Full Circle

Considering what’s been happening in my life this past two weeks, it’s ironic that my last post was about change.

 

On Saturday, August 24, we drove from Broken Hill NSW to Quorn SA. The next day we performed three times at the Quorn Show. Monday we stayed in Quorn to relax. Tuesday, August 27, we drove almost to Adelaide to look at a bus, but arrived too late in the day to test drive it. So on Wednesday morning (the 28th) we drove half an hour from our camp back to see the bus, test drove it, and promptly decided we wouldn’t buy it because of all its issues, which were unnoticeable when it was parked. Thursday (29) we checked out another bus, but it was unregistered at the time so we weren’t able to test drive it until the next day. We put on a deposit on this one and headed back to camp, arriving at 9:30pm, only to find the tent destroyed by the wind. We spent the night in the van, and the next morning picked up the bus and drove it home. On Saturday we went back into town to buy some stuff for the bus. Today is Sunday, September 1, Father’s Day, and we are now the exhausted owners of a 38ft 1987 Leyland Tiger.

We’re starting from scratch again, with camp stretchers and air beds and a foldable table our only furniture so far. Today we’ve fixed the lock on the front door, but mostly just sat around doing nothing apart from exercising the dogs and watching movies. We have vinyl tiles for the floor but haven’t started to put them it yet. We’re all really tired but happy to have a bus again!

Quorn Show video

The Quorn show on the 25th was great – day started cold and foggy but cleared up before our first performance to be a beautiful day. The crowds were great, only downside was performing on gravel but the dogs didn’t seem to mind!

Stability in Change

The most important thing I’ve learned since I’ve been driving is “always expect other drivers to do something stupid,” because a lot of the time they will. Overtaking in front of road trains, overtaking on a solid white line, pulling out of a parking space or side road right in front of you, not using their indicators, general law-breaking and stupidity. How on earth did these guys ever pass their driving test?!

It’s a common statement – “children need to grow up in a stable environment.” And maybe it’s true, I don’t know. All I know is that living on the road must seem like a very variable lifestyle. We know our camp will change every few days, but there’s heaps of things that don’t change. In the van we sit in the same seat every trip, and we only swap seats if I’m driving instead of Daddy. In the tent we put our beds in the same place every night. We have coffee/hot chocolate/milk every morning. I even have the same cup every time. Sparkie and me go for an on lead walk every day, usually in the morning while the jug is boiling for coffee. So not everything changes.

It was a very fast trip from Isa and it’s been good to stop for a few days with friends in NSW. They’ve even let us stay in a little one bedroom + lounge house next to them, with its own toilet and shower and kitchen. They have three small dogs too, who Freya is enjoying playing with, although I think she’s a bit too boisterous for them! It’s amazing how green it is down here after Winton/Isa/Tennant Creek, and I’m looking forward to performing at Quorn on Sunday. Should be nice and green there too!

^ the beautiful Freya, six months old now! ^

I have a video of Sparkie’s latest trick on Facebook, won’t let me put it here because it’s uploaded to Facebook not YouTube. So you’ll have to go to the Superdogs page to see it – www.facebook.com/superdogsaustralia

We have another performance lined up after Quorn, a fundraiser in Melbourne. And another currently being organised in Naracoorte SA, so still just a possibility at the moment.

Out On The Highway

A few weeks ago, I was driving out on the highway for the first time driving the family into Mt Isa. Everything was going great and I was feeling very confident. I had the van up to 80kmh, which is the speed limit for a learner driver. I’d avoided a dead kangaroo in the middle of my lane, given plenty of space to the road trains, and was enjoying myself very much. There was a ute that had been behind me for a while, and I figured he’d pass me the moment he got a chance. Nobody likes going 80 if they don’t have to. The solid white line in the middle of the road turned to a broken one. A road train came around the corner ahead and I prepared to move over. The last trailer on them sometimes fishtailed and I always was careful to stay out of the way. I glanced in the mirror. The ute was indicating and pulling out into the other lane to pass me. Dude, you’re not gonna pass me, I thought, because that’d be just crazy. I could tell there wasn’t enough room. But he didn’t care, or didn’t realize, or something, and moved fully into the other lane. In our five years on the road, I’ve seen plenty of similar situations, but never before this had I been behind the wheel when it happened. I knew what I was supposed to do though. I braked the moment the ute was out from behind me, giving him all the room he needed. The road train slowed down, pulled off as much as he could – when you’re 50 metres long there’s only so much you can do to avoid a crazy driver. I slowed right down and pulled over slightly as the ute dodged back into his lane and sped off. The last trailer on the road train swung over the centre line a bit as the driver pulled his heavy vehicle back into the middle of his lane, and it wasn’t until a few minutes later when I was doing 80 again that I realized my heart was racing and my mouth was dry. “Crazy driver!” Daddy said from beside me, sounding nearly as spooked as I felt. And then we crested another rise and there was the crazy ute, parked on the very edge of the road with their dog wandering free in the middle of my lane, while the driver appeared to be texting on her phone. Yep, her phone. The crazy ute driver was a woman!

 

Our current tent is about to become part of the “broken tent saga” – the zips on the main door have nearly had it. We’re on our third toilet tent too. Zips just aren’t reliable for this sort of thing!

 

On a more positive note, the family who brought one of Lassie’s puppies came to visit us this week. Junior, the last of the litter, is now 14 months old and called “Cadbury.” He’s beautiful and behaved himself very well camping next to us for several days. He knew most of his basic obedience commands, never ran off Big thanks to his owners for training him so well!

We did a performance at a fundraiser in Mt Isa on the 27th, which was great fun. Photos are on the Superdogs Facebook page.

 

I haven’t been very good at keeping this blog updated this year, it’s been so busy and with our trip to the QLD outback we didn’t often have internet reception! Our next show is down in SA in three weeks so hopefully I’ll have more time to blog. The lack of photos on this post is due to the battery on our camera refusing to charge! So another thing to add to our increasing list of broken gear.

On Tour

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!

It’s An Attitude Thing

We’d only had our tent for three months before the zips started to break. We tried to fix them like the instructions said, which worked for a few days and then they broke again. So eventually we took it to a camping store for a replacement. We get the replacement, drive to camp and start setting up… only to find they’ve given us the wrong poles and the fly has a rip in it. So we went back to get it replaced. All seems in order this time – until we unfolded the poles and found one of them was broken. So now we have to get another replacement. Again.

 

 

The good thing is bad times don’t last forever. Then again, neither do good times. So I try to make the most of the good times while I have them. When I last posted, we’d had rude caravan park owners, rough nights sleeping in the van, and disorganised shows messing with us. But right now, things are looking up. (Apart from the broken tent.)

 

 

We did the Mt Isa Show on Friday and Saturday, which was awesome. The crowd loved us, we had perfect weather, the organisers did what they were meant to do (organise!), and the dogs all performed at their best.

 

 

(heaps more photos on the Superdogs Facebook page)

 

Two days and six performances later, we’re all pretty tired. Except Freya, who never gets tired. She did all six performances and walked around the show and met people, then getting a big game of fetch at the end of the day. But even on Saturday night, she was still wanting to play at 10pm, and then throwing a hissy fit when Chantel wouldn’t let her run around! And then as usual, on Sunday morning she woke up at 7am wanting to go out and play again. She has more energy than any puppy I’ve ever seen!

So you had a bad day…

Sorry I’ve taken so long to get this post up – it’s been a rough few weeks and I couldn’t work up enough motivation to post about it all. And then we were without internet access for over a week, picked it up again for half a day in Cloncurry (but the computer had no battery in it that day!), and then back out into the bush for another several days. We've come into Cloncurry to fill up our water containers today, so I’m taking the opportunity to post this while I can.

 

The Pumpkin Festival on May 27 was a disaster.We’d been out to Goomeri to set up our fencing the day before and I was shocked at how disorganized it was. We had been told they couldn’t afford to pay us anything “due to flooding earlier in the year”, not even a majorly discounted price of $75 for three performances. We were originally meant to be crammed in a tiny space between a camel truck and the horseman Guy McLean (who regularly cracks whips during his performance), so we complained. Then we had to wait three hours before they allotted us a better spot, already fenced off perfectly. My mood lifted a little. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. But the day of the festival wasn’t much better. We arrived just in time for the parade, which we’d been told we were welcome to go in, only to find nobody knew we were going in it. And we weren’t in the program, or on the website, so no one knew who we were. We got down to our area, only to find the fencing had been moved, leaving our area fully open to the busy highway. We ended up just randomly performing in an open area in front of an animal nursery. Sparkie was the only dog who behaved like she was meant to – Tess and Lassie both ran off several times, and Freya just wanted to sleep in the shade.

After that we all had a round of colds, which cleared up just in time for the Winton Show. We got into the showgrounds late at night, so the caretaker showed us where to camp. The secretary came over the next day and showed us our performing area, which was on a beautiful green grassy area in front of the grandstand. We met the other entertainers, including the famous knife-throwing, sword-swallowing Roy Maloy (but I gotta admit, I’d never heard of him before that day!). Roy was very helpful and willing to give us tips on how to get our very stubborn audience to cheer for us! The other entertainers, a couple of stilt walker/fire twirlers, were a little more cold towards us, like they felt superior or something. We did four performances over the weekend, as well as Tess and Lassie competing in the High Jump (they got 1st and 3rd) and then all four entering the Children’s Pet Show. Tess got 1st in the Hurdle Race, Sparkie got 2nd, and Lassie got 3rd; Lassie also got 3rd in Best Dog, and Freya got 2nd in Best Puppy. The audience at our performances didn’t seem to know when to clap, so Mummy had to tell them when to do it! During our third performance, Sparkie was getting a little bored and was going really slow doing her agility demonstration, so Mummy asked the audience to cheer for her to see if it’d make her go faster. And Sparkie did go faster! It was so funny. So that was a good show. Our camp was pretty dusty though, and it was windy all the time, and the buns we got from the local store were mouldy and the cheese sauce was a week past its use by date.

ABOVE, LEFT: our dusty camp at Winton Showgrounds. ABOVE, RIGHT: the area we performed in.

 

We arrived in Cloncurry late on Wednesday night, and went to a place called Wal’s Camp. There was big sign out the front saying “STAYING GUESTS ONLY PAST THIS POINT,” and a phone number. It was 9:30pm, and we were desperate for a camp and this was the only one in Cloncurry. Mummy rang the number, and the man on the other end swore and told her it was 10pm and “oh fine then I’ll come down and see you.” Ten minutes later the phone rang again, and apparently there was an office somewhere and that’s where he’d gone and “the least you could have done is come all the way to the office!” and more swearing. He wouldn’t say where it was and there was no signs to point the way so now what? Mummy said maybe we should find somewhere else to camp tonight and he said, “Yes, I think you’d better.” So we ended up sleeping in the van on the side of the road.

 

So you can understand that we’re all feeling somewhat depressed at the moment! Our current camp is all cool breezes and nearly-green grass on the banks of a lake amongst the rocky hills between Cloncurry and Mt Isa. We’re rehearsing our routines, Sparkie’s learning a partially new routine for Isa, and we’re enjoying the open spaces to explore! Only two downsides to this camp – there’s no running water (which is why we’re in town refilling our water containers) and there’s no toilets.