I couldn’t have picked a better weekend to go up to the Sunshine Coast. They really laid on the weather for me with glorious warm blue sky days. The trip up took forever as the Bruce Highway was full of bottlenecks and roadworks. I did manage to find this lovely pig outside the butchers’ shop when I stopped for a coffee on the way. It was late afternoon before I arrived at my destination, a beautiful little farm on the edge of the rainforest near Buderim. I left on Saturday morning with a huge bag full of freshly picked oranges, mandarins, tree tomatoes and avocados!
My next stop was Kenilworth, to catch up with my very dearest friend of thirty years. To get to her place you drive past the Loweke Jersey Stud and I couldn’t resist stopping to look at the cows coming out from the dairy. I was tempted just for a minute to call in and ask if there were any cows for sale but then thought better of it. It is quite an expensive process to get cows from ticky country cleared to come into our tick-free country above the range here and, also, dairy cows don’t do very well here in traprock country.
It was wonderful to catch up with Tina and Neil. I wish I could have stayed longer but mid-afternoon I headed off to Caloundra to catch up with Kevin and Kerrie who I met when they came to camp on the farm for a few days. Kevin was keen to help with the REO bus conversion if we were to buy it. When I pulled up I was delighted to see his 1982 FJ40 Land Cruiser with 307 Chevrolet motor that he has owned for thirty years. They also showed me through their garden which was a little oasis only a couple of blocks from the beach. Bamboo mixed with raised veggie garden beds and a dry stone creek ran the length of the garden. It was absolutely stunning! I also went to visit the cemetery where Mum and Dad a buried. I had a bit of a chat and told them what I had been up to and fixed up a few flowers on other people’s graves.
Sunday morning arrived soon enough, another stunning day, and after a delicious breakfast at the Real Grocer in Golden Beach I headed off to pay a last visit to the cemetery and then back down the highway towards home, wishing I could stay just one more day. Traffic was much lighter and the trip about two hours shorter!
The cold temperatures have been a real shock this week. The only warm place in our house is the kitchen when the slow combustion stove is going! I measured the temperature in our bedroom this morning around 7 am and it was 8 degrees!
We have plenty of feed for winter and a big demand for our Southdown sheep, so I decided to buy some Merino ewes and put one of our Southdown or Babydoll rams over them. Agent Ross from McDougalls brought me a pen of 23 ewes this week. We kept them in the yards overnight, giving them a quarantine drench before sending them up to their own paddock. What a pleasure they were to work with. They were incredibly well behaved compared to our stubborn sheep. They weren’t wild like those Victorian rogues in our mob! They moved quietly when directed and the job was done in no time. I did have a few Merinos when I first moved out here but they didn’t seem as hardy as the Southdowns. I will be keeping a close eye on them.
June is the Rare Breeds Trust Cattle Month so I would like to tell you a bit about Tuli Cattle. I have seen Tuli cross calves pop up at the Pig & Calf Sale from time to time so I am guessing that there is a dairy farmer on the Downs somewhere that A.I.s his heifers with Tuli semen. I saw some humorous advertising from the 1980s touting Tuli as the Bra-less breed – meaning they don’t have any Bos Indicus (Brahman) content. A couple of years ago the CSIRO sold all of its semen stock including Tuli. The RBTA tried to buy some but missed out at the time, however, we have since been donated some.
The Tuli is known to be a gentle, fertile, hardy Sanga breed, easy calving and naturally polled. They are well suited to the northern Queensland country, coming originally from Zimbabwe. The name Tuli means dust. They are known for their tolerance of extreme heat and have a minimal amount of fat but still good marbling. Sanga cattle is the collective name for indigenous cattle of sub-Saharan Africa. They are sometimes identified as a subspecies with the scientific name Bos taurus africanus.
Tuli were first exported from Zimbabwe to other countries in the 1980s. All full blood Tuli are registered on www.AgPro.technology as a breed and performance register. Jack Milbank, owner of Hartwood Cattle Co in Bundaberg, has collected all CSIRO and all Australian Breeding Management bloodlines as the only two imports to Australia and is continuing to produce embryos using the last pure DNA verified donor cows.
Jack’s work is supported by the original importers of the breed as the nucleus herd is rebuilt. Due to foot-and-mouth outbreaks in Africa, no further genetics can be exported so all Tuli found outside Africa originated from bloodlines brought into Australia and were then exported to USA, Mexico, Columbia, Argentina and NZ. The International Tuli Bull Sale will be held in Bundaberg in October 2023. It will feature fifteen Tuli bulls from sires which were not previously available outside Africa, originating from semen collected in a South Australian quarantine facility in 1993.
I noticed on the Tuli website (tuli.com.au) that they cleverly advertise the use of Tuli sires over other breeds, calling them Anguli (Angus/Tuli) Murguli (Murray Grey/Tuli) Waguli (Wagyu/Tuli) and so on. They are definitely a handy breed and one that deserves a place in Australia. We have 36 genetic bloodlines with 5000 years of breeding behind them.
