It's Fox Mate!

I caught up with an old mate I hadn't seen for over 20 years about a month or so ago and as happens we got around to talking about other people we knew and John sadly told me that one of our good friends had recently passed away. I was saddened by the news as we used to have a lot of fun together, as we were talking about our friend Shane we got on to the subject of some of the hilarious things he had done. Shane was one of the funniest guy's I have ever met, unfortunately he used to get in a bit of trouble due to his love of a drink and it eventually let to his early passing. But being the joker he was he had an uncanny ability to joke his way out of whatever situation he had gotten himself or us into. I figured I should share one of these incidents as it always makes me laugh just thinking about it. 

Well first off, a bit of background information to set the scene. 

In the late 80’s I was shooting foxes for skins with Shane, on a couple of properties on the Steam Plains in Southern NSW and we were camped in an old derelict farm house on the banks of the Billabong Creek just to the North of Conargo. It had plywood nailed over the windows, but the roof didn’t leak and it was dark during the day so it suited us just fine. We would wait until we had a couple of hundred dried skins and then make the trip to the skin buyers in Melbourne, Cornelius Brothers I think, if I remember correctly.

So picture an old derelict farm house with fox skins drying in the shade stapled to plywood all around it. I am busy stapling out the night’s skins and my mate Shane is cooking up some of the Kangaroo backstraps, Beans and Eggs for breakfast. Along the creek appear these two old Italian guys with shotguns out shooting ducks. They walked up and had a bit of a friendly chat as I finished pegging the skins out and Shane went about his cooking.

One of them made comment about breakfast and asked what the meat was, Shane being a bit of a joker replies “it’s Fox mate” and went back to cooking. The two Italians are giving him the strangest looks but he didn’t seem to care he just cut a piece off the already cooked meat and ate it, then offered them a piece each. Out of politeness they ate it and even commented on how good it was and how surprising it was that you could actually eat Fox. Before I know it Shane has invited them to have breakfast, its no problem he says we have plenty of meat I’ll cook you up some. So he casually walks over to the pile of skinned Foxes and whips the backstraps off one. Then he walks back to the Esky and grabs a couple of Eggs before dropping the whole lot in the Frying pan.

When it was done he dished up the whole lot and we sat down and ate it, I was looking at the Italians waiting for them to go nuts but they ate the meat no problem still commenting how good it was. By now I was getting a bit suspicious as to what was going on but knowing better I said nothing. Any way the two old boys eventually went on their way and I headed to the esky to get a cold beer before bed. I opened up the esky and there sitting on the ice are two fox backstraps, well the penny dropped and I started laughing, Shane has fed them Kangaroo and they think they ate fox.  We both had a good laugh about it thinking how funny it would be the next time they shot a fox and tried to eat it.

Fast forward 24 hours and we are driving along the creek towards the house with the nights foxes and there are the two old boys with a camp set up under the box trees. One of them is tending a fire and the other has a Fox hanging from a Gambrell in the tree and he is carving the Backstraps off it. We waved politely as we went past and Shane looks at me and says “ when we get back to the house grab your swag and throw it in the back we best be getting out of here before that fox hits the Frying pan or we are dead men”. We got to the house grabbed our swags and bolted laughing our heads off for ages as we drove away, I wish I could have seen the look on their faces when they tried to eat that Fox meat.

I know you are not with us anymore, but you still make me laugh.
Thanks Shane.