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Outback 8
How difficult would it be for a city child to cope with outback life and learn to be a jackaroo - a way of life that's foreign to today's youth? We've taken eight children to the heart of the outback: Longreach, Queensland to find out.
In the dry and dusty centre of Australia lies the outback, a place where thousands of families make their living on cattle and sheep properties. Here kids are expected to lend a hand as soon as they can ride a horse or care for animals. As they grow older they will pick up casual work on neighbouring properties securing odd jobs to mend fences and muster cattle. These young apprentice stockmen and women are called jackaroos.
How would city kids cope with the physicality of the bush, the dry and dusty environment and putting the livestock's feeds before their own?
In Outback 8, eight children - four from Australia and four from the UK - will attend Australia's oldest agricultural college, the training ground for thousands of working jackaroos. Over one month, the Outback 8 will learn how to ride a horse, work as a team, care for sheep and cattle, hear about bush heritage and indigenous culture and experience the natural wonder of the outback. All this training and experience will prepare them for one final assignment: to come together as a team to muster a mob of 200 cattle across the open rugged outback terrain of Australia.
This is the ultimate challenge for the Outback 8.