The Next Level: Quamby Rodeo

25/7/2015

Had a fun evening with Rhonda, Trish and Scott – a good meal, great conversation, a bottle of red wine and some decent vodka lemons with mineral water. As usually, the sleep quality was not too good afterwards and waking up way too early didn't help either.

Mount Isa from the balcony

Morning sun

Late morning

Mount Isa is a real remote place – Townsville is the closes town, over 900 km away. Even Townsville is only a very modest country town. Feels a bit like up in the Pilbara!

Cooked a big omelet for breakfast for Rhonda and Scott. Right after breakfast we packed Rhondas car to drive the 160km to Quamby where the annual rodeo event was being held. Quamby is in the middle of nowhere – about 40 km out Cloncurry. We picked up Haimish on they way. Haimish is a surveyor and a colleague of Rhonda. Talking to both of them during the drive, I learned a lot about the local geology, deposit and mining methods. Quite interesting the vast amounts of different metals that can be found here. The copper mine Rhonda works for is the deepest underground mine in Australia – think they are at 1800m level already and might go down another 100m soon. The fastest skip for people travels at 60kmh up the shaft. Incredible! And it is super hot down there – no big surprise either.

Bulls tipping over cars! Beware!

Overtaking a road train - luckily there are overtaking lanes every few kilometers

The rodeo was very interesting, they had many different contests and I was surprised how rough and dangerous some of the stuff looks. Even the kids out here in the countryside are fully on board with the activities – tough little cow boys and girls. Good to see that there are still young folks around that enjoy getting dirty!

The kids event

learning how to fall

team discussion of the bucking horses - how to get the rider down in the quickest possible time

The greasy pig event - whoever catches the pig wins the prize

almost but it got away

Women's foot race - running barefoot through the arena

Men's foot race - look at the dust that they kick up!

The audience was drinking heavily but I was positively surprised how well everybody behaved, despite drinking all day and evening long and with a good pace, thanks to the heat and sun. Rhonda, Haimish and Scott were partying hard and enjoyed themselves, I volunteered to drive home at night so I consumed bottle after bottle of water.

next event: calf scratching - two people wrestling a calf down, the quickest pair wins the price

calf doesn't look impressed

the first main event: riding along a young bull, jumping off the horse, wrestling until the bull submits or runs away. The quickest person wins the price

Jumping off

Holding on to the horns

Gotcha!

Amazing event, great for taking many action-packed photos. I learned that the horses and bulls are bread and trained to buck – to make it really hard for the contestants to stay on. Looks really dangerous to me. One cowboy had to be picked up and transported off the field on a stretcher by medics, hope he wasn't too badly injured. They had some ambulances there, but the next hospital is probably all the way back in Mount Isa, 160km down the road.

The next event: bucking horses - you need to stay on the horse for at least I think 8 seconds, then you get a score from the judges - highest points wins

These horses are wild!

The security guards, three police officers and I were probably the only sober people in the evening when the band started playing. Most people were camping at the event over night or just rolling out their swags when the party finished – it probably still kept on going for many more hours after we left.

The second main event - bucking bulls

You better start young if you want to become a pro!

A cowboy with his foot stuck between the ropes - and the support crew rescuing him

You wouldn't want to meet these bulls out in a paddock!

The last event for the day: the donkey race: Women had to sprint from one end, grab a sombrero or scarf, continue to the other side....

.... drink a Tequila shot, finish a small bowl of baked beans without tools, sprint to the other side of the arena, climb over the fence, jump onto a donkey (facing backwards) and ride over the finishing line

... or fall off the donkey trying

That is the right technique

The drive home was hard but funny – Rhonda was in a great mood, singing along to the very loudly played songs in the car. The hard part was to make sure not to hit any wildlife – I saw many kangaroos and wallabies next to the road, at least one wild horse and some wild bulls. Rhondas Prado drives really well and we made it back safe and sound.