Rodeo

I spent Christmas on the beach, my birthday on a farm and now I've spent Easter at a rodeo. Completely different to how I'd celebrate these occasions back home.
The new jobs going good, I never appreciated the work that goes into these shows before its full on. The family I work for Mick and Jackie have 2 food vans, 2 snow cone stands, a coffee stand and 3 rides. So quite a big operation. The areas they work in are agricultural shows and rodeos and for instance the Saturday morning markets. Every event or market you need to set up the stall and all the merchandise, do your trading then pack it all down when you're done. It's bloody hard work but I'm enjoying it. Friday night was an experience because it was my first rodeo. It was so amusing at first cause they actually have real cowboys. They all wear jeans, a shirt, boots, a hat and an on show big flashy belt. They have events like horseback racing, bareback, bronking bulls and horses and ones where you race someone to catch a cow with a lasso and tie it up.
My job on the showgrounds is on the snowcone stand. A snowcone is a cup of crushed ice with cordial poured over it. It's quite funny cos when I was younger I always wanted a mr frosty machine and when I got one it was too hard to crush the ice and I was devastated I couldn't use it and now basically my job is making something very similar. We sell candyfloss and popcorn too so I get the kids high on sugar then send them to their parents!
So I started on Friday preparing the canteen (a snack van) for the rodeo on Friday night. We started at 10am and finished about 10:30pm, Saturday was the street market starting at 7:00am till 4pm cos we had to then pack down and set up for the Sunday market in a new location. Sunday was 7:00am at the market then straight onto the rodeo finishing at 12:30am. A bloody long day that was especially since I went out on Saturday night! So as you can see its long hours and hard work.
I'm now in a town called Toowoomba which was a 5 hour drive from Roma. I was up at 8:30am and we had to pack up the camp and drive here and set up camp in the dark. As you can guess I'm absolutely shattered. It's generations of the family that all own their own rides and stands. So there's a lot of people and everyone's so friendly I've already made new friends and having fun. I've already seen two towns in Australia that I'd otherwise never see and experienced a rodeo so I can really see myself sticking at this job.