Opportunity

I have some big news. You remember Roy Maloy, a circus-type performer we met at Winton and then Mt Isa? Well, this week he messaged me and offered me a spot in a show he’s in. Actually, two shows. Sort of. Ok, that didn’t really make much sense, did it?

 

First of all, I’ll be performing once at the Whittlesea Show on November 2. Last year, 50,000 people were expected to come through the gates. It’s one of the biggest agricultural shows in Victoria. Then, that same night, I’ll be doing two performances for a wine and cheese thing in the city, performing to a live band. It’s a big deal, a high-calibre event with a line up of “best in the business” entertainers. The whole family’s coming along, but it’ll be just me and Sparkie actually performing. Roy’s helped me pick out a costume, which really drove home what I’m getting myself into – jeans and a t-shirt won’t cut it here!

(every blog post needs a picture!)

Oh, For Crying Out Loud…

A few days ago I was driving to Gawler, South Australia, from our camp half an hour away. I wasn’t keen on driving into Gawler – it’s busy and crazy and has traffic lights, and roundabouts with five or six roads out of it – so the plan was to pull over just before I got to Gawler and let Daddy take over. But I missed the stopping bay and ended up at the first roundabout. Ok, I could handle a roundabout. Except when I tried to take off again, the van stalled. That’s not unusual, and I’ve done it before, and I can handle it. But this time there was a line up of cars behind me, and the first one in the line was in such a hurry he blasted on his horn the moment he saw a gap in the traffic and I didn’t go. I quickly restarted the van and tried to drive forward, only to stall again. The impatient driver behind me slammed his hand on the horn again. And I’m thinking as I re-restarted the van and finally got through the roundabout, for crying out loud, don’t my L-plates mean anything to you?

 

When someone is learning something new, do we expect them to do it right? Or are they expected to make some mistakes along the way? When I was teaching Sparkie to beg, she’d only lift one paw up for starters. Imagine if, while I was gently encouraging her to lift both feet up, a stranger yelled at her for not doing it right straight away. She would have baulked, refused to do anything, been confused. Nobody would do that, nobody would yell at someone else’s dog like that. And yet when I didn’t do the right thing fast enough, I was tooted at repeatedly. People say how the younger generation has no manners, no respect for others. And yet, both negative experiences I’ve had on the road have been with adult drivers. The “I own the road” attitude from older drivers needs to stop. How else can new drivers learn respect for other road users?

---

In the meantime, the bus fit out has started. The black rubber flooring is getting pulled up and new vinyl tiles laid.

We’ve finalized the change of ownership and today we break camp (not literally) and head to Victoria. We have two shows lined up now – the fundraiser next week, and the Hamilton Show in October. Sparkie learning another new trick, as is Freya. Sparkie hasn’t done any agility since Quorn but the rest of the team has.

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!