honda. The airstrip was the ideal training ground and a little bit later Katja was joined by Michael and his youngest son Mick who chose the airstrip for a quick race on their motorbikes. After a little bit more than two weeks work it was time for Katja to say goodbye to Lorraine Station and especially to Michael’s wife Hannah who she got along with very well. Katja wanted to see her daughter Emma in Germany again.

Therefore we drove from Lorraine Station to Cairns. Looking forward to our upcoming holiday at the east coast and the conscience to leave the demanding work behind us for now we left. Of course we stopped once more at the Burke&Wills-Roadhouse (#burkeandwills) to get fuel and take a few last photos. In the next report you’ll be able to read about our way through the Queensland Outback (#outbackqueensland) (#queenslandoutback) and our adventures at the east coast.