Boots and bridles
You can hear the girls long before you see them. Whooping and hollering from their saddles like veteran outback cowboys, Julia, Cynthia, Feya, Samira, Josephine and Alyssa are hidden from sight behind the lip of a craggy ridge, taking the lead to guide a herd of Black Angus cattle along a heavily timbered and precariously sloping bush track. They are driving their charges to a cattle yard on a property in the remote hill country outside Tamworth in NSW. And the sounds filling the air are of pure joy.
It’s mid afternoon and desperately dry and hot. The paddocks on the lower slopes of the 518-hectare property, Leconfield, are parched by a drought that holds the country in a vice-like grip. Thick red dust rises in clouds around the girls as they crest the ridge, waving their hats and scarves like the banners of an approaching army.
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