If I told you I had 2000 head of cattle and I needed to move them across 40 miles of desolate unforgiving scrub, what image would pop into your mind? Probably something like stereotypical old-west cowboys herding cows across rangeland to a ranch from horseback. I don’t know about you, but I’m sure that something has come along in the last 200 years that has changed the cattle herding business.
Well, actually, in the US we started acting like the Europeans and put up fences. Now the cows just wander about and eat grass in fenced in fields. The Australians, who know how to have a good time, still have cattle that roam the outback and they’ve come up with a better way – helicopters, quadbikes (four-wheelers, atvs, whatever you want to call the things) and dirt bikes. The clip above is from a BBC program called Human Planet and pretty much summarizes the whole event of mustering 2000 cattle scattered over 50km of Australian outback with Robinson helicopters, dirt bikes, and even a couple of horse-borne cowboys. The video below shows a similar muster in central Queensland (that’s in Australia) set to music rather than a narrator.
In general, I’d say it looks like the Aussies know how to have a good time. I would like to take a second and stress, that this is a rather dangerous activity, so I wouldn’t recommend to just anybody that they jump in an R22 and go herd cattle. The pilots are probably of a similar caliber as the guys doing the high-voltage power line repairs–exceptionally skilled and crazy. Now that I’ve said that, enjoy the videos and if you’d like comment, check out the Facebook page or follow Leaving Terra Firma on Twitter.