‘My leg went green’: How stoush with cow ended in a 7hr ordeal

A Queensland cattle trainer has revealed the details of horrific accident on site that almost led to the loss of her leg.

JONI HALL

Cattle trainer, 40, Clermont

Having your legs pinned by a quad bike for seven hours gives you a lot of time to think.

In 2003, I was separating cows from the young weaners and one mother didn’t want to leave the yard. I tried to persuade her and flipped the bike. I was only 200m from the house but everyone was out working and the boss’s wife was teaching in the classroom.

The two-way radio was flung over the handlebars, where I couldn’t reach. I felt pressure more than pain and could lift the bike enough to relieve it, let the blood flow every now and then, but not enough to kick my legs out.

Spud, the boss, eventually found me and drove me 90km to Richmond (498km west of Townsville), then the RFDS flew me to Townsville.

I ended up with compartment syndrome in four compartments of my lower left leg, then a pseudomonas infection (caused by soil, water and plant-born bacteria) which turned my leg green. They nearly amputated.

Joni Hall.

I spent two months in hospital and it took about nine months to walk again. It was the weirdest feeling, thinking you can walk but can’t.

I’ve got full mobility back but no feeling, because of the nerve damage. That cow really ticked me off. I had already started working with dogs, but this accident definitely cemented that it was the safer way. Instead of running after your own cows, get the dogs to do it.

I’ve got about 27 working dogs, including seniors, middle dogs and pups I’m training.

We go through a 20kg bag of dry dog food every two days and drive an average 20,000km a year to properties across Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia – though I’ve been stuck in WA for the past 18 months, thanks to Covid border closures.

Eighty per cent of the properties I’m working on at the moment run cattle across more than one million acres each.

Basically, my job is to teach young cattle to be self-sufficient in the wild without their mothers – to be compliant and pliable, to eat, drink from troughs and walk through the yards.

School wasn’t for me. I was always passionate about life on the land.

I grew up on a cattle, cotton and feedlot property about 100km outside Clermont, run by Dad, Bevan (61), and his brothers Marcel and Daryl.

They lived in houses 100m apart with Mum Lorraine (60, a nurse) Aunty Jan and Aunty Cheryl. My brother Brendan, 37, sister Nyree, 31, and I were raised alongside our eight cousins.

Dad tells stories of not being able to escape the house to lay out salt licks for the cattle without taking me with him, ever since I was little.

Joni Hall with puppy Chet.

I learnt to ride horses when I was four. After Grade 10, I went to Emerald Agricultural College to study beef production for two years, then started working on properties around Queensland.

We were encouraged to carve our own path. It’s not an easy life but I’ve been doing it that long, it’s just like hanging the washing out. It’s routine. It can be quite lonely because you’re working on your own, living on your own and travelling on your own. I’m on the road every four days and it’s hard to plan much.

The dogs are more of a tool and, after being with them all day, when night comes, I don’t really want their company. I don’t have any favourites but one retired old girl, Cheeky, 12, hangs around the truck with me. Don’t leave any rubbish out or she’ll get into it, though!

I’m an artist too. Sometimes when I’m training the weaners, I might be carving a boab nut but it’s mainly at night time, to fill the hours between 6 and 8pm. I make leather belts, do leather carvings and pencil drawings, all for my own pleasure, not for sale. Drawing is something I’ve been doing forever.

There’s not much (phone/internet) service out here, though it’s surprisingly more than you’d think.

I’ve got a TV in the truck with a hard-drive, but I’ve had it for 13 years and can recite everything on it. I like re-runs of TV series like Big Bang Theory and sometimes The Mentalist, mainly because it’s easy to listen to while I’m drawing.

I train the cattle with earphones in, listening to music or sometimes a story, but it’s easy to lose your spot in a podcast when you’re talking to the dogs.

Muster Dogs, Sunday Jan 23, 7.40pm, ABC TV/iVIEW 

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