Good Dog: Losing a loyal friend in the Australian Bush
MATARANKA, Northern Territory – On an afternoon weighted by heavy tropical heat, Michael Karaitiana slides into the front seat of his trusted tumble-down ute, a small pickup with enough hard Outback road miles to have rumbled off to the moon and back.
He chains his four hunting dogs onto the raised bed in the back and runs through a final check of vital necessities: enough water to survive hours in a humid-and-hostile environment; boots and trousers to protect his legs and torso against any poisonous creatures he might trample upon, such as the ever-present bush spiders and the dreaded brown snakes.
Years ago, on a similar venture, one big bastard had risen up and reared at him like a python loosed in the brush. He dispatched it with a gunshot to the head.
But today there would be no guns. This time he will use only knives to do his killing.
He is hunting for wild boar.
Michael is in the middle of a six-week-long trip up the rugged spine of Outback Australia, steering his ragged caravan of bus, truck and two lumbering over-packed trailers up the fabled Stuart Highway. He's moving between Adelaide and Darwin, stopping at fairgrounds in small towns along the way with his crew of brutish performers.
They’re called showies here, this gypsy tribe. In American terms, it’s known as the carny life, peopled mostly by gritty men with personal addictions, violent instincts and prison records, outcasts who revel in cheap drama.
To them everyone, men and women alike, are "cunts." They size up one another with a single criterion: Can they fight? Can they defend themselves?
There’s Dennis, an aging performer who’s along for one more nostalgic tour on the show ground circuit that has defined his life. There’s Fugzy, the one without teeth -- which he lost in a motorcycle crash -- a mercurial Aboriginal who can touch his nose with this tongue and likes to brag about his substantial manhood.
And there’s the big baldheaded performer known as the Moree Mauler, a whimsical, self-educated man with the gentle humorous spirit of the actor Bill Murray, whose body is covered with vicious scars from knife and brick attacks, mostly from the women he’s loved and let down.
Before each show, these tattooed Aboriginal men bend low to lift heavy iron bars and pound rusted steel pegs into the red earth, to erect their performance tent. Only days later, they will tear it all down and pack it back into trailers with compartments so small, so unfit for what they carry, it’s like performing a Chinese puzzle to fit everything into the right spot.
Only Michael knows precisely where things go and the men await his directives, sweating in the heat. He is the boss man on this trip, a fellow man of color whose experience and demeanor command respect. He calls the shots and rarely do the roadies contradict him.
He can do the job of three men, and once pounded in tent pegs with a sledgehammer in each hand. Boom ba boom ba boom.
But there is an anvil of stress attached to his role – driving the big converted bus for 14 hours at a stretch, haggling for good ground to erect his tent and campsite at each show, making sure the crew doesn’t get too drunk or stoned to perform their labors. But he knows what he can control and what he can’t.
He merely shrugs his shoulders when one of them men goes AWOL, an escape here known as “making a midnight,” shaking his head, strategizing on how he’ll maintain a contingent of Australian muscle to get the job done.
On a bright Saturday morning, after weeks on the road, he steers his creaking rig into the village of Mataranka, in the isolated Elsey National Park. The site is well north of the Tropic of Capricorn, a few hundred miles from the coastal town of Darwin; a place with an almost overbearing equatorial humidity.
Known as the Never Never, these sacred Aboriginal lands were the setting of the book “We of the Never Never” about the plight of the first white homesteaders in 1902, an effort plagued by isolation, harsh conditions and malaria.
Today, the original homestead and adjacent hot springs have been turned into a tourist attraction for the utes and caravans that trek along the Stuart Highway.
Most visitors are here on some sort of holiday; Michael is not. He’s an intense, solitary man who works as a truck driver and mechanic when not on the show circuit. Half Maori and half Australian, he’s rough and wiry with a graying shoulder-length mullet and large mournful eyes.
His body may look lethal but it’s his hands that define him. They’re large hunks of bone and flesh, with gnarled knuckles that have been broken by fighting men and fixing machinery.
His body tattoos depict his dual cultural identities: His shoulders and back bear Maori artwork and tribal symbols. On his left temple, he wears an image sacred to his mob back on the North Island of New Zealand, an exotic figure that morphs into a snake with a long tail that curls around his ear – in a dash of Australiana.
It’s just before noon and he sits at the outside bar, drawing off his first cold bottle of Northern ale, inhaling deeply on a cigarette; beginning to unwind after what seems like a lifetime on the bitumen.
Mataranka is the halfway point of his trip, the place where he blows off steam, takes his dogs out onto the wild primordial landscape and roots though the underbrush for a vicious and antisocial breed of wild swine that can grow to the size of a small car.
It’s the place, says is son-in-law Harley, a big-shouldered now and again mine worker, where the old man “goes Rambo.”
Michael has visited the Never Never since he was a child, when his father and grandfather ran the show tent and made this same pilgrimage across the Northern Territory.
Over the years, he befriended Aboriginal residents who showed him the best spots to fish for fresh water barramundi, pointing out the lagoons and billabongs where the feral pigs make their homes and the big saltwater crocodiles, or “salties,” scramble up the river banks to come right after you.
Michael has hauled his pack of hunting dogs thousands of miles for just this occasion.
Like the men he oversees, they’re a rough and rangy lot, mostly half-breeds with big appetites and bad tempers: There’s Choco, a Irish Wolfhound mix who stands waist high, with large yapping jowls.
There’s Ringer, another big hound Michael has raised since it was a pup; he bought it as a house pet for his youngest daughter but took it on as his own once he discovered that it liked the hunt.
There’s Sugar, a temperamental mid-sized mutt that has bitten several of the men, but which Michael likes to keep on as a camp security dog. And, finally, there’s Pepper, the smallest of all – a sweet-tempered hound that snuggles with Michael’s granddaughters but often leads the hunt once on the scent of a big boar.
For all of his strength and lethal presence, Michael is a sentimental man who revels in time spent with his four children and growing progeny of grandkids. His hunting dogs are considered part of his brood.
At his home in rural New South Wales, a few hundred miles west of Sydney across the Blue Mountains, he keeps them caged in his back yard, feeding them a diet of raw kangaroo and table scraps. Only Pepper is allowed the run of the yard.
The two big dogs howl and pace their quarters when he approaches, anxious for a feed or, better yet, an unfettered outing such as this one. On the trip, each has been assigned to its own cage on the main trailer, while Pepper has been allowed to ride with the humans inside the bus.
In the town of Alice Springs, on a night Michael was running his show tent, near disaster struck.
Choco broke from his chain and ran off, petrified by the loud lightning cracks of a fireworks display. Unable to go in search for the dog himself, Michael dispatched Harley in the ute to track down sightings of the big dog in the pitch-black show grounds parking lot.
But it was well after dark and Choco, it seemed, had headed for the hills. Still, when the show was finally over, Michael jumped into the ute and set off alone into town, driving the streets well into the early morning hours, in search of his dog.
He went to bed despondent, lying awake for hours, as he usually does, going over the successes and failures of the day, the challenges of the next, and the measures he would take to get his dog back. He’d place a local newspaper ad; buy a few radio announcements for the missing animal.
Due to hit the road in just 24 hours, he knew that if Choco didn’t turn up, he’d resort to eyeballing every vehicle he overtook on the road north to Tennant Creek and beyond. He would make sure that some opportunistic showie hadn’t tried to make off with his animal.
The following morning, good luck came with first light. Just after sunrise, his granddaughter, a freckled five-year-old tomboy named Marley, spotted Choco lurking just outside the campground. The tension release was palpable. Michael rubbed the neck of the big dog and doubled up his chain.
The men could come and go as they pleased; it was no matter to this veteran showman. Their absences would be endured, the setback quietly shouldered by more hard work. But the dogs were different. They were irreplaceable, like family.
In Mataranka, Michael drives out of the tourist camp with just a few hours of sunlight to spare. He’s slept off his midday beers and seems anxious to get back into the real bush on another hunt for feral pigs. He talks about safety precautions. Highly poisonous brown snakes are common here, especially in the Northern Territory.
It’s believed the name “Mataranka” means “home of the snake” in the language of the Yangman Aboriginal people.
And the eastern brown snake is not something to mess with. It’s rated number-two on the world’s most-venomous snake list and Australia’s most frequently-encountered poisonous serpent. Orange-brown in color, its belly a light cream color with orange blotches, it makes its home in coastal rangelands, savannah woodlands and inner grasslands like the ones where Michael plans to tread.
It’s a daytime hunter, hard to spot tromping through the deadened brown underbrush in pursuit of screaming pigs.
Get bit by one of these monsters and you must act quickly; sit down, don’t move and try to get a splint onto the appendage. It’s the only way you’re going to survive.
Bagging feral pigs has become a national Australian pastime, especially across the country’s top end where their numbers in the coastal flood plains are prolific and the animals can reach 350 pounds or more. The creatures aren’t pursued for their meat but as pure blood sport.
Finally, Michael turns off the sun-baked bitumen of the Stuart Highway, and onto a track that cuts through groves of fig, gum trees and paper bark nourished by the nearby Roper River plain. Off the road, the bush is suddenly thick and pulsating with heat and wildness.
The dogs yelp at several wallabies that bound in front of the truck, anxious at any scent of quarry. But Michael does not want to waste any time or energy on a wallaby. He wants the big bastards, the wild pigs.
“Shaddup!” he yells out the window at the dogs, which pull at their chains and stumble into one another.
He reaches a fork of two dirt tracks, at the site of a pair of huge black-plastic water basins, and talks aloud to himself: it’s been four years since he’s been here and the way to his favorite hunting grounds has become hazy in his memory.
He takes a guess and goes left, and a mile later veers off into the scrub. He turns off the engine and rolls out from behind the wheel. He’s wearing a baseball cap, a green camouflage shirt and blue jeans, a chain woven around his waist on which he carries his two killing knives.
Slowly, one by one, he unchains the dogs and fits each with a specially-made vest to protect them from the slashing tusks of wild pigs.
Years ago, Michael lost Monkey, one of his best hunting dogs, after he was gored in the chest by a big boar. The vests are a precaution against that happening again.
There are other dangers out here, for dogs as well as men. The tropical heat has taken its toll of animals whose instincts will not allow them to give up the chase – their heart and lungs finally collapsing from heat and exhaustion. In the hunt for pigs, not only the prey dies, but the predator as well.
The dogs, finally freed, jump down from the truck and root around in the brush. For three of them, this is the first time they've gone unchained and uncaged in months and they are fidgety with anticipation. Sugar vanishes in the undergrowth, returning only after a quick whistle from her master.
Then team moves off, crossing the dirt track, slipping through two tangled lines of barbed-wire fence. The terrain is fiercely beautiful, seemingly untouched, as though only a handful of humans have ever set foot here. Noses to the ground, the dogs seek out any scent as Michael follows close behind, scrutinizing hoof marks in the dried earth to determine how long ago an animal has moved through here.
Through practice, he knows there is swampland nearby, where the pigs root in the mud for sleeping dens in the thick undergrowth. He bends and weaves through the thicket, following the dogs over the now-muddy ground, emerging onto a plain of deadened gum trees and brown grass. He moves quickly, not at all fatigued, as lean and fit as the dog pack itself.
If the dogs pick up any scent, they will head off yowling into the undergrowth, with Michael close behind. If a pig is at hand, a high squeal will tell him it’s a female and a feral grunt means it’s a bigger, more dangerous male.
On the wall of his living room, he has a picture of a pig hunt in Queensland with he and his tent men grouped around the carcass of a big male, Michael gripping the trophy by its bloodied tusks.
A chase can last for hours. It’s the hunter’s job to keep pace with the relentless dogs. Many travel by truck but just as often on foot, a version of the hunt that seems more primal. Michael has described the adrenaline rush of hearing the dogs go into their attack mode, knowing only time will tell how big a creature awaits in the undergrowth.
Feral pig hunters can kill by any means – gun, arrow or knife. Michael prefers the blade, by far the most dangerous method. At the end of the chase, the dogs surround a cornered pig, taking turns getting their teeth into its legs and hindquarters, careful to stay clear of those tusks. Then Michael moves in, his role to flip the boar on its back and either slash its throat or plunge the knife into its heart.
The battle is savage and bloodthirsty. When it’s over, he might cut off a few legs to feed to the dogs and leave the rest to the bush predators.
A half hour into the hunt the dogs are off. They’ve smelled something. Michael hurries along in the dense heat, stopping to listen for the now-distant yelping. After 15 minutes, Pepper and Sugar, the two smaller dogs, emerge from the brush, tongues lolling. While the bigger dogs will run themselves to exhaustion, Pepper is better trained and heeds to her owner’s whistle when the chase fails to pan out.
Michael bends to one knee and offers each a few slurps from his water flask. Two dogs are back, but the bigger animals are still missing.
For several tense minutes, Michael moves toward the shore of a small river, unsure if it’s fresh or saltwater, from which a big croc could lunge at any moment. The dogs wade off the bank, lapping up water. Michael knows that if a croc takes one of them, there’s nothing to be done. They need to cool themselves. But he stays back.
Finally, the big dogs show up, their chests heaving under the heavy vests, and both plunge into the water as though just completing some diabolic marathon. Ringer seems worse for wear, her winter coat still long and shaggy, weighing her down. Michael lets them luxuriate for several minutes, allowing them to cool their core temperatures.
He decides to head back to the ute, removing the vests from the two overheated dogs. The other two move ahead, rustling under trees and splashing into the shallow billabongs like children. Ringer lags behind, walking slowly and Michael pauses to call her name, ensuring she can find her way back.
At the truck, he reloads the animals and moves off to a second hunting spot. This time, he leaves Ringer tied up as a precaution. She has had enough on this day.
At dusk, the shadows set in as fleeing river parrots shriek in distress. Michael finally moves out of the bush and back to camp. The ute passes a few wallaby, but the dogs don’t make a peep; their pack instincts for now exhausted.
While he has not found his quarry, Michael is relaxed. Just moving through these wild lands has a way of easing his mind. He is a man seemingly born 100 years too late, able to read the tracks, as though by instinct, expert at outsmarting an animal known for its aloofness.
Back at the Mataranka homestead, the dogs chained to their posts near the old bus, he drinks a few beers at dinner and listens to a live singer croon a few country standards outside the bar. He says little, his mind perhaps still lost in the hunt and on the hard days to come.
He turns in early.
Sometime in the night, the sounds come, a fast-paced breathless screech of a wounded animal, like a donkey in heat, with a desperate and perverse hew-haw. It is hard to hear and lasts for the longest time, a seeming eternity in the dark, but it finally goes silent, followed by howls from the dogs.
The next morning, at dawn, Michael emerges from the bus to feed the pack and head off on another hunt.
Then he sees it: Ringer is dead, still chained to her post.
Her fate isn’t clear. Was she bitten by a snake or did she simply run herself to death?
Michael moves silently before the others awake. He unchains the body and lifts it into the back of the ute. Just after first light, he drives to a nearby dump and digs a depthless grave in the dirt, covering the body with tires to discourage the bush predators.
Then he prepares the remaining dogs for another hunt.
He drives along, moving back into the bush, the loss crushing.
A man of few words, anything he says will be freighted with meaning.
And finally, it comes.
“I can’t seem to catch an even break,” he says.
Then he turns back into the Never Never.