Tennant Creek was by far the busiest show, and probably the longest day I’ve had in a long time. I woke up at 5:45am when it was still dark. It was about 30*C most of the day, and we did four performances. We’d asked the show organiser if we could borrow some chairs for our audience, but they said they didn’t have any. We managed to find about seven chairs, but hardly anyone seemed interested in our show. Our biggest audience was probably about 10 people. The funny thing was, when we walked through the pavilion with the dogs and everyone we talked to said they’d seen the show and loved it. So obviously people were watching from a distance.
By 4pm, after the last performance, we were all worn out. We brought slushies and iced coffee and fizzy drink and went back to camp. We were camping at the showgrounds, as usual. All day the aborigines had been crowded in any shade they could find, about ten of them around every tree, and lining the wall outside the toilet block. They were practically in our camp half the time because we had a tree there. Fast forward to 6:30pm. We were gonna have pasta for dinner, and Mummy was boiling the jug for it, and we were all just kinda laying around feeling tired. And then this drunk aborigine guy staggers into camp. And he was really drunk, he couldn’t even walk straight. In fact he could hardly walk at all. So he comes over, gets right up to Daddy and watches him do the dishes, like it’s the most interesting thing ever. Freya was barking like crazy so he wandered off for a bit, before coming back and sitting under the tree, just watching us. It was kinda freaky. All the showies were packing up and heading out, so we decided we should do the same. Our average pack-down time is three hours – we did this pack-down in one. We’d just got the tent down and were about to load everything into the boot, when the guy gets up and staggers over to the boot and starts looking in like he’s either gonna steal something or just climb in. I was in my seat with Sparkie, sorting out my backpacks, when I realized he wasn’t under the tree anymore. So I’m looking around and I see him standing at the back of the Jumper. “Hey, Sparkie, look,” I said quietly, and like the good dog she is she barked. Just once, but it was enough to alert Lassie, who was tied to the back, to the fact a stranger was right beside her, and she went off. Freya was tied to the bull bar and she started barking, setting off Sparkie who set off Tess who was in the van too. So this poor drunk guy got a huge fright, and he jumped, and nearly tripped over trying to leave. The dogs really earned their keep that day! We had cheese and corn beef sandwiches for dinner outside a gas station and then hit the road, finally pulling into a camp spot and going to sleep in the van at 1am. The next morning we drove all the way to Camooweal again.
It seems like we’ve hardly stopped this year. In March we competed at the Blayney Show, then sold the bus and moved into the tents about a week later. Then in May we did the Wallumbilla Show and two weeks later the Gympie Show and the Million Paws Walk in the same weekend. One week later we performed at the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival. Two weeks after that we did the Winton Show, and another two weeks later we did Mt Isa. Three weeks later we did Tennant Creek, and now we have two weeks until our next performance at an animal rescue centre fundraiser in Isa. We’ve been in the paper several times, mostly just mentions but one full interview, and on the ABC radio. It’s been crazy and I’m getting a bit tired now. But it’s been awesome, we’ve made some new friends, earned a bit of money, and had a few adventures on the way!
