Section 7: Alone This Holiday

I have always found early December to be a hectic time of the year, work or school gets busy from the crush to finish of projects, the shops and streets get crazy with the Christmas time rush, the days of summer are upon us and people are starting to feel the heat and for me personally, I have a few birthdays to deal with, namely my Mums and later in the month my own. For most people however, the Christmas to New Year period is a time to wind down and relax. It used to be this way for me too. Not this year though...

I made my first trip home around the 17th of December. I had only been in Darwin a month and already I was looking to escape the heat and humidity. I was extremely slowly finding my feet in my new job. It was an entirely new proposition for me to have the everyday needs and welfare of five total strangers being my responsibility and the whole whirlwind of the previous month had been wearing me down. Bec's cousin was getting married, so I hopped on a plane back to Victoria for the first of a few 4 or so hour trips back home.
The plane was packed with younger people just like myself heading back 'down south' to visit family and friends for Christmas. I was the odd one out for having only my backpack with me and not being hidden behind mountains of presents. Mikey had been taken care of, my fellow coordinator, mentor, confidant, chauffeur, partner in crime and of course friend Julie had agreed to look after him. At the time Julie lived on a nice chunk of land at a little spit on the map called Virginia, about 30 minutes out of Darwin past Palmerston. Mikey had plenty of room to run, play and socialise with Julies dog Sally, so he was more than happy after being stuck in the little courtyard of the crap shack. Julie had also kindly agreed to drop me off at the airport, which I happily accepted because as anyone who works in Disability Services knows, we sure as hell don't do what we do for the massive salary, so any chance to save a taxi fare was much appreciated.

I arrived back to something I had missed greatly since I had left Victoria. Cold weather! Oh and my Mum and Dad were there too to pick me up. I had never seen Mum beam so much. It was as if I had been away for years, not weeks. It had been extremely hard for my Mum having me move to the opposite end of the country. My Mum and I are similar in that we both wear our hearts on our sleeves and are not ones for much stoicism. We let our emotions show and Mum was more than happy to let the world know that yeah, it had only been a month, but she missed her son a whole lot. Even Dad, who is usually the opposite of Mum and I when it comes to showing his feelings let his guard down and it made me just that little bit happier to be home. Of course, I couldn't wait to get back to Ararat and see Bec and some of my friends, but for the moment it was about my Mum, Dad and their eldest son.

It was with great excitement and anticipation that I waited to get back to Ararat to see Bec. The hour and a half trip from Bacchus Marsh seemed to take forever. I was elated to actually properly see Bec, not over some grainy Skype web cam, not via an MMS picture, but in the flesh. I just wanted to give her the biggest hug of my life, just so she could tangibly feel how much I had missed her. After a month of either being on my own or with just Mikey (who I love to death but let's face it, he is not a great conversationalist) it was great just being around the person who understood me better than anyone else ever has. We chatted about nothing for God knows how long. Just random, stupid stuff that we could laugh about, until we fell asleep, with Bec in my arms where she belonged.

The wedding was fun, held at a beautiful old church on top of what seemed the biggest and steepest hill in Daylesford and a great time was had by all. The day after the wedding Bec and I headed back to Bacchus Marsh to spend a bit more time with my parents and enjoy a smoothie and breakfast. I also happened to be flying back to Darwin on my birthday and it was one of my birthday presents that would be part of just about everything I experienced while we lived in the Northern Territory, a brand new pair of black Chucks. The became my Territory shoes and when I left, they stayed, no longer black and a crisp white, but almost grey and stained with everything from the monsoonal rain waters to the red dirt of Arnhem Land. I also got for my birthday, thanks to the wet season conditions over the top end, some turbulence on the flight back to Darwin. I'd had a great time being back home, seeing Bec, Mum, Dad and my friends, but it was now back to reality.

Christmas in the Territory! I never thought I'd ever experience it! And on Christmas day I...worked. Yep, I worked on Christmas Day. At Somerville, coordinators and support staff didn't get public holidays off, nor did we get paid public holiday rates. So that was my Christmas. On the plus side, Mikey was able to come to work with me for the day and run around the yard like a lunatic, plus when we got back to the crap shack we were able to watch Animation Domination ALL DAY LONG! As soon as we got back to the crap shack, non stop Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad and Futurama (only broken by the WWE and when we changed the channel to avoid King Of The Hill). Of course I did the ring around, my parents, the family out at Auntie Tina's farm etc. But it was incomplete without Bec, who was not having the best day either. (Also, I missed out on the croquembouche that Bec had made. If you don't know what that is, then remember, Google is your friend). We both wanted nothing more than to be together that Christmas day, but the tyranny of distance was our enemy. As for New Years, well let me put it this way. I was in bed asleep by 10.30 Central Time (I chose 10,30 as it would have been 12 back home). 2009 was done, a year of massive change and upheaval for us, now we had to see what 2010 had in store for us.



Title Song: Alone This Holiday by The Used from the album 'Maybe Memories'

Section 6: My Sweet Dog

The old saying goes that dog's are a man's best friend. After a few weeks of being on my own, nearly 4000 kms away from my family and friends, with little to no furniture, I was definitely in need of a friend. So to say that I was excited that Mikey, our big playful golden Labrador was on his way up, was a massive understatement. Mikey had a fairly gruelling flight up from Melbourne airport, instead of the usual 4 hour flight Mikey had an 8 hour trip with a stop over in Alice Springs. Already our almost one and a half year old lab had more done more travelling than some of my human friends.
Poor Mikey had had some difficulties with his first travelling experience, heading down to Melbourne he was blissfully unaware of what was ahead of him, all he cared about was that he was going for a big drive in the car. For a puppy born in the wheat belt area of Longrenong and raised in Ararat, Melbourne airport must have been something else. A veritable sensory overload, so many new people to meet and smell! For a social creature like Mikey that would have been nirvana. Unfortunately for Mikey, the person working for Australian Express that day wasn't in such a sociable mood.
As anyone who owns/has owned a Labrador knows, they are a breed of dog that despite being full grown display their puppish behaviours for the first few years of their lives, Mikey was (and still is) no different, his friendliness sometimes spilling over into unbridled puppy excitement. The Australian Express employee was either having a bad day/not a dog person/a complete douche (I personally think it was the last one) and didn't appear to appreciate Mikey's friendliness and unwillingness to get cramped into a travelling cage that was too small for him. Captain Australian Express decided that the best way to get Mikey into the travelling box was to yell at not just our poor confused dog, but also at Bec and her friend Alyce, who had gone for some moral support. Thankfully a more level headed person from a pet minding service was there to help. It was an emotional day for Bec as she watched Mikey board the plane, looking at her with the 'why are you doing this to me?' expression on his face normally reserved for when we go inside after playing tug of war with him, and tears were shed. Bec would not be that emotional again until a few weeks later when Mikey skyped her.
Up in the top end, my emotions were the opposite of Bec's. I was at the airport 45 minutes early, I was so excited to see my mate and take him for a stroll along the foreshore. When he got off the plane into Darwin, he seemed both relieved and a bit overwhelmed by the combination of the flight and the heat. But he had a wading pool of water, some new toys and a bed waiting for him at the crap shack. Hell, at that stage he had more possessions in Darwin than I did!
Darwin is, despite the mammalian unfriendly climate, very much a dog friendly place. It seems everyone has a dog, the most common being what we came to call simply 'Darwin Dogs' usually staffy crossed with god knows how many other breeds, usually behind 6-8 foot high fences that would come tearing down towards the footpath with a look of malice and intent in their eyes if you dared walk past with your dog. The beaches around Darwin are also leash free beaches, which we thought was a wonderful thing until we learned that the reason for leashes being optional is that if there happens to be a saltwater crocodile lurking in the water (and yes, there are crocodiles in the coastal waters of Darwin, last year over 300 were pulled out of Darwin harbour and a 2.5 metre croc had also been spotted lurking near the popular tourist spot Mindil Beach mere metres from a swimmer) then the crocs would be more likely to attack the dogs first, given the humans time to beat a hasty retreat. Suffice to say, we kept Mikey on a VERY close lead while down at the beach.
Crocodile worries aside, the beach was one of Mikey's favorite places. he had never been in the ocean before, so when the first small waves lapped at his legs he didn't know what was happening, there certainly weren't any waves in the dams he had been swimming in out on the farm, but he soon got used to that. he loved splashing in the shallows, misjudging the depth of rock pools and falling head first into them and chasing birds up the beach. He also loved the mangrove mud from the beaches near Cullen Bay and came back half golden, half dirty black mud colour. Fair to say that as much as he loved the mud, it did little to improve his personal odour. Mikey also loved going to the Jingli water Gardens and splashing around in the fountains there with the other dogs.
As was the case with Bec and I, the climate gave Mikey some issues. In his second week in the NT he was off to the vet after I had noticed blood behind his big floppy ears. the humidity had made the skin around his ears so soft that when he scratched his ears it broke the skin. And then there were the scourge of canines in the top end, the ticks. One of the worst things we had to do was pull ticks off Mikey, literally dozens at a time. This also meant monthly trips to the vet for tick prevention injections.
Mikey was an occasional visitor to my work place, where the household residents seemed to get a kick out of him being there, however that was infrequent due to a staff members phobia of dogs. Mikey also gave obedience training a second crack, a little more successfully than his previous attempt when he was a drop out. And if it wasn't for Mikey, i would have spent Christmas Day and New Years Eve alone. I appreciated having my big pup there with me on those days especially.
So many of our experiences involved Mikey, whether it was cleaning up after him after he had left a 'present' on his Auntie Madie's bed while she was out, watching movies in the air conditioning with Mikey asleep at our feet or Mikey freaking out the staff in the McDonald's drive through by sticking his big gold head out the window as soon as he saw his beloved soft serve ice cream being handed to us (he LOVES McDonald's soft serves and still gets excited when he goes anywhere near a McDonald's). Having Mikey with us made the whole Darwin experience that bit more tolerable and I sometimes wonder if he misses the place at all. Except for the ticks of course.



TITLE SONG: My Sweet Dog by Hi-Standard, from the album Angry Fist.