crossing the road

The farm at Sams Creek is divided by the Princes Highway - half of the property is on one side, half on the other side of the road. For 40+ years moving the herd from one part of the farm to the other has required an on the road crossing... Ours is one of the last on-the-road crossings left on the Princes Highway - most farms have under the road crossings - and for good reason - cows and fast moving cars are not a good combination.

this is a taste of what happens here every couple of months...




Generally a minimum of 3 people are needed to cross the herd over the road - one person for each direction of traffic (that makes sense does it!) and another to open the gate and round up the herd stragglers . That's my father in the middle of the road - he's just opened the gate and is encouraging the girls to get a move on (crossing cattle is not something you want to dilly-dally with). Gate opening is his assigned position... (lucky bugger - it's the easy job!)



For many years my job has been to head north to stop traffic ... I don't have a nice little 'stop & go' lollipop sign - I have to step out in front of any approaching vehicles and just wave my arms around like a deranged woman (I do this part of the job particularly well).

So the gate has been opened, the herd is moving smartly across - the older herd members lead the way and teach the new ones what to do - cattle are not fond of bitumen - and for many of the young calves this is their first crossings.




Farmer Phil gets the south approach (there he is in the distance - through a gap in the herd... and already he's found an opportunity for a chat) - both approaches are tricky - but on the south side approaching vehicles don't really have much vision of what is up ahead (oops there's a herd of cattle in the middle of the road... what to do? what to do?) so FP plonks his ute beside the road and gets the muddy hazard lights a-blinking




If you look at the road marking you'll notice that I'm in the middle of the highway... I did my arm waving bit and this time it was a local whose car was stopped - yippee - no trying to explain what is going on... and no chance that the car will attempt to go through the herd... Hey I know it sounds stupid - but this has happened - more than once!

On other occassions I have had to jump out of the way of vehicles that seem not to notice either me (and my arm waving) or the large black creatures right in front of them... not a fun time...


This crossing was blissfully uneventful - it only takes a couple of minutes to get the whole herd over the road. In a few months time we'll move them back again, and so on and so forth...that's farmlife...