Emery runs and grabs his mum, and says, ‘I’m gonna have me a doughnut. Crispy, right outta the fryer, hot jam in the middle and a blob of cream on top, all melting.’
‘What’ll you have, Ella?’ Dad asks.
‘Anzac bickies,’ I say, even if I can’t remember what they taste like no more. ‘A family-sized tin and I’ll eat them all myself until they ooze out my eyeballs!’
‘You know none of this stuff will be here this year, right? Maybe not for years,’ Dad asks.
I smile. ‘But it’s coming.’
‘And when it does,’ Dad says, ‘I think everyone is going to be a little more careful.’
Him and Mum have been talking about staying up here for good, helping Christmas with her business, getting solar set up on the house, helping out the rest of the town with solar or crank electricity coz solar panels are hard to find, farming roos and eels to sell meat to nearby towns. There’s lots to do here and I’m happy coz I like it here, where the dogs get to run all day and there’s always someone around and we can all look out for each other.
The plane comes back around waggling its wings and the pilot is grinning and waving, his face orange in the sunset.
I leap about, waving back at him, chasing after him, five big doggos leaping and yowling, chasing him too. Me, waving and waving, wild and happy coz I thought everyone had given up, just decided to look out for themselves, but someone, somewhere, made a seed bank to save the seeds just like Emery’s grandad did, and they’re finally replanting grass, even way out here.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I hope that The Dog Runner will get young people thinking and talking about the ways we currently manage our environment, where we source our food, and what we eat. Food security is an important issue, easily overlooked, and Australia is an interesting place to consider this, as it was extensively and successfully managed and farmed prior to the arrival of Europeans, their animals and plants.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which this book is set and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. In addition, I would like to convey my respect of their past care and management of these lands and waterways, and highlight to others that this custodial work and the accumulation and passing down of landcare knowledge has never ceased and is ongoing around the country by many groups, including these groups in Victoria:
Barengi Gadjin Land Council, Horsham
Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, Melbourne
Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, Frankston
Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation, Bendigo
Taungurung Clans Aboriginal Corporation, Broadford
I deeply respect the work done on-country by these groups and others, continuing to manage their land and waterways, sustaining cultural traditions, regenerating native species, protecting cultural sites, and providing job opportunities and training programs for local Indigenous people. I believe their work should be supported as their knowledge of land management and native species is vital to our future.
Thank you so much Jared Thomas for reading The Dog Runner, and for your thoughtful advice and support. Thanks also to John Clarke, Director at Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, for taking the time to comment on the need to build relationships with communities when depicting practices belonging to particular Aboriginal communities.
I read these books as I wrote The Dog Runner and highly recommend them:
Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage
I received a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Grant from The Myer Foundation and Writers Victoria to assist with research travel for this book, and I thank them for their support in visiting the regions Ella and Emery travelled, walking railway trails, and also meeting with the following people:
Graeme Hand at Stipa in Branxholme, thank you for meeting with me and detailing the process of natural grassland regeneration. Thank you for your fascinating insights and walk of your demonstration farm. It was quite terrifying to learn how out of tune modern farming is with our land. Soil health is everything, a vital fact understood by the original farmers of Australia, but now largely ignored as farmers push the land to its limits to meet the bills.
Emily Vourlidis, President of Sled Dog Racing Queensland, thanks for meeting me at 6am on a cold morning, answering questions, and allowing me to see sled dogs in action. Kids, if you have a big dog with lots of energy who likes to pull you places look into this wonderful sport. Like Ella and Emery you do not need snow!
Noel Arrol, owner of Li-Sun Exotic Mushrooms, Mittagong, thanks for the tour of your mushroom tunnel and sharing your extensive knowledge of woodland fungi, and a punnet of delicious mushrooms.
Also, a big thank you to Susannah Chambers for all your support and calm advice. I promise one day I’ll write a book and not have a major catastrophe during the edits. Thanks to Matariki Williams and the team at Allen & Unwin for all the work you did and do to get this book out to the world. Thank you also Jo Hunt for another brilliant cover.
Thanks to my family, friends and fellow writers for their continued support, and to my husband for narrowly escaping death, being still alive is a pretty big achievement considering, and thanks to Darwin Royal Hospital for rebuilding shattered bones. And now... onto the next adventure!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bren MacDibble was raised on farms all over New Zealand, so is an expert about being a kid on the land. After 20 years in Melbourne, Bren recently sold everything, and now lives and works in a bus travelling around Australia. In 2018, How to Bee – her first novel for younger readers – won the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature and the New Zealand Book Awards, Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction. Bren also writes for young adults under the name Cally Black.
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