Dingo, dingo and dingo again

Press, 31 January 1986, Page 15

Dingo, dingo and dingo again

[ Review I Ken Strongman j

Semantic satiation is the jargon phrase to describe what happens if you keep saying a . word over and over again. It sounds increasingly silly and begins to lose all meaning. This is exactly what happened in Monday’s "The Keepers.” Try it; just say “dingo” 300 times or so (a conservative estimate) and see what it means to you. Of

’roos, although they do not actually manage to see many of either. Last Monday, though, there was a wombat, and the birds twittered nearly as much as the actors said “dingo.” The two-pronged plot was simple enough to be understood by the average duck-billed platypus. Farmers were having a tough time with the drought (except that it

kept raining) and the ever-present (except that they weren’t) fence-des-troying ’roos. And to cap course, it might not have meant that much to begin with.

With the overkill they perhaps regard as thoroughness, the A.B.C. has filled “The Keepers” with unremitting nature. Two wildlife officers are surrounded by gums,

fence posts, rabbits, paddocks and bush. Their entire conversation seems to centre on dingoes and it all, their ewes were being savaged. “Maybe it was a dingo.” “Alright Col, I’ll have a look at your sheep.” “You do that, it’s got dingo written all over it.”

The two wildlife chappies stood around looking at the countryside. They grunted a lot and made cryptic points with a wry, crinkly-eyed humour, although the younger one :has not yet got his full crinkles. So close to nature are they, that they have seen all the vagaries of man, although not so many of woman. Meanwhile, sensitive but roughlooking itinerant fencers contrasted with gotta-be-tough-in-the-out-back-sheilas.

The animals, even the lone dingo, were immeasurably better actors than the humans. The actors gabbled their lines as though they were so surprised to be there, saying them, that they expected someone to come and take them away any minute. “No matter how well you train them, they never lose that killer instinct.” Guess what he

was talking about A large part of Mon- . day’s hour was spent in alternation between the younger wildlife officer wrestling with the ’roo problem in the courtroom and the older one stomping over the countryside, dealing with the dingoes. He was sucking on his ciggies like a vacuum cleaner while he attempted to discover who or what was savaging the sheep. "Come on, you know that dingo’s a killer.” His gumboots looked as though they could do the job without him. “Could it be the same dog that attacked that wombat yesterday?” In the end, after some nail-biting eyebrow work in the courtroom, which at one time contained all of the bit part actors in Australia, and after the older officer had actually said “fair dinkum,” the real drama began. “We’d better get the rifle son.” From this moment, you knew with the certainty of sunrise that the poor old dingo didn’t have all that much time left. After everyone had said “dingo” another 100 times or so, things really began to hum. Keeping pace with the programme, the

fencer’s truck crept along in ultra-low gear while he collapsed with a migraine (fencers with migraine?) Oh, oh, what was his faithful dingo up to, haring off like that? Going for help or going after the sheep? He had tb be shot, the visibly ageing wildlife officer almost blurring the rifle sights with his tears. In the end, with an irony driven home by a steam-hammer (whatever that is), the farmer found out that all along it was his own dog that had been savaging his sheep; he shot him as well. So the poor old dingo was first of all maligned, and then what was probably worse, shot, for nothing. Cricket tailpiece. The commentators are keeping it up. On Monday, whilst New Zealand was making the Australians look like the first Bulgarian cricket team, one said: “That policeman is making sure that nothing stupid is being done in the fountain.” Nothing was, at least that could be seen from the long-range camera.