Last night at the restaurant it started out like any other night. The usual crowd.
A table of old ducks dressed to the nines swapping stories on long suffering husbands, grandkids and children over cheeky gin and tonics and lemon, lime and bitters.
Families dressed in R.M.Williams flannel shirts tucked into blue jeans, belt buckles boots and akubras.
The occasional first and last date type of couples and everything else in between.
It seemed like a normal night to most, with the exception of one thing really. The occasional 'moo' braying from the car park.
One of the farmers had a dairy calf in a cage in the back of his ute. Just a few months old. He'd bought her, daisy, that is, as one of eight yesterday as part of a charity auction.
Problem was, she was the last one to pick up and he had dinner booked with the in-laws from out of town.
What's a farmer to do in a pickle? Well bring the calf along for dinner of course.
Being a city slicker through and through I had to say hello to miss daisy. After all of my fondest memories as a child were when we visited our family's mccauliffe dairy farm at mothar mountain. Quite the novelty for a girl born and bred on the gold coast.
So naturally I was the first one in the car park to greet her. Rather than shy away, she leaned over and nuzzled
my hand with her wet nose, curling her long, coarse blue tongue in between my fingers. She then leaned against the barrier, pleading for a quick back rub.
I indulged her for a bit before racing back to waitressing duties. After washing my hands first of course.
Novelty over, the night continued as normal with other patrons barely battling an eyelid at the black and white resident in the car park.
Except the owners in-laws from Sydney. It was their first time to Gympie and clearly found the edition of a cow in the car park a bit unnerving.
It didn't stop them ordering steak though. All went well until the steaks started coming out. As if on cue, the minute the first set of rumps came out a 'mooooooo' echoed from the car park.
As I set the meal down with steak knives I noticed the customer's face had turned a shade of grey. Both looked at their plate and then out to the car park.
Then another set of steaks came out and the mooing intensified. Somehow over the course of the night more than 15 people ordered steak last night and every time a rump, eye fillet or T-bone came out, mooing erupted and echoed from the car park.
The chef kept asking if there was something wrong with the steaks because they kept being sent back to the kitchen half eaten. I had to point out it wasn't so much his cooking but the dinner guest in the car park that was putting diners off their meal.
Before long daisy's owner went down and gave her some hay for dinner and she settled down for a nap.
As the best of the eagles flowed out of the speakers in the restaurant, the dulcet tones of cow snoring started joining in.
Imagine a rumbling, half broken rattling chainshaw. That's what a cow snore sounds like.
All in all an interesting night and brought whole meaning to the question of how you like your steak done doesn't it?
X
J
