What happens when two columnists meet a bull? Though the joke answer eludes me, it would no doubt include the word bulls***. And on Sunday my Australian fellow-columnist, Richard Glover, and I castrated one. Well, not quite. We sat on a steer's neck while its owner - knife, scissors and antiseptic in hand - did the awful deed.

I feel that it's important for a Times columnist to keep learning, lest, as the decades roll by, our columns dwindle into mellow reminiscence; so when Richard and I wandered over to a eucalyptus-shaded pen from which we could hear bellowing, and were hailed by a part-time cattle-man (and full-time professor of vetinerary science at Sydney University) and invited to pin his bull down while he removed its testicles... why, reader, can you imagine with how little hesitation a cry of delight sprang from our lips?

Richard presents the biggest drive-time radio show in Sydney and writes a weekly column for The Sydney Morning Herald. He and his family have a property in the gum-forested hills - dirt road, no electricity, log fire, the shriek of lorikeets to wake you at dawn... that kind of thing. Fantastic.

We already knew that a mass castration was going on because we had been earlier to see the herding of male calves into a paddock, and heard the enraged mooing of their fearsome mothers.

What we didn't know was that among the calves was an adolescent the weight of a Fiat Punto, about whose prospects as a professional bovine lothario the professor had thought again.

Ah baleful rethink! Sedated, but by no means sedate, the young steer seemed to have some inkling of his fate. He was doing his vigorous best to get to his feet. “You sit on his neck, where we need the ballast,” the professor said to Richard. “And you sit on the shoulders,” he said to me.

We straddled the front end of the beast, one behind the other, like two delinquent teenagers who had invaded a kiddies' playground and were preparing for a violent see-saw contest against a rival team. But the rival team was an enormous animal. We expected at any moment to be projected skywards with one taurine flick. If we cared for this sort of thing we would have become cattle-men, not columnists.

As the knife and scissors descended, I don't mind telling you I shut my eyes. It's harder for a man, isn't it? I desperately wanted to cross my legs, but there was a bull's neck between them. A lady vet was also present to assist, and her insouciance was terrible.

When it was over I struggled a little weakly to my feet; the bullock (as he now was) began to revive and seemed already to be forgetting about it; and Richard and I departed for a cup of tea and Lamington cake. Our swagger spoke of Hemingway. But our thoughts were with Proust.

More cuts required?

Departing England, some boastful remarks of Gordon Brown's rang in my ears - something about Britain being (because of his management) “better placed” than other countries to cope with the financial storm.

Arriving in Australia I found the vexed question of the hour to be whether their national Treasury's A$44billion surplus, built up during the years of prosperity, will all have to be spent in weathering the downturn (Australia claims to be able to avoid recession) - or whether, as the Federal Government hopes, a small surplus can still be maintained.

So “better placed” than whom? Where are all these other countries worse placed than Britain? Just Iceland?

Shear heaven

But from the viewpoint of a Derbyshire ewe, Britain's sheep are undoubtedly better placed. I've just been to inspect a few hundred Merino ewes, gathered for shearing at dawn tomorrow.

I'm at Trilby Station up in the Outback near a tiny settlement called Louth in the northwestern corner of New South Wales, a super place where they take guests, either in some cool bungalows by a pool, or camping (as we are) among kangaroos on the banks of the Darling river. It's 36 degrees; and Merinos are the woolliest things you ever saw. Poor creatures, the land is so sparse it's ten acres per sheep.

There was a lively correspondence recently among the more status-conscious readers of The Spectator as to how many acres you need before you can properly call your property an estate. The consensus was that 1,000 acres is the minimum. Trilby Station is 200,000 acres. I think that counts.

Life on the Outback is staggeringly big. The hopes, the distances, the effort, the ingenuity, the imagination... but also the cruel reminders of lost endeavour.

Remind me to come back to Trilby. But also not to be a sheep-farmer. Or a matador. Or a vet.

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