Dingo Lady

Tuesday, 5 March 2019

Berenice and Shakespeare

Berenice's mother, Betty Lawson, in the role of Macbeth

As a teenager, Berenice loved reciting poetry and reading Shakespeare with her mother. Betty, ever the actress, was a member of the Thea Rowe Group. Gwen Friend, sister of artist Donald Friend (also Ken’s cousin) and Gwen Plum, well known Australian actor comedian, were also members.

During the war years they travelled to many unusual places to give concerts to servicemen. In contrast to the Tivoli showgirl type of shows, they gave the troops excerpts from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Major Barbara and other highly acclaimed plays. When Betty was learning her lines, Berenice loved reading the other parts. Berenice’s 'rank Australian accent' came in for a lot of criticism from Betty who constantly told her to ‘speak properly'.

Macbeth was their favourite play and Berenice was delighted when it was included as part of her studies for the Leaving Certificate.

Lady Macbeth was Betty’s preferred role. Dressed in a long black velvet dress, her hair entwined in pearls she seemed to relish the handwashing scene. Always being one for washing hands she would dramatically declare “Out damned spot, out I say!” as her character tried to wash away the memory of murder.

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Wednesday, 27 February 2019

Jarrah – Cheeky Scone Thief

This magnificent dingo was always very gentle and loved people. He was always gentle, firm but fair, with a great sense for fun and drama, and always noble.

He was also a very vocal dingo who loved any excuse to howl. To Berenice’s relief, he eventually gave up doing so under the bedroom window.

By thirteen a number of inactive skin cysts developed in his skin, but one lump started getting larger. Blood needed to be collected from his leg for pre-surgery. While this was being done Jarrah treated all and sundry to one of his infamous roaring episodes, terrorising all within earshot. Jarrah recovered well from his ordeal.

It was said Jarrah had a weight problem. In fact, his greatest admirer banned us from calling him fat, pointing out he was merely cuddly. However, his love of date scones, and anything else he could scavenge may have had something to do with his errrr... cuddliness. He was famous (maybe I should say infamous) for his talent upending garbage bins, strewing the contents all over the floor, and opportunistic rifling through unattended bags of groceries.

One day, Berenice was busy welcoming relatives. Jarrah took himself into the lounge room. While waiting patiently for the guests to join him, he neatly ate through most of the scones, licking the butter off those that remained. Tired of waiting, he finally brought a butterless scone to Berenice, dropped it at her feet, as if to say that he had waited long enough, before sauntering outside, disgusted at not being joined in the lounge room.

Berenice’s kitchen was quite compact. There were three of us in there one day making ham sandwiches and barely enough room to turn around. Deep in conversation, and all facing out the window we did not hear, or feel, one large (and cuddly) dingo creep into the kitchen and remove the slices of ham from the bench behind us. A unanimous (and not uncommon) cry went out “Jarrah!!” The loveable rogue had done it again.

At twelve Jarrah was still the darling he always was and became one of Berenice’s 'oldie' house dingoes. With most of the dingoes she was usually flat out staying one step ahead but with Jarrah he was usually one step ahead of her – the crafty but lovable old man, that he was.

In mid-1997 Merigal received a phone call reporting the sighting of a dead dingo-like dog by the side of the road in the local area. A frantic head count resulted in a heart-stopping discovery, Jarrah was missing. In the middle of the ensuing panic, Jarrah calmly walked out from under his favourite bush, yawning and wondering what all the commotion was about.