In the Buggy with a Bull at the Gate

An eagle, kangaroos, foxes, creeping birds, baby goats, cliffs, tragedy, a blue-blue sky and a bit of a hero.

Therese Ralston
Sep 2, 2018 · 7 min read

I went in the Can-am with my husband this morning. While he was busy shovelling cottonseed and skewering hay bales to feed the cattle, I went walking.

I photographed amazing cliffs around our property. Full of orange-yellow earth, with rusty streaks dripping down the rocky ledges; the landscape is dramatic.

There was a one-tonne bull outside the fence. On his own, he was hungry and hostile. Tossing his head, snot streamed from his nostrils, but at least he wasn’t pawing at the ground like they do in cartoons. When a bull leans on a post to scratch an itch, the fence can fall over. A beast doesn’t need to apply much pressure with a huge rump behind them; we have enough bent gates around to prove that.

This black bull could have bowled over the barrier between us and stomped through as easily as breathing. It could have killed me if he had only realised it was possible.

My man strides past and I back away. He has a pile of cottonseed to feed the bull. Swaying and squirming with anticipation, it salivates like you wouldn’t believe. Ready for breakfast, the bull begins eating before all the feed is shovelled through the fence; getting it over his shaggy head.

‘Don’t get too close to that big boy; it’s not a pet you know?’

‘Okay,’ I say, though I still want to.

I walk on and see Eastern Grey Kangaroos race across the paddocks, covering huge distances with three-metre leaps. They were startled by the noise of the tractor, hay bale skewered on the front as my husband, the farmer, delivers feed to the cows. The calves are finally standoffish; it took them weeks to learn not to get in the way of their hungry mammas.

A friend told me he had several new calves crushed between the weight of his heifers jostling each other to get to the food. I didn’t know what to say back to that farmer. What could anyone say? Any drought is tough for those on the land, but one that lasts two years is a killer.

I wander into the foothills, hearing but not seeing little birds in the scrub. I did glimpse two treecreepers, but they’re the busybodies of the bird world. Creepers hitch their way straight up the trunks. These birds are curious and like to follow people from tree to tree as they move through their territory.

Walking into a dry creek bed, I go to a place where a deep pool used to be. So deep we could swim in it and not touch the bottom, it was once alive with the tortoises bobbing their heads in and out at the surface. Craybobs crawled along the shallow edges and dragonflies buzzed about searching for a mate. Now there’s only a bleached bed of pebbles.

My husband is finished, finished having to outrun the cows who know they’re about to be fed and crowd too close to the vehicle.

Coming back to the side by side, we hop in. I get a little anxious when he drives towards the gate. Almost finished his cotton seed ration, the bull comes closer on his side, as the Can-Am gets closer on ours.

‘You don’t need to go through the gate do you?’

‘Yeah, why not? We’ll have a bit of a drive around.’

‘But what about Ferdinand there?’

‘We’ll be right.’

Curious, the bull jostles forward to meet us. My husband leaves the engine running and opens the gate. One tonne of bullish bull is gaping at me. His voice deeper than usual, my husband shoos it. Aggressive, he commands the animal to stop and move away.

Cowering in the tray of the Can-Am, even the kelpie is too afraid to growl. He knows you don’t mess with the man, not when he speaks like that. At the moment when I could have reached out my hand to pat that fur, the bull backs off. Instead, I’m cringing in a vehicle without doors. Husband jumps up, driving the vehicle through the gap as I move into the middle of the bench seat. I didn’t consider the logistics before. This isn’t a zoo, being two feet away from a giant animal without a fence between you is frightening. I was glad when my husband gets back into the driver’s seat after closing the gate again.

The big Angus went back to gobbling the few balls of cottonseed left on the ground nearby. Relieved, as we ride past I strain my neck to see it snorting. That fluffy boofhead has strings of saliva flying out his mouth like gossamer.

Over a small rise in the dirt track, a Wedge-tailed Eagle struggles to leave the ground. It had been gorging itself on a kangaroo it had probably killed. The roo meat so fresh it hadn’t begun to smell, yet there was nothing but a hollowed out carcass left on the ground, and the ribs were picked clean. I could see different shades of caramel plumes and the six distinct finger feathers of the wingtips. Being within feet of one of the world’s largest eagles was almost as daunting as the bull.

Eagles only fly low to the ground when they’ve eaten almost half of their own body weight. Too heavy to get off the ground, they remind me of a Harrier Jump Jet on take off. They limp to a low branch of eucalypt, where they rest and digest for hours before they can soar again. Perching in a tree, they gaze at you. Still majestic, their legs are feathered down to the talons.

One of my Facebook friends grew up on a farm in some nearby ridge country. Walking down her long, dusty driveway to the school bus stop, she saw an eagle pick up a lamb. The raptor struggled to get the babe off the ground, still trailing the umbilical cord underneath it like a gory kite.

The eagle flew low to the ground. The girl chased it, screaming while waving her arms. Once the bird adjusted to the weight, it flew higher; flapping away with a prize still bloodied from birth.

The tiny lamb must have stopped from breathing only minutes after it started. Exhausted from running, tears washed down her cheeks into the collar of her uniform. The girl was angry, disappointed she couldn’t save the little white woolly thing.

Each year at the start of spring, my husband takes me to see our baby goats. They are white and chocolate brown, spotted and sweet. Noisy, they bleat and shiver, wobbling on four spindly uncoordinated legs.

I loved nursing the darlings. Two years ago, I grabbed a floppy-eared kid from under the old shearing shed. I sat it across my lap, patting the little fella until it went to sleep. I cried it was so good, feeling its heartbeat grow steady on my thighs. It stayed so long, I thought it might wee on me. It didn’t, but I wouldn’t have minded that much if it did. It’s those moments you want to hang on to as long as possible.

I won’t be able to see baby goats this season; eagles are killing the kids this year, cleaning up anything left unprotected by the nannies. Some birders don’t believe the eagles kill. When I tell my husband, he says he found a kid with gaping holes in its back. The marks were made by talons. The baby goat was too heavy to lift. The eagle had torn through the fur trying to carry it away, making deadly wounds in the flesh.

It’s sad, but one thing goes so another can stay alive, and Australia’s climate has always been harsh.

When you’ve been in a relationship a long while it’s easy to forget why you married. I tell him he’s domineering, but when he raised his voice and growled at the bull, he was commanding. It was the reason I liked him in the first place. When there was a brown snake, or a grassfire, or something in danger, he always took charge. My husband is gruff, but he knows what to do and gets on with it while I’m crumbled in a heap.

As we ride home, I snuggle closer to a husband who smells like clean hay. I breathe in the scent. For today, I’m glad he’s able to control beasts ten times his size. He’s bossy, but he’s also daring and I really like that.

The sky is that deep blue you never see all winter. Cloudless, the hills and escarpments looked spectacular beneath it. Long, thin gums still reach up towards the blue, even though there are dead trees scaring the landscape alongside them.

Still beautiful, no matter how many times I see it, my eyes feast on the scenes of hills and valleys, of shrubs and gums. Of skinny rabbits and foxes running across my sightline; of swooping birds decorating the sky and singing about the glorious farmland we live on below.

Therese Ralston

Written by

Writing about the real life, farm life, reading life, birdlife, wildlife, pet life and school life I have in my life. My blog: birdlifesaving.com

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