MATTER OF TRUST

think I’ll give trust a bit of a go’,’’ she said.

Ink steps up to help

AND there is the Danielle Rancie. The 27-year-old had completed a psychology degree at the Gold Coast and had come up to Townsville to do her honours thesis on the victims of last year’s Townsville flood. She had not been here long when she was diagnosed with an aggressive stage two melanoma on her arm.

She went into surgery in May, but was back in again in June when infection set in. She was discharged from hospital and in a city with no family support, no close friends. “I rang Jenny and asked her if I could go out to Ranchlands. I felt that I needed to be in contact with animals. She was away at the time, but told me to go there. There was no one there. No staff. I walked out into a paddock and Ink, a 26-yearold gelding, came up to me. He must have sensed I needed company. He stayed with me for seven hours. He was my shadow for all of that time. He didn’t leave my side for seven hours. He nuzzled me and gently sniffed the patch on my arm and the tubes that were still attached. It was like he was saying, ‘what’s this? What’s going on with you?’ It was like he knew I needed a companion.” Danielle is now working as a psychologist on the Gold Coast. She specialises in youth and children and is still practising equine psychotherapy.

Well-earned retirement

AND in a postscript, Ink, along with his Ranchlands riding stablemates Storm, 24, and Lizzy, 27, has just retired. Children have been learning to ride for a combined 62 years.

In all, thousands of kids have learnt to ride on Storm, Lizzie and Ink. Now, these grand old horses, best friends forever, are whiling away the days in a paddock near Giru. You have to wonder who will miss who the most. Will the children miss the horses as much as the horses will miss the children? Happy retirement you three old stagers.

Drawing the line

WHEN the COVID-19 pandemic closed the pubs on March 23, the world as we know it, changed as if with the flick of a switch. Little did we know that at the time there was a silent withdrawal of a vital lifeline, carried out with the utmost secrecy. Yes, little did we know as we huddled in our homes, trying to avoid deathBY-COVID, that all the kegs of

XXXX Gold in North Queensland were being trucked back to Brisbane. Yes, Lion was taking all of them, 25,000 49.5 litre kegs from all over Queensland back to Milton HQ. Just like World War II when plans were made to abandon the North and form a defensive line at Brisbane if the Japanese invaded, Lion had declared a Brisbane Line for Covid. Brisbane would have all the kegs and in the North we would have to make do with tinnies and stubbies. Well, it makes for a good story, but it wasn’t quite the case of a ‘Brisbane Line’. What happened was that the kegs had to go back because of their expiry date. The beer was tipped down the sink, so to speak. The