I don't travel with a pet myself, but always enjoy meeting those who do.  I remember meeting an old feller near Gladstone who travelled with some sort of parrot.  Not sure how many words the bird knew, but I swear the two of them would have more in-depth conversations than I've ever had with my other half!  I also remember running into a lady camping at Coronation Beach near Geraldton in WA who travelled with two dogs and a goat.  I think the goat actually thought it was a dog and she certainly treated it like one.  Absoluately amazing to see.  She was a middle-aged country girl and an incredible character.  Does anybody out there know her?  Anyway, there's my travelling with pet stories.  I guess I'll mooch on back to the general forum now.

Parrots are amazingk... My grand father had a ****atoo that used to sit on a T in his "front room" in his Bondi house (long time ago, trams still used to shoot through to Bondi then) but I digrees anyway this ****y used to know every record that Pop had in the pile of records near the gramphone that Gracie sits next to <<<... I use to get into strife because I use to put on a record on and the bird would chime in with an as I recall brilliant rendition (Peter Dawson or Mario Lanza) and I'd lift the needle of the record and the poor bird would sing away BUT at the end when all you heard was the shhhhh shhhhh shhhh of the needle in the groove the poor bird would keep going until you came into the room to lift the needle (that had already been lifted). I must have been a terrible grandchild....
Then at Croydon FNQ we were sitting at the shop that is the oldest still working in Australia having mornos and in wakls this guy with a snake around his shoulders..... Ok but the snake was a python of enourmous size and named, yes you guessed it "Monty"...
I can see our censor at work, I'll have to say a parrot with a sulfur crest to defeat it....

-- Edited by Basil Faulty at 18:35, 2008-08-29

Great story, Bazza.  However the lack of parrot in your current avatar is noted.  Has he perhaps been traumatised?

Silver Fox wrote:

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Great story, Bazza.  However the lack of parrot in your current avatar is noted.  Has he perhaps been traumatised?

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Ahhhh the Gramophone lives on as do the records alas the parrot who went by the name of "Master" ( I suspect Pop was a staunch freemason) passed away in 1969 at around 70 years of age!!!!! Pop had owned the bird since he (pop) was 10......I've got a B&W pic of them somewhere, I should dig it out and post it....

we took our 2 miniature foxys (wimpy and fuggles) with us once, settled down right next to an idylic bubbling brook under a big old gum tree, went for a wander upstream with the dogs having a ball sniffing this and piddling on that and barking at something else,  found a couple of decent billabongs threw the yabbie nets in and within 2 hours had about 3 dozen decent size yabbies, returned to the fire boiled them up with the usual garlic and eleven secret herbs and spices, well chucked a bit of salt in there anyway, munched about half a dozen, dogs watching, lips, tongues and mouths going, feet with a mind of their own stomping away, constantly begging and well O.K. I gave each of them a couple of yabbies, with their own little cup of beer each, they lapped it up,  loved every second of it, we had a few beers and a couple of whiskeys and all of a sudden it was really late (nearly 9.30) so time for bed, fell asleep straight away, awoke about 11pm, BAD SMELL, checked to see if it was the dragon, got a smack under the ear so looked elsewhere, oh, oh, dogs dont take to yabbies too well do they, the rear ensuite was literally awash with sloppy doggie accidents and rising by the minute and our 2 little mates couldnt even so much as move and it would attack them again, little tails trying to stem the flow, but it just kept coming,  the look on their faces was "sorry dad but it wont stop, honest it wont!!!" spent the next couple of hours cleaning up after our little buddies, and when we got home, spent the next week scrubbing the smell out of the camper, so not too keen to take them elswhere, the doggies are fine of course it was a matter of repulsing the enemy within 

In other post's to Dave, where he indicated that the weather in QLD is good, BUT, mouldy. He neglected to mention the "critters" that have a habit of meeting my mate, then transferring to me, given a chance.

I am one of those that will not use "prescription" rather choosing natural. Well the ticks and flea's here, for my mate, are bad, so I use Tea Tree and Eucalyptus, mixed with organic oil.

On a bad season, I will wash him twice a week, just i have to wash the bed covers the same amount of time, as "Slick" leaves a film on them

-- Edited by twobob at 22:54, 2008-09-08

Last week we were at Tathra.... Gracie loves the surf and loves diving in to chase rotting seabirds thrown into the waves. Unfortunatley during a retrieve of a dead penguin Gracie got dumped and was not impressed.... Took a lot of coaxing to get her back into the surf...