Through the ringer

In the Northern Territory’s dry season, Liz Cook has one of the most dangerous jobs on Earth – wild cattle and buffalo ringing. She shares her unlikely journey with Tiffany Dunk.

- Tiffany Dunk

When Liz Cook first arrived in the Top End in 2013, she had one broken arm and was carting six-month-old son Blake in the other, while two-year-old Charlie trailed behind. The trio was finally joining Liz’s husband, Willie, who had taken a contract flying for North Australian Helicopters five months earlier. He’d been forced to find a new job after their dairy grazing farm in New Zealand’s Central Otago was sold by the bank when a client defaulted on a large payment.

The sweltering heat, red dust and isolation were a far cry from the lush green hills, relatively close quarters and chilly temperatures they were used to, but Liz was determined to make a go of their new life Down Under.

And so, as she waved her husband off on what was supposed to be a six-day trip to a property some 1500km away (it would prove instead to be six long weeks, thanks to a series of floods), Liz gathered the kids and stepped inside their new home … where she promptly found a snake in the toilet.

“During the time Willie was away, Charlie got stung by a paper wasp and I’d never seen one of those before,” Liz chuckles to The Weekly. “We’re an hour away from town and I was like, ‘Will that cause a major reaction?’ Then there was the time I had to go and start a bore that was about 50km from the homestead.

“I went out in a Toyota that wasn’t exactly reliable and had to crank the handle and pull it away before it let go. There were a couple of times it swung off and went flying over, narrowly missing my head, and there I was with the two little boys. It was a tough time out there … I thought, ‘God, what have I done?’”