“My brother is home at the moment so he is looking after the place. I’m off to Brisbane tomorrow for a week of shopping.”
“Oh lardy dar! It’s good to be you baby! Hey, would you like a lift to the hairy-port tomorrow? I don’t have much of a life and I’m free all day. Actually I’m free most nights! Just don’t tell everybody!”
“Actually, that would be great because I don’t have a way of getting there yet. Oh I mean I could get a taxi.”
“No way baby, I’ll give you a lift. Where are you staying?”
“At the Burke & Wills, Room 27.”
“Okay. Hey are you free tonight? I’m working for a couple of hours at the Irish Club and then meeting a few friends afterwards, did you want to join us?”
“Actually, I’m having dinner there tonight, how about we meet up afterwards?”
“Sounds excellent Soph.”
“But you can’t have too big of a night, you have to drive me to the airport at 2 pm tomorrow.”
“Yeah no worries, I’ll be good, I’ll meet you in the Blarney Bar at 10.15 pm tonight?”
“Sounds great. See you then.”
“Bye Soph,” said Kylie, waving like the Queen but with her mouth wide open and turning her head left and right like one of those clowns you put ping pong balls into at side show alley. Sophia giggled and shook her head as she walked away.
Kylie also picked up a copy of the Saturday edition of the Townsville Bulletin which was a good source of positions vacant for the surrounding area, before heading to the counter to pay for the papers then made her way back to her car.
All the way home she sang to Shania Twain’s Greatest Hits. On getting out of the car, she was greeted by the ageing but young at heart, ten-foot tall and bullet proof, family dog. Well, he thought he was ten-foot tall and bullet proof. In actual size, he was one foot tall and like a black terrier but bigger than a Scottish Terrier. He had sharp, pointy claws and liked to jump on people who were not fans of dogs. Yes, he liked to jump on Kylie. He wasn’t a mean dog, he was just a dog. And Kylie preferred the company of soft-haired animals that were as independent as she was. She liked cats. Kylie liked cats so much she treated them like humans. In the way that humans wear clothes and get married, so did her cats. So what if they scratched their way out of most of the matching ensembles she carefully selected and dressed them in. But after finding items of cat clothing strewn up and down the street, she got smart with her selections. She quickly discovered all-in-one, baby jim jams. Sewn in feet, sewn in hands, press button closures, you are sew not getting out of that pussycat! Ha! She made sure they were comfortable though, by cutting a little hole in the back for their tail to pop out of. They looked so adorable, even though they would always seem to be hissing at her and making mournful ‘get meeowt of this outfit’ sounds. They would wriggle about like they didn’t want to be there but once their makeover was complete and photos had been taken, you should have seen how happy they were to bolt out of the house. Battlecat and Motor Min would race away, and would be quickly out of Kylie’s sight but she would hear the laughs from the neighbourhood kids who happened to spy either of the fashionable felines as they pranced up the road. They remain the best dressed cats ever to have lived in her street.
“Down damn darlin’ doooog dat Nigel,” Kylie’s dad yelled out from the backyard as he saw Kylie being greeted by their barking and excited pet.
“What are you up to A Baby?” her dad yelled out.
“I just got my cards read Rar-gee. And I bought a couple of papers.”
“Did that there Tar-rot (pronounced Tar-rot and rhyming with Carrot) card reader say you were going to get black ink on your fingers today?” he asked, laughing at his own humour.
“Noooo. She said I was about to start a new chapter.”
“Well then A Baby, you shoulda left the papers and instead, bought a book!”
“Yeah yeah.” He was pretty witty with words old Rogie. Kylie had started calling him by his name after she turned twenty-one. It was more light hearted and playful than calling him Dad. Besides, every time she used to say, “Daaaad?” he would answer with, “How much is it going to cost me A Baby?” In her eyes, she was starting a new habit that didn’t automatically necessitate pecuniary obligations.
Kylie walked down the side of the house and out to the back yard where her father was hosing and sat on a chair with the papers.
He watched her sit down and get comfortable then bellowed, “Get me a beer A Baby.”
“To get you a beer will cost you a beer Rar-gee.”
“Sure A Baby,” he laughed, knowing his son and Kylie’s oldest brother had only stocked up the beer fridge last week so they were both sneaking complimentary beverages.
Kylie handed him a beer in a stubby cooler that said ‘You’re not a real Aussie ’til you’ve been to Mount Isa’. It meant something to their family for a few reasons. All Kylie’s siblings were born and raised and still living there and her Dad had often joked that he would end up being planted at Sunset Lawn, the Mount Isa Cemetery. The stubby cooler was part of a tourism campaign to promote travelling west to Mount Isa to experience the Outback, the Barra fishing, camping and also a working tourist mine called The Hard Times Mine, a volunteer-operated, working underground mine model that gave tourists the opportunity to have the full underground mine tour after Mount Isa Mines ceased public tours at the MIM mine. The Hard Times Mine was a fantastic example of hard work and community passion and a tribute to the town’s lifeblood of over ninety years.
Her dad took the beer and said, “Thanks Baby, now what else did the Tar-rot lady tell you?”
“Rargee, I wrote it down. Let me tell it to you word for word, to be sure to be sure.”
“Wrote it down? Ha. Didn’t want to forget it A Baby?”
“Nope. Thought I might look back on it one day when I’m old and shit, like you are now.”
“Easy.” He stared back at her with a stern face trying to be serious. “I may be old but I’m not shit. I am da shit! Ain’t that right dat Nigel?” he said and pointed the hose at the dog that was rubbing his undercarriage on the lawn, getting grassily aroused in his own dry, testicle-less little world. When the stream of water hit him, he sprung up on all fours with a quick bark as if he was a guard dog on duty and someone had just walked past the fence. Roger laughed his high pitched laugh in response.
Kylie sipped her beer and, with her father’s full attention, read out the card reader’s words.
“A Baby might have to leave town to find so much water, this place is a desert!’
“Yeah, I was thinking that, or maybe get a job at the dam?”
Roger turned on his serious voice, “No love. The water treatment plant part of the dam has been owned and operated by the same family for 35 years. You won’t get a job there. It’s like a caretaker set up. And you live here for free so why would you move?”
“True dat! Free living and free beer Rargee!”
Roger laughed, “These are The Face’s beers you know.”
The Face was Kylie’s name for her eldest brother as he had a unique talent for giving face, for example, he could pull a ‘who just farted face’ even when no one had expulsed a love puff or let fluffy off the chain. He could laugh, then cry, then become serious within seconds if a story he was telling required it. Kylie thought the only people that had good face were entertainers but both her Dad