We made so little money our amateur status was secure

Butch wasn’t pretty but he had a good nose and you can’t ask for much more than that in a dog.

Like most farms ours had a variety of dogs, cats, chooks (I still can’t bring myself to call them hens), geese, possums and suchlike. In fact, what flourished best on our farm was possums. And kids.

Oh yes, kids.

I meant the human kind but that reminds me that we had a few goats, too. Ever eaten a goat? Young goats make very nice eating indeed. I will always remember the big old billygoat we had. He smelt like all billygoats do, but worse, and Mum insisted that we tether him well away from the house.

Shifting the old so-and-so was never easy but we eventually developed a fairly smooth operation that saved us a great many bruises. We’d attach a bolt to a goodly length of hayband and then throw the bolt so that the hayband fell between Billy’s horns.

When the twine was pulled up tight the bolt would jam between his horns and we could tow him wherever he was willing to go. Just occasionally, that was where we wanted him.

Of course, this required a certain amount of skill. It is strange that none of we boys ever became Olympic decathlon champions. We had to master almost as many skills, and the farm kept us fit enough. Living on the farm was a little like being in the Olympics, come to think of it. We mastered a thousand skills, and we made so little money that our amateur status was never in danger.

One member of the staff, though, was far more clever than any of us. He was fitter, too. Every farm has a story about a dog and ours was no exception. Bluey was a Queensland heeler. There must be about three million blue heelers in this country and nearly all of them are called Bluey, but who cares? If the name fits, wear it.

We’d let Bluey off his chain at about four o’clock and then we’d have a cup of tea. By the time we’d finished and gone up to the shed all the cows would be in the yard, standing up nice and straight and saying “Yes, Sir” and “No, Sir” and “Three bags full, Sir” to Bluey, who’d be sitting in the gateway. I don’t think he ever nipped a cow but he kept fine discipline in that herd. Naturally, at about the time that I was old enough to bring in the cows Bluey got too old to do it. I remember that, mate, and if I ever meet you in that great cowyard in the sky I’ll get even, halo or no halo.

One other dog we had was Flash. He was a pedigreed Cocker Spaniel with a name as long as a five-strand fence but he loved to roll in cowdung just as much as most other dogs. He did have one special ability. We had high cypress trees around the house. They’d been there since Cocky fell off the perch and the branches were so interlocked that there were tunnels through the trees, perhaps thirty feet in the air. These tunnels had become lined with dead branches, old leaves and what have you, and Flash could scramble up into the trees and then race along the tunnels giving the chooks a grand time.

Our chooks (alright, hens) definitely had a streak of wedge-tail in them. The chook-shed (who’s ever heard of a hen-shed?) had nesting boxes, but the hens (there!) weren’t the suburban kind. They laid wherever the mood took them. On the roof. In the cypress trees. Under the tankstand. In the feed-room.

For those of you who haven’t experienced the very dubious delights of Gippsland dairyfarming, the feed-room is not the farmhouse kitchen. It is the room where the bags of wheat, bran, pollard and chaff are put to feed the mice. We had mice the way dogs have fleas and clocks have ticks.

Times were usually hard but Dad never found it hard to feed all the animals. We kids did it. The dogs sometimes ate dogs-meat from the butchers, but if the milk-cheque was late, or a bit low, the dogs tended to have to fend for themselves. That’s what rabbits are for, isn’t it? I know we ate them often enough when the kitty was down a bit, so why shouldn’t the dogs?

When a calf was born that wasn’t any good, which was rare, or when the market was so bad that it’d cost more for Matt Furborough to truck them to the Warragul saleyards than we’d get for them, which was common (and which is still far from rare), we’d knock them on the head with an axe and hang them from a tree with a piece of eight-gauge fencing wire..

When the dogs had eaten all they could reach we’d lower the carcase a little more, until it was all gone. That might sound barbaric but it fed the dogs, removed an unnecessary carcase and saved a quid.

Mum was a bit funny about it, though. She’d been ruined by a public-school education and she had funny ideas about smells and flies and things like that. The carcase had to be hung a fair way from the house, and we didn’t always tell Mum about it.

All the dogs had to be worked, of course, and if we kids were caught playing with a working dog we were usually told to leave it alone before we flamin’-well ruined it. There was one exception, and that was Butch (we didn’t go much on imagination in naming our dogs). Butch was a Cocker-Labrador cross, which gave him a marvellous personality.

This charming disposition was tested to the limit when Butch was run over as a puppy, bending his pelvis and interfering rather sadly with his stud potential, but he survived it. He also survived being run over another seven times. Believe it or not, the ninth time he was run over he was killed. I can still hear the vet, on about the third or fourth ‘skittling’ saying “I can’t find the break anywhere, but his pelvis is definitely out of shape...”

Butch had a nose like an idle ferret and he could have been a great gun dog if he hadn’t been so scared of firearms. Whenever we took off on our bikes to shoot rabbits we’d leave Butch locked up, but he always caught up with us and that usually put an end to the shooting. I don’t think he wanted us to hurt the rabbits. He chased them but it wouldn’t have surprised anyone to see the rabbits taking turns to chase Butch.

The animals on a farm are something city kids miss out on, and a day’s excursion to the country can’t even begin to compensate. I can still smell the wet cows we milked, still feel the warm, fat little pups, still hear the thunder of the Clydesdales rolling. I often hated it all, but now that it is gone, I miss it badly.

Desexing discount

Pensioners and people on low incomes living in Cardinia Shire can have their cats desexed at a subsidised rate.

The procedure will cost cat owners $50 with the rest subsidised by a state government Animal Welfare Fund grant.

People should check their eligibility for the cheaper rate by telephoning the National Desexing Network on 1300 368 992.

If eligible they will be issued a voucher before making an appointment at one of the participating veterinarian surgeries in Cardinia Shire - Our Vet Pakenham, Gembrook Vet Clinic or Emerald Vet Clinic.

The program closes on June 30.