"I got really serious about it after going to a steer wrestling school in Junee in '96. I keep my practise horse here, bought him off a mate in Goulburn but he originally came from Victoria. In NSW and Victoria they're ten steps ahead of us because they have more rodeos so close together. Out here there's such a distance factor. A practise horse can be one that's slowed down a bit, or he might be in training and have the speed but not be doing it quite right, so you practise on him until you know he's got it right as well.
 
"Last year I bought six Texas Longhorn cows and a dozen straws of Longhorn semen from a bloke in Charters Towers. Three of those cows were in calf when I bought them and all six are now in calf again, so it's just a matter of slowly expanding the numbers. We used to buy cattle from wherever we could find them, mostly up in the Gulf Country, but finding the right size with the right horns wasn't easy. Then the people you're buying them from would know what you want them for and suddenly they're twice what they should be worth. We'd like to move on to selling stock to a contractor, but at the moment I'm just breeding cattle for myself and my mates.
 
"If I didn't have my own horse and arena I'd be just hopeless. I'm a fairly inexperienced steer wrestler and I rely on the initial training I did at the school. A lot depends on what the steer does and you've got to react instantly. He may pull his head down or turn away, or maybe the horse is running wide so you have to change the way you get off. Maybe you've got to slide down and push yourself over with your feet and do a dive into mid air. Once you've encountered a few different situations a number of times you don't have to think, 'Now what do I do here?'
 
"In the short term I want to be consistently competitive. There's nothing worse than stuffing up a run where you know you could have nailed something but you made a silly error. And most people who go to rodeos, their long term goal is to win a significant event.
 
"We've also bought a big American pick-up truck to accommodate our son, Campbell. Colin and Kylee are carting Kolt around and Emma and Andrew Forster from Apache Downs, towards Winton, take their young son around, and we generally all pull up together. We put our matresses in a big long horse trailer.
 
"The week between Cloncurry and Mount Isa everyone stays here. They pretty much rock up on the Tuesday with their horses and everyone can relax and have a good time and go out to the grounds in the morning. We all practise together and encourage each other. If you get criticism from people like that you take it from them. A lot of the ti,e you'll do things that you don't realise are wrong, but later on you'll see it because it's one of your mates telling you. You may do something in a pretty fast time but you make some pretty fundamental mistakes. But you got away with them and still pulled it off. You can take some shortcuts, but there is a fairly set method of doing it and some things which you really shouldn't do. Si it's good to have a group of people that you know are honest as opposed to some idiot standing behind the bar who might just say 'Yeah, that was good, mate'."