27 Skins

One frosty morning, after checking the sheep, I noticed something draped over the fence. It was a kangaroo with its leg twisted in the top wires hanging upside down. Its head had been chewed off during the night. I untangled it and put it on the ground. It had a beautiful grey skin. It seemed a pity not to skin and tan it for posterity.

Skinning a kangaroo is quite easy because there is very little fat to wade through, the meat is dry and firm and the skin itself is strong and elastic. In fact, after the first couple of incisions, the skin can be torn off like a wet suit or a sock. Having no eyes looking critically at me as I did the surgery made the job easier.

A few days later I came across a large dead wombat that had been bounced off the road by a vehicle during the previous night. Nearby was its baby. It was also dead but just looked asleep. Maybe it had been thrown out of the pouch. I had never attempted skinning a wombat, so now was the opportunity. I chose the baby. Its tiny feet were lovely and soft, totally undamaged by walking and digging. However, I soon began to wish I had walked past the corpse and let it rot because skinning was so difficult. Above the behind the skin overlaid gristle that was a centimetre thick and the two were firmly glued together. I struggled for more than half an hour before being satisfied with the cute baby, hands feet and head all nicely displayed and flattened. It tanned well, but not quite as perfectly as the kangaroo.

When Ben heard that I now had a collection of rabbits, wombat, kangaroo, sheep and Basil variously decorating chairs, walls and the floor he made a wish. He wished I wasn’t the person to find him after an accident. He reckoned it wouldn’t feel nice being skinned, stretched out and pinned to the wall for all visitors to see; an art work and long term dust catcher. I asked if I could keep his head in a small bottle.

20 Bureaucracy

Despite being in the middle of nowhere with no town facilities like sealed roads, piped water, sewerage and rubbish collection, the bureaucracy caught up with us. The double garage we were living in most comfortably wasn’t classed as a dwelling, only as a shed. If we set in play the building of an actual house by sending the council the plans and paying the appropriate dues, we could continue to live in the shed till the house was built. It was also noted that the access to the property was inadequate, not being trafficable in all weathers, and not being wide enough for the passage of two vehicles simultaneously. This should be attended to as a priority.

We hadn’t factored in these costs and time consuming activities. By now she had almost finished her Law Degree with exams looming and I had additional responsibilities at work, but no more pay as happens. Luckily for us these council demands were followed by personnel changes in council and so the pressure was off for a while on the shed. Unfortunately, Gordon next door got really sick with cancer and there was an increasing likelihood that he would need to use the ambulance to Bombala Hospital occasionally. This may not seem relevant, but when the river was in flood, our neighbours’ only way to get to Bombala was through our place as that avoided crossing the river. But our place had a back creek which also rose to more than a metre deep.

I talked to Garry. He came up with a plan. Build a bridge over your creek he said. I had images of using a shipping container placed on the high banks to span the creek. It would work and containers were only $100 plus delivery. Garry liked to do things very cheaply and always read the adverts in the Canberra Times for bargains. I was sure he memorised many of them for revisiting on a rainy day. A metal H-shape beam from a decommissioned overhead crane was advertised a couple of weeks ago, he said, and it was only $20 though it must have cost $100s. I didn’t get his drift. If it’s long enough to span the creek when cut in half, I could weld in some spacers between the halves and you have a roadway. He got on the phone. The beam was big enough. The selling firm in Fyshwick would do the cutting for nothing and an adjacent company had a truck with a hoist big enough to load the metal onto our truck. The hoist driver would do it for a case of VB.

Garry said we can do it tomorrow. I need a day off work. Of course he had to get permission, so I gave it to him.