Musterers work quickly in the hot Australian sun to skin and take the cuts they need before the meat begins to spoil.
There’s pretty much one thing on the menu at the station kitchen, meat. You can have it anyway you like, blue, raw or medium-rare. Just not well done.
On a cattle station in the Australian outback, where the nearest shop is a 110 mile drive, you have to make do with what you’ve got. Which just so happened to be 10,000 cattle on 50,000 acres of Australian bush.
One evening, when the sun low and our stomachs empty, we piled into the station ute and rattled out in search of dinner.
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Don was the finest cowboy I ever met. One of the last. Bar fights, droughts, floods he's seen it all in his 30 years as a musterer.
I rarely saw him on two legs, he preferred four.
Kiana cattle station. The Northern Territory, Australia 2015.
I heard howling in the desert one night, just one voice, metres from where I slept. It came softy at first, a whimper rising to a moan. A howl that pricked the hairs on my neck and made my heart jump. There was sadness and loss in that midnight song.
The morning revealed this old girl, warming herself in the early morning sun. Just looking for a spot of company.
The Devils Marbles, Northern Territory. Australia 2015.
Barbarity, or just humanity?
Blood runs freely from the nubs of cattle's freshly cut horns as they are loaded for market. Why? So they do not injure themselves or bruise the meat of others.
For the musterers, this is their livelihood hood and they were hesitant of photos being taken. They know the repercussions and attitudes of people unused to this industry.
As I worked with them, during the processing of cattle, they acted with the utmost professionalism for the animals. Only performing what was "necessary", and not once goading or provoking the cattle. It was rumoured on another ranch, scientists were trying to breed hornless cattle, thus to eliminate this stressful act.
For now, as long as we expect fresh meat in the supermarket for a growing population and continue to lead a predominately meat based diet, intensive farming will continue.
The Northern Territory, Australia 2015.
“Young men now don’t know the back end of a car from the front” Ron would muse between exhalations of his home-grown tobacco.
He was concerned for the future. Men of his generation were a dying breed; the practical, spit on your hands sort that could take an engine apart and get the bugger running again.
There were no “young uns” to replace him, they were in the city. Who would work the land?
“Immigrants?” he laughed.
The welts and scars written across his hands told another story.
The Atherton Tablelands, Australia 2015.