Love in the Outback

by Deb Hunt

  ‘We lost a horse, a cow, all the chooks and ducks and most of the sheep.’

  ‘How many sheep was that?’

  ‘Three thousand.’

  ‘Didn’t you have any warning?’

  She laughed and shook her head. ‘It got noisy all of a sudden.’

  The normally sluggish creek that ran past their house was inundated by floodwater ten feet high that arrived without warning and roared through the property, destroying the sheep, the house, most of the outbuildings and all of the garden, including her treasured rosebushes.

  ‘We eventually found the shearer’s quarters sixteen kilometres downstream,’ she said. ‘They were forty foot up the side of a hill.’

  More seriously Jenny’s father, who had been staying with them while he recovered from a heart bypass operation, was also taken by the flood and swept off his feet. He ended up clinging to a pepper tree in the garden and had to be rescued by helicopter. There was worse to come. Far from being safe, Jenny’s father ended up back in the floodwater when the helicopter that rescued him got caught in the swirling water as it tried to take off. It crash-landed, leaving the pilot Dave, Jenny’s son Andy, and her unlucky father stranded. Two of Jenny’s grandchildren – eight-year-old Ben and ten-year-old Keith – had already been airlifted to safety and they witnessed the crash from a nearby rise.

  ‘They set off to get help,’ said Jenny. That meant embarking on a long and difficult walk to Olary to raise the alarm, and it was another six hours before the stranded threesome were eventually rescued. It was a year before the family could move back in and even then they slept on the veranda for months while repair work continued.

  ‘I vowed I’d never plant another rosebush,’ said Jenny, and then she looked at me and smiled. ‘I have, of course.’

  I listened with growing incredulity to the litany of disasters she’d witnessed: the time a gaslight blew up in a local girl-guide camp, the time her son, Greg, knocked his teeth out and tore his nose off falling from his bike, and the day her husband, Keith, speared his arm on the branch of a mulga tree. Each time, the Flying Doctor was called. Jenny and Keith hosted a Flying Doctor clinic on their property once a month, in a purpose-built clinic that attracted patients from miles around. ‘It was the least we could do after all the Flying Doctor has done for us,’ said Jenny.

  Everywhere I turned it was the same story. When a lad mustering sheep came off his motorbike and broke his back the Flying Doctor landed on a dirt strip, stabilised his injuries and flew him to the nearest major hospital. When a child needing regular chemotherapy couldn’t get to hospital the Flying Doctor stepped in. When a stockman was bitten by a king brown, when a first-time mum went into premature labour or a girl got poked in the eye with a stick, when skin cancers, heart attacks, strokes, broken bones, dog bites, spider bites and car crashes happened in a remote area, the story was always the same. The hardship those women had endured was something far beyond anything I had ever experienced.

  As the final day drew to a close I realised with quiet shame that I had missed the point. Yes, of course there were easier ways of raising money and faster ways of making Christmas puddings but there was a reverence in what we were doing, a sense of grace in the endlessly repetitive tasks and the challenge of facing another gruelling day and another eight hours of nurturing those blobs of unremarkable ingredients until they were transformed into something magical. Each pudding was given such close attention at every stage of production that some of that attention rubbed off. Each plump, cosseted, calico-wrapped parcel became a silent offering of thanks, a grateful acknowledgement of all that the Flying Doctor had done to help desperate families no one else could reach.

  The last pudding was lifted out of the copper at 2.45 in the afternoon, to be squeezed and drained, dried and wiped, patted and pulled into shape. The wire was checked, the calico cleaned, the pleats smoothed, ears tugged, tag attached, tie twisted, hook threaded and the final pudding was hung on the rack to dry at ten past three. Seeing all those fat calico bundles, each a creamy white with pert rabbit ears protruding from tightly closed wire necks, I felt a sense of pride that I’d had a small part to play in that huge production. I gave one of the puddings a discreet pat on its round bottom before I left the storeroom.

  I went home at the end of that final exhausting day clutching a calico-wrapped Christmas pudding, with instructions to hang it for two months and boil it for two hours on Christmas Day. On the way home I stopped at the petrol station. I was still wearing an apron and had to explain what I’d been doing.

  ‘I don’t know why those ladies bother,’ the attendant casually remarked. ‘I always buy my Christmas pudding in a tin.’

  A tin? A tin? God forbid. I could no longer accept that puddings be wrapped in anything other than calico nor boiled in anything other than coppers.

  That Christmas we enjoyed every mouthful of our Broken Hill Women’s Auxiliary pudding. We both knew how much loving attention had gone into each little bundle of joy.

  chapter twenty-six

  So what of you and CC, I hear you ask. Well, I’d thought not falling madly in love with him when we first met was a negative, but I grew to realise it was the best thing that could ever have happened. The warmth, tenderness, respect and love – yes, that was in there too – that I felt for CC grew stronger the longer I knew him. I was glad I hadn’t lost my head and that for once my feet were firmly on the ground. I wasn’t a jittery bag of jangled passion or a sinister stalking spinster, I was a grown-up (it took long enough but I got there in the end). I learnt to approach CC with kindness and reason instead of the tortured angst of misplaced passion and thwarted desire that had characterised most of my other relationships. When we disagreed on something I argued my case without worrying he would leave me or thinking our relationship was on the rocks. That said, there are degrees of disagreement and for a while there we were in the middle of an absolute humdinger.

  We had decided to get a dog. We were too old for children and a dog was the next best thing. The question that nearly drove us apart was what sort of dog? CC knew what he wanted (a guard dog) and what he didn’t want (a poodle) but other than a family Jack Russell in childhood I’d never had a dog, so I was hesitating. I wanted a loyal companion and a faithful friend, an obedient dog that didn’t shed too much hair, wouldn’t destroy the garden, wouldn’t eat the chickens and would come when called. I was searching for an unattainable ideal of the ‘right’ dog. I couldn’t shake the romantic notion that the right dog would simply turn up one day; it would find us rather than the other way around. It was ridiculous, a throwback to the notion I used to have that the right man would simply turn up one day and my life would be sorted – no work involved, just an instant fix. CC did turn up but he was the wrong man, not my type at all, but then he turned out to be the right man so where did that leave me? In the Broken Hill library and back at the second-hand bookshop.

  I armed myself with What Dogs Want, A Dog of Your Own, Dogs for Dummies, Let’s Have Healthy Dogs and Identifying Dog Breeds. I downloaded copies of Before You Get Your Puppy and After You Get Your Puppy because what if we didn’t get a rescue dog? What if we got a puppy instead? I bought dog beds in three different sizes and shifted them between my office, the laundry and the back door to find the perfect location. I bought three dog bowls and a range of chews and treats. CC already had a lead, there was a kennel in the garden from his last dog and I got quotes on putting up fencing to protect the veggie patch. I went back to the tip and scavenged for soft toys so the new member of our family would have something to play with and I bought a bright purple collar (all right, three – I wasn’t sure what size I’d need). I was an expectant dog owner, a dog owner in waiting, and the only thing we didn’t have was a dog. It was beginning to feel a bit like a phantom pregnancy.

  Leaving aside the indecision about breeds, we couldn’t agree on what dogs were for. In CC’s world a dog should stand at l
east as tall as your knees and exhibit clear dog-like behaviour: living outdoors, guarding your property, chewing on the thighbone of an even larger animal and barking at intruders.

  ‘Dogs don’t like to be kept indoors, they feel trapped, it’s cruel to keep a dog indoors,’ CC declared.

  ‘It doesn’t say that in any of the books,’ I muttered, feeling like CC had an unfair advantage as he’d had dogs all his life. His last was a blue heeler and from what I’d read, that was the Australian cattle dog equivalent of a German shepherd, the classic dog of choice for police forces and military units around the world. And in my humble opinion, only slightly less aggressive than a Rottweiler (courageous, loyal, fearless, confident and devoted, according to the books, which sounded more like the perfect attack animal than the ideal family pet).

  I’d seen a litter of soft, floppy, dove-grey bundles at the RSPCA as I was driving past one day so I called in, picked one up and cuddled it.

  ‘What is it?’ I cooed.

  ‘A rottie cross,’ the vet cooed back.

  A rose by any other name, I thought, and put the small dove-grey bundle down.

  If a dog was any smaller than a blue heeler CC believed it should have certain physical attributes to compensate, like the strength and muscle of a Staffordshire bull terrier. ‘A dog has to be able to defend itself,’ he said. ‘And if your dog gets into a fight you’ve got to back it up.’

  Who said anything about fighting? I was thinking a dog might sit on the sofa with us. Dogs were part of the family where I came from. Gran had spaniels, my sister had West Highland whites, and other friends had a variety of street dogs: mutts with wagging tails, lolling tongues and curly coats that slept indoors, curled up against the Aga. Some even had their own armchairs. I remembered Nipper the Jack Russell loved nothing better than curling up on your lap and falling asleep while the television was on. CC and I had a long way to go to find a compromise.

  It didn’t help that every second dog in Broken Hill seemed to be a staffy, a rottie, an American pitt bull or a mix of all three. I saw them chained up in the back of utes, salivating and ready to attack with huge jaws and powerful shoulders. The Barrier Daily Truth carried regular reports of stray dogs roaming the back lanes and savaging innocent passers-by or randomly killing timid family pets. I didn’t want a vicious beast, I wanted a dog I could cuddle.

  ‘What about a spaniel?’ I suggested.

  ‘Its ears are too long; they get infected.’

  ‘Golden retriever?’

  ‘Too much hair.’

  ‘Bichon Frisé?’

  ‘White rat.’

  In his own way, CC was as prejudiced as I was. He refused to consider anything with curly hair and floppy ears, which ruled out spoodles, cavoodles, labradoodles and all the other cute ooodle crossbreeds. ‘They’re not real dogs,’ he said, definitively. Our conversations degenerated into mud-slinging arguments.

  ‘What’s your problem with bull terriers?’

  ‘Those hairless white things with long snouts? They look like ugly thuggish brutes.’

  ‘You shouldn’t judge a dog on its looks.’

  ‘Really? So how come you don’t like poodles?’

  ‘Poodles aren’t real dogs.’

  ‘Of course they are! Poodles don’t shed, they’re alert, loyal, easy to train and the French use them as police dogs, did you know that?’ All that research I did was coming in handy.

  ‘That’s the French for you. What about a staffy?’

  ‘I’d rather have a pig as a pet.’

  *

  Tabby was a tall lugubrious vet with a face like a bloodhound and an air of distracted exasperation, often quoted in the local paper urging owners to get their dogs microchipped. He ran the local pound on Rakow Street. When I found a stray beagle wandering along Williams Lane I took it to Tabby, expecting praise for my civic duty. He just sighed and shouted to someone hidden at the back of the surgery. ‘That bloody beagle’s back again.’

  I felt bad about the pig comment so I had gone back to the pound to see if I could take a staffy home on trial. All I knew about the breed was what I’d read (‘affectionate, bold, reliable, courageous’). I’d never even stroked a staffy. Maybe I was the one being prejudiced.

  ‘Do you have any staffies?’ I asked Tabby.

  He sighed. ‘Nothing but.’ (In my humble opinion, that wasn’t a good sign.) ‘Have a look at the cages out the back. You can take your pick.’

  ‘What do you think of the breed?’ I asked, playing for time before venturing out to the back of the building where I could hear large beasts baying for blood.

  Tabby shrugged. ‘They’re OK, as long as you can forget what they were originally bred for.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Fighting.’

  The cages contained an achingly sad line-up of misfits and ugly crossbreeds. Some threw themselves at the bars as I approached, others just lay on the ground, dejected and bored. Saddest of all were those that dropped to their haunches and sat as I approached, trying to do the right thing in the hope that I might open the cage and let them out. In the end I picked out a gentle female. She didn’t jump up when I opened the cage, she just pressed against me and begged to be taken home. From certain angles she looked almost like a black Labrador. Almost.

  ‘Have her for as long as you like,’ said Tabby.

  The timid staffy (‘tenacious, muscular and descended from dog-fighting ancestors’) sat on my lap as we drove away and I was nervous without knowing why; maybe it was the solidity of her muscle and the size of her jaw. I bought a kangaroo bone as a treat, a heavy piece of bone and gristle the size of a man’s foot, and she took it onto the lawn when we got home. Four efficient monster crunches later it was all over. Everything – bone, meat, marrow and gristle – was gone.

  CC was thrilled when he got home and he made a big fuss of Staffy, even letting her into the lounge room to sit by the sofa, but I was still nervous. ‘She’s only on trial,’ I reminded him.

  Next morning Staffy (‘fearless, tough, stocky’) sat beside me on the lawn while I weeded the vegetable patch. She seemed placid enough and paid no attention to the chooks noisily scratching behind the fence so I nipped inside to pick up a packet of basil seeds I’d left on the kitchen table. I couldn’t have been gone more than two minutes, but that was long enough for Staffy (‘can be aggressive to other dogs’) to find Bertie the Bantam’s nest hidden under the lavender bush, grab Bertie behind the back of the neck and kill her. Staffy carried out the attack silently and efficiently, just as silently and as efficiently as I drove her back to the pound (‘surprisingly popular choice for pet owners’). It wasn’t her fault as she was just doing what a lot of dogs might have done. It was my fault that I hadn’t put Bertie somewhere safe, but that didn’t help the staffy’s cause.

  I buried Bertie in the back garden, shedding guilty tears that I had failed to protect her. When CC found out he was almost as upset as I was. Bertie had been his favourite.

  ‘Whatever breed of dog we get, it won’t be a staffy,’ I said grimly.

  *

  The six-week-old puppy was small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, a bundle of warm fur with a wet nose that curled up and nuzzled into the crook of my arm. I stroked the sleepy puppy and felt its fluttering heartbeat through my fingers.

  I’d always had a soft spot for beagles (‘amiable, intelligent, even-tempered’) ever since I’d discovered they were the dog of choice for scientists in the 1950s, who shamelessly tried to find out if cigarette smoking was harmful by fitting the dogs with facemasks and forcing them to inhale tobacco smoke. Only a biddable beagle would have put up with such an atrocity. They had floppy ears that ruled them out, but their coat was short and they didn’t shed, which ruled them back in. All the books said they didn’t have an ounce of aggression in them.

  The ad appeared in the BD
T while CC was away on business, which looked like fate stepping in. (In my experience it always looks like fate stepping in; the trick is to figure out when it’s fate stepping in and when it’s you trying to justify an otherwise unjustifiable action; I hope you can see where I’m going with this.) ‘Tri-colour beagle puppies, male and female, $300 each.’ I took a unilateral decision and drove 120 kilometres to Menindee to see them.

  ‘Is this one taken?’ I asked. The breeder shook his head and I handed over a fifty-dollar deposit, ignoring the stark evidence in front of me: all the adult beagles on the breeder’s property were either chained or caged (‘clever escape artists, seldom come back when you call them’). Some people don’t know how to build a proper fence. The breeder docked a millimetre of hair from the puppy’s tail so he would know she’d been taken and I agreed to go back and pick her up in two weeks.

  ‘We’re getting a beagle,’ I told the woman at the garden centre when I arrived back in Broken Hill.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Beagles are lovely dogs. You can’t train them, though. They’re led by the nose.’

  I told the man in the paper shop we were getting a beagle and he said, ‘What do you call a man with a lead in his hand and no dog on the end of it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A beagle owner,’ he replied, laughing.

  I rang Tabby. ‘What’s your opinion of beagles?’

  ‘Want to know the difference between a staffy and a beagle?’ he said. ‘A staffy won’t see the fence standing in its way, it will plough straight through it. A beagle will go over it, under it or around it. It is the greatest escape artist ever.’

  I called the breeder in Menindee and backed out of buying a beagle, forfeiting my fifty-dollar deposit. I was terrified of getting the wrong dog, much like I used to be terrified of making the wrong choice in relationships. Maybe it was just the idea of a dog I loved. Did I really want a boisterous, demanding, needy animal that couldn’t be left alone for too long in case it might dig up the garden, chew the furniture or crap on the carpet? If CC had his way the dog would never come indoors, so what was the point of having one anyway? And what if it turned out to be an over-excitable ninja like my friend Sue’s little Bichon Frisé? What if it turned out to be a chook killer? An escape artist? What if I found I didn’t even like dogs? Maybe I should get a dog and call it Whatif. There was a slogan they often used on television in England in the run-up to Christmas: ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas.’