ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A local grazier has welcomed his youngest home for university break this week.
Racing the predicted weekend rain to get some summer pasture in around the house, David Galhooley of ‘Ucharonidge’ via Windorah, told The Advocate today that he was just completing his final lap of the five-hectare bit of shit near the front dam when dust appeared on the horizon.
In the passenger seat of the rapidly approaching 2018 road-stained Prado was Tom Galhooley, who is currently a final-year actuarial studies student in Sydney. He was lamenting the lack of phone reception and his mother’s circular stories about people he doesn’t know when they both noticed the John Deere come to a stop where the tillage neared the road.
David’s 68-year-old meat sack gingerly descended from the cab as the Prado came to a stop.
Tom smiled at his father as undid the seatbelt.
“Hi Dad!” he said.
David’s eyes narrowed and Tom noticed he was looking at the hat. He knew he wasn’t about to get a hello back, something else was ticking over in the old man’s mind.
“What does that say? DC? What does that stand for?” said David.
And before Tom could say anything, before the breath even strummed his vocal cords to reply, David answered his own question.
“Dumb cunt?”
Then the warm shotgun-like blast of laughter that both he and the wider farming community in the eastern Diamantina knew very well came to slap him in the face.
It was funny because Tom is, with regard to his three brothers, not a dumb cunt.
The oldest, Will, is taking the farm over. He says. He spent ten years fucking around in Brisbane. Did half a trade, went to Marcus Oldham, went on a few overseas holidays and at 29, has decided the fresh hell of letting nature and guile decide your destiny is for him. He is not the dumbest. The dumbest is the second oldest, Roy. He did a Bachelor of Communication and now works in advertising account management in London. The third oldest, Fraser, married the daughter of an ENT surgeon in Brisbane who recently passed away on a massage table in Fortitude Valley, so they don’t have to worry about the mortgage anymore.
“Nice to see you too, Dad.” Tom said.
More to come.
