One morning when I was summoned by a great commotion, I went armed with the broom, expecting to confront a goanna, or a wayward chicken-hawk. Nothing. I looked into the laying-box where all the complaints were issuing from, and saw the problem. The next hen in line couldn’t wait any longer, and instead of dropping the egg from the roosting-bar, she decided to get into the box. For some reason, two at a time in the box was not acceptable, and the hen in residence wouldn’t let the other hen sit with her in the hay. Finally the desperate interloper perched on the other hen’s back, laid her egg, then hopped onto the side of the box and was gone.
The six boxes were in hot demand by thirty hens, and some began wandering into the house to lay. Nothing was safe—cupboards, any shelf, boxes, even the hand basin in the bathroom! When Charlie sat on an egg on his office chair, a few stockmen were assigned to me for the purpose of building secure laying boxes in the proper places, the chicken pen. So the hens finally got their laying boxes and settled into a routine of laying in the pen, grazing under cattle during the day, and waited for Donna and me, and the broom, to bring their feed in the evening.
On my call, thirty hens would leave the protection of the cow or horse they were grazing under and make a headlong dash for the pen. If a distant hen saw the chicken-hawk in the sky starting a death dive on her, she would squawk for help, and Donna and I would rush to the rescue. Several times a hawk met nothing but a straw broom at the end of its dive, and waggled away with its steering temporarily out of synchronisation.
14
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PRIMA DONNA
When Donna no longer got her exercise keeping the chickens in line all day, our daily walks became top priority. To let me know that it was walking time, she would stand in my path and look up at with an expression that indicated there was something important I should be doing; it was always right on walking time.
Even if I was too tired or too busy, I knew Donna was right, it was important for me to get away from it all and walk. And so we would both go and find my sneakers, then off we would go. Sometimes all the other dogs would join us, and Donna would spend the whole walk bossing them around. Some days, when we set off, you could see one of the other dogs look at Donna, and think, no thanks, you look too crabby and bossy today. And they would go back to sleep.
But Donna thoroughly enjoyed herself, whether she was bossing the other dogs or just with me, bounding over the paddocks, chasing anything that moved, and racing back regularly to check that I was safe. I would walk two miles, Donna covered at least five, zig-zag fashion.
Even when she was having her first litter of puppies, she still didn’t want to miss walking! Her labour started in the afternoon, and she had her first puppy at four o’clock, walking time. When I went to put on my runners, I told her to stay. But when I reached the back gate, there was Donna coming out the door, with difficulty, but determined not to miss our walk. Her motto was, if you go, I go. She had left the puppy, and by the way she was walking, it wouldn’t be long before the next puppy was due. I abandoned the walk and led her back to the little den I had made for her under my desk, to sit and hold her paw during delivery. The next pup came within the hour; it would have been born out on the road somewhere if Donna had gone walking. Or worse, dropped in long grass during one of her dashes after a lizard! It took Donna a few days to realise the puppies were hers; then she was ecstatic, and became a good mother and a fierce protector.
Before she had the puppies, whenever anyone approached my office Donna would bark and challenge them; but when the puppies were in residence no-one except the children could approach without this fiendish animal launching out of her den, hair standing on end, growling menacingly. Even poor Charlie got the treatment. Donna and Charlie had a ‘Mexican stand-off’ relationship: he said a perfunctory ‘Hullo, Donna’ when he saw her; she would just close her eyes and open them in a tolerant way to acknowledge the greeting. He never patted her, she never asked him to. They lived their lives around each other, but with me.
Charles’s rule of no dogs in the house was observed only by Charles; Donna, like all other dogs, had fun breaking all his rules. At night, when Charles and I were sitting in bed reading, the door would open a few inches, and just the tip of a black nose would appear and pause, sniffing the atmosphere. Some nights, when Charles was in a bad mood, he would shout ‘Out!’ and the nose would be gone in a flash. Of course, that was not the end of it; the nose would keep on reappearing until there was no ‘out’ because Charlie was finally asleep. The door would be pushed further open, a pair of eyes would check that he was asleep, then the door would open wide, and the rest of Donna would walk confidently around to my side of the bed to receive a pat, then curl up on the mat with a contented sigh and drift off to sleep.
Some nights when Charlie was in a more cheerful state of mind, the exchange was different. The nose would appear, sniffing. Charlie would ask me, ‘Is that dog anywhere around?’ I would say no. The door would open further, and he would again ask, ‘Are you sure that dog is not here?’ Donna, now in full view, knew the game had started. She would start crawling across the floor past Charles, until she was out of sight at the bottom of the bed. At intervals Charles would ask, ‘Can I hear that dog?’, and Donna would freeze in position; I would say ‘No’, and she would start crawling again until she reached her mat, where she would sigh deeply and curl up.
Charlie would always finish the game by saying, ‘There, I heard that dog!’ Donna’s eyes would lock anxiously onto mine, and I would have to reply, ‘No, no dog here.’ Charlie would chuckle and put out the light, Donna would heave a softer sigh, and we would all go to sleep. In a very short time, I would have Charlie snoring loudly beside me, and Donna providing a stereo effect and amplifying the noise on the other side, on the floor.
Donna was part of every minute of my day, so when I played squash, she too had to join in. As it was, she was quite an important part of my squash game. I used to just hit up against the wall for half an hour or so, for some quick exercise. Like most things on Bullo, in the Charlie years, the squash court was started on the spur of the moment, when Charlie decided he wanted a squash court for a quick work-out. Half was to be underground, for coolness in the hot season, and the other half above ground. But it was not built properly from the word go. An alcoholic mechanic as project manager, directing a heavy drinker who was really just a handyman. They were pouring concrete into moulds, though neither of them knew much about concrete or moulds. I am amazed that the structure is still standing and hasn’t collapsed inwards in a heap. Of course, they didn’t think of drainage, so the squash court fills with a few feet of water every rainy season. And to this day it’s only half finished—it never got past ground level. So I had to play low-level squash: any ball higher than eight feet went scudding across the lawn.
This is where Donna came in; she would race off across the lawn, retrieve the squash ball and place it on top of the wall, then stare at me. Eventually, after many shouts of command and a few threats, she would push the ball over the edge with her nose and would immediately start barking, waiting for the next ball to come over the wall. So ball retrieving came at a price! There was no way to stop the barking—I tried. Whether she was barracking or just saying ‘hurry up and hit it out, so I can join the game’, she made her presence known. If we didn’t hit enough out, she told us, and there would be a pause in play while a ball was deliberately hit out for Donna to retrieve.
Charles couldn’t play alone, because when he hit a ball out, Donna wouldn’t give it back. She would stand looking down into the squash court, ball still in her mouth, and no matter what threats were issued, she just stared at him. If he went to the extreme measure of walking up the stairs to take the ball from her by force, Donna would just run away. So I would be summoned regularly to tell ‘that dog’ to give Charlie the ball. Which she would do immediately, when I was standing next to her, with an expression that clearly said ‘I was just going to do it, when you arrived—truly!�
�� So I had to be present every time Charlie played, because he didn’t like a dog getting the better of him. I suggested I lock Donna up when he played, but then he’d have to retrieve the balls. A few times he had her locked in a room, and the children retrieving the balls, but they soon were noticeably absent whenever Dad played squash. So it would be back to barking Donna retrieving the balls, and me standing next to her to see fair play.
Tennis wore Donna out much quicker. She would race back and forth, following the flight of the ball. Sometimes she’d get cunning and wait near you; then, as you were preparing to swing at the ball, Donna would leap into view and take the ball. Other times, she would crouch below the net and take the ball in flight. Unlike the squash ball, you couldn’t wipe a tennis ball dry, so you would be sprayed with her saliva each time you hit the ball. To play tennis in relative peace, we had to have four ‘Donna’ balls, which would be hit off into distant paddocks, so a rally could be played in peace, with a dry ball, while Donna loped off in pursuit of the soggy one. When she returned, another would be hit. Eventually, exhausted, she would sit quietly under a tree in the shade, and chew the last retrieved ball. She couldn’t resist the occasional bark and whine, but when threatened with being locked up, she would settle down to low grumbling, and chewing.
Donna’s greatest passion was the swimming pool; she lived in the pool. She wouldn’t swim or play in the water alone—this required the girls or me—but at other times you could find her sitting on the step in water up to her neck, with her head resting on the top edge of the pool. From this position she could watch everything that was happening in the house. The occasional beer-seeking employee, trying to sneak into the other end of the house when I was in the kitchen, would be scared out of his wits by a charging wet Donna.
Best of all, Donna loved swimming races. She seemed to know they were competing to win, and would line up with the girls at the edge of the pool while I said ‘Ready, set, go!’ You could see all her muscles ready to leap on ‘go’; she knew the word ‘go’!
Danielle was given a start because she was the youngest by seven years, so when she reached a certain point in the pool, Donna would look at me, waiting for the countdown, then dive in with the older girls right on cue. The competitiveness showed in every stroke of her paw. She could really swim, and would plough through the water at a fast clip. If she passed, one of the girls, usually Danielle, would grab Donna’s tail and be towed along. But Donna wouldn’t give up: pulling Danielle, she would still head for the end of the pool with all the determination of an Olympic swimmer.
Donna and the children weren’t the only keen swimmers in the pool. Each year at the same time, a cormorant flew in from some distant land to the north, and took up residence in our swimming pool for a few weeks, or until it realised there were no fish in that particular hole. The pool was very natural, made out of sandstone, so I suppose from the sky it would look like a rocky billabong. This bird was very possessive, and didn’t like anything else in its billabong. The children had a wonderful time during these weeks. They would dive in and the cormorant would swim after them and peck them; if it got too close, they would call Donna, who would dive in and chase the cormorant, which would dive underwater or hot-foot it out of the pool until Donna had left the water.
This game would go on all day, much to the children’s delight. I am surprised they didn’t go on to become endurance swimmers; I was sure they would develop gills, they were in the water so much. Finally it would dawn on the cormorant that this fishing hole was minus fish, and it would fly away to a better location. But it returned each year, always hopeful of finding fish—or maybe it just enjoyed a few weeks of fun, playing tag with the girls and Donna.
Like all the animals with which I have had the privilege to share my life, Donna was exceptional, a delight, and gave me so many happy hours, days and years; so many wonderful memories.
15
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MAX
One of the beer-searchers that Donna ‘had it in for’ was Max. As hard as he tried to win her over with endless offers of meat, Donna would take all the meat, let him into the house after dark, then raise the alarm. All the dogs would bail him up against a wall, and someone would have to rescue him. A few times in the early hours of the morning Charlie ignored the pleas for help, and at five-thirty when I went to the kitchen to start the day, there were all the dogs sitting staring at their captive, motionless against the wall.
Donna seemed to take pleasure in bailing up Max; maybe she disliked the particular ingratiating manner he used with her, trying to convince her he was her friend. The only result would be a minute raising of her lip to show a faint snarl, accompanied by a growl so low you couldn’t be sure you had heard it. Max never dared lean closer to check! But for some reason, he kept trying to befriend Donna. Dick would warn him he could lose his head, but Max never took advice from anyone, and besides, if he won Donna over, the potential rewards in terms of extra beer were tremendous.
Max is a character of great magnitude; after Uncle Dick, he would have been not the next-longest resident character, but the longest regular temporary visiting character. He used to arrive on the station every year or so, for about three months. The reason was therapeutic; he needed this time to dry out. In town, his normal consumption was two cases of beer a day, just during working hours, not to mention what was consumed when out at night. He always told me he didn’t drink while he was working: two cases of beer represented ‘not drinking’ to Max.
By the end of the year his system would start to get waterlogged, or I should say, grog-logged. The doctor would tell him to stop drinking, but instead he would come to Bullo for a three-month drying-out programme. He always arrived the worse for wear: puffy-faced, with bleary, blood-shot eyes—if you could see them through the puffiness.
Over the months, the puffiness would leave his face, his eyes would clear, and his body would recover, and Max would start to eat regularly. Gradually, a healthy-looking person appeared.
On the station, he was on a restricted daily ration, like everyone else, of six beers a day—plus any other alcohol he could get his hands on.
Max was a good worker, but there were language problems: Max only understood what he wanted to. If he didn’t agree with you he simply said, ‘I no understand’, and that was that. Nothing would get him to change his mind, except maybe—no, definitely—beer. It was very tiring playing these stupid games, but it was the only way I could get my house built.
My realisation that there was a language problem came early in the piece. When I finally had a so-called tradesman at my disposal for a reasonable length of time, the most urgent job was to change the terrible hole described as the bathroom. It was the original all-tin affair, unlined, with a cement floor. A washbasin was suspended on the wall; a raised cement ledge outlined the shower recess and a wooden bench finished the décor. You could scrub the tin and cement for hours and it didn’t look any better. Charles complained regularly that it looked dirty; I told him it was dirty-grey to start with, and with twenty-plus people using it every day, it couldn’t look clean.
Then he complained once too often, on one of my very worst days. In his exasperating manner he took me into the bathroom to show me the dirt on the wall in the shower recess. Twenty people had just been through, and this was grease washed off men who had been working in the workshop. Charles was of the opinion that I should stop cooking, rush in and clean the shower from ceiling to floor, just for him. His last words were, ‘Don’t let me see that wall dirty again.’
My response, to myself, was, ‘Okay, Charlie-boy, you won’t!’
I took a sledgehammer, and knocked the whole wall out! It was only six feet across, so I didn’t do too much serious damage to the overall structure. I pulled the shower curtain across, so when you opened the door it wasn’t too evident that the wall was missing. The next night the staff hung a blanket over the hole, and went about their showers without a word; they saw the expression on my face. I rem
oved the blanket before Charles turned up for his shower.
He walked past the kitchen while I was cooking, walked in the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain, and there was the vast expanse of distant mountains—but no dirty wall. Charlie, being Charlie, stepped into the shower recess, pulled the curtain across and proceeded to have a shower, exposing his all to the landscape, and anyone who just happened to be walking by; our Charlie was quite an exhibitionist. He walked back past me in the kitchen and simply said, ‘It’s an improvement.’
The wall stayed like that for many months, and having a shower became the highlight of everyone’s day. You could be showering and a horse would put its head under the blanket. The milking cow would pinch the soap; a young poddy calf once ended up right in the recess, and had to be forcibly removed; snakes found it a cool place to rest. You always had to check.
So here was my opportunity to improve this situation. I drew a plan for Max; it seemed very clear to me, and I explained the drawing, showing him walls, door, windows, shower and bath. But most of his previous supervisors had been Yugoslav, and could explain plans in his own language; no such luck on this project. So I asked him if he understood what I wanted, and he replied, ‘Oh, y-e-e-e-s-s!’ So like a fool, I wandered off and left him to it.
Some of My Friends Have Tails Page 19