Chris and Brogan!

6/28/10

G’day mates. This morning we started an “Early” day at 6:30 and like usual at the Golden Arches. After that wonderful breakfast we drove to the Primo’s Abattoir (beef plant). I learned that quality of Aus. Beef is a whole lot different than the states. They really like high yield beef with just about no marbling in the ribeye, which are very young and very small. After the shock of seeing the size of carcasses and the lack of marbling, we drove to the Caroona feedlot (JBS) and took a look at their operation. After that we drove to Big Pete’s house and had the time of our life. At Pete’s place we had a chance to buy kangaroo belts, and then we went outback and drove to a cabin and had a barbi. Pete’s father cooked up an amazing steak dinner and kangaroo tail soup, which is quite good! After dinner we found a rabbit and chased it around on foot, supposedly an Australian past time. This was possibly one of the most fun things I have ever seen and done! Well that’s all mates!

Chris

6/28/10

Hey everybody! Once again it’s good ol’ McDonald’s for “Brekkie” and as always it’s decent. Once we finished up there it was back in the vans and on our way to Scone, NSW, for our first experience in an Australian processing plant. This facility, owned by Primo’s is a beef slaughter facility that goes through 500 head of cattle per day with a total out of 1600 if a double shift was ran. This was our first shot at doing the Eating Quality Class and a refresher for carcass placing. After a couple hours there, we headed north to again and had another first when we went to the Caroona Feedlot. This was located in a rural area. It depended a lot on the locals to get their sorghum and whole cottonseed, since they don’t grow corn from limited water to feed animals. They can have up to 28,000 head in this JBS Swift operation and carry mostly angus, murray greys, shorthorn crosses, Herefords, and more heavily bos indicus influenced cattle to fill the gaps. It was funny when the silage they stored were completely covered because of a problem with kangaroos hopping across and poking holes in the packing! From there it was driving to the rest of the afternoon to Peter McGilchrist’s family operation.

Right away it was hard not to like anything, especially Doug (Peter’s Dad) came out with handmade belts from kangaroo hid! After milling around at the main house for awhile we went up to a cabin further in the hills to spend a little time cruising around looking at wallabies, kangaroos, and spotlighting rabbits to chase them on foot. Tell you what, when you see a tall person like Lander jumping hanging in the air for what seemed like ten seconds from the adrenaline rush, and then landing flat on the ground with the rabbit just out of reach is hilarious! Somewhere in all of this we went back to the cabin, enjoyed a campfire and some kangaroo tail soup. All in all it was a great time up there and we had to get in the vans to get to our hotel in Tamworth.

Catch you around like rissole,

Brogan