He knew what it was as soon as he saw it. The distinctive grey fur with the blotchy tan and white backside. He’d been looking for one for a long time now. They’re few and far between these days. Not easy to find. But there it was. Someone or something, a truck probably, had done the hard work for him. He pulled over just past the body, the big tyres of his dark purple Falcon ute spraying gravel as he braked suddenly on the side of the road. Looking around, he saw no sign of people nearby. Not surprising. This was a minor road, a dead-end really and he was about seven or eight kilometres from Currandilla, a small town to the east. Nothing here but gum trees.

As he stepped out of the car, he noticed there was a white cottage about a hundred, maybe two hundred metres down the hill to the north. No people that he could see. The carport was empty. There were a couple of dogs in a fenced-off yard to the side of the house. One, a typical cattledog, mostly white with a black patch around one eye was uninterested, more occupied with scratching itself, twisting on its back on the sandy ground. The other, a collie. It looked like a miniature version of Lassie. It had been busily digging a hole but stopped to look at him as he moved to the back of the ute. Nothing to worry about there, he thought, fenced and harmless. He grabbed an axe from the ute and proceeded with the task.

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“It used to be you’d pick me up, an we’d go in on a Thursdee.” His hands showed just a shimmer of a shake as he plonked a tangled pile of tobacco on a crumpled cigarette paper. The Akubra hat, covered in those tourist pins, like Boy Scout badges, sat awkwardly on his head of long, greasy hair, that was tied back in a ponytail. He could have done with a shave, but his face was so pock-marked, maybe it was best he left it alone. He wore a grubby, stained, incongruously ironed khaki shirt and tight, blue denim jeans and those ‘Western cowboy’ boots with what looked like the Lone Ranger, rearing his horse, Silver, etched into the sides. I had to wonder, where were the spurs.

“I’m sorry, Dave,” I said, “I’m not sure I follow.”

“It’s Cowboy Dave, they call me Cowboy Dave, and like I jest said, it used to be you’d pick me up on Thursdee. It used to be I’d get paid on a Tuesdee see, then it used to be you’d pick me up on the followin’ Thursdee. I’m sure that’s how it used to be.” He placed the fag in his mouth; struck a match; and lit it, hands cupped around it as a barrier to a breeze that wasn’t there; the early morning sun to the right of us as we stood on either side of the sad, slack and flimsy, wire and star-picket fence that separated my property from his.

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