What country property in Australia would be complete without two dogs named Henry and Banjo? You do know the story of the famous feud between Henry Lawson and A.B. “Banjo” Patterson, don’t you?

You saw a kangaroo in Australia? What, only one? I have a house in rural Australia, and mobs of the beasts wreak havoc on any tree I try to plant. The young males box with saplings, you know.

My Japanese better-half was horrified on his first trip to rural Australia. We passed a dead kangaroo on the side of the road. Shouldn’t we help the poor creature? Nah, I said. It’s dead. The shire council will clear it in a day or two. He was shocked at my heartlessness. A couple of kilometres later, we saw another. And another. I pointed out that the 4WD we were driving had a bar on the front designed to ensure that, in the event of an accident, the kangaroo sustained more damage than the car.

Kangaroos play many roles in the Australian national psyche. But the main one is roadkill. It convinced him that Australians were truly barbarians, and all our bleatings about the Japanese whale fleet were hypocrisy.

Looking forward to your post.

Madam says: Ha! I think you just wrote my recap for me! Now that I think of it, I did see more dead kangaroos than live ones…

I tagged you with a meme today. You can get to it sometime after the laundry is done. LOL. The concept is to try to condense your life story down to a 6 word memoir.

Madam says: Agh! Six words? We shall see…

Madam says: Coming soon…