My Red Dog

No.69 in my series of short stories.

Walking the girl

We had come overland to Roy Hill Station delivering homemade jams and cakes, fresh fruit, and vegetables from town 650klms away . We often stayed with brothers Ray and Murray Kennedy who owned the station, sometimes staying for a week or two, the brothers liked all the goodies we brought with us as they were scarce to get hold of unless someone drove 200klms round trip to town.

We had a lovely large off-road caravan to stay in so I could sit in the cool and draw and paint. My husband would help out around the station by doing electrical work and small jobs that the brothers couldn't manage. It seemed that running the station was becoming a bit much for them as they were getting on in age. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging around drawing and painting all the old buildings and all the old stuff that was lying everywhere. Some out buildings were very rickety and near on falling down but that made them all the more captivating.

My friend Jane who lived with Murray had a shade house built under some large trees. Jane wanted to try to grow some plants out in the hot dry desert. We all sat in the shade with a cold drink when Murray came out for a chat, though we couldn't hear each other talk as the white cockatoos were squawking making one hell of a racket. Murray pulled his pistol out of it's holster and shot up in the air to scare them away. At the time I had not realised he had shot a bird which fell onto the top of the shade house, I did not notice the blood had started to drip through the shade cloth into my nice cold water. I asked Jane if she had given me weak red cordial as I hadn't realised that the blood was dripping into my drink, so glad I didn't drink it.

We had been rounding up Jane's Camels with Red Dog and he was excited to do the job though the camels were not amused. I did quite a few paintings of camels while I was there, before moving on inland past Sylvania Waters Cattle Station which I had mentioned in previous blogs that the station was owned by a relative of mine. My Red Dog refused to get on the back of the Land Cruiser so that we could depart but he was having to much fun, and he wanted to be in the cab of the ute where he thought he could be in the air conditioning. No chance of taking my seat or anyone else's, so finally he was put on the back tray much to his disgust.

The above tiny painting was called Walking the Girl it was one of the many paintings I did whilst at Roy Hill in the 1980's