Storm is a city dog. He sits around all day drinking coffee, visiting antique shops and eating free range and organic food. He doesn’t know what it’s like to leave the big city so we decided to invite him along to our annual camping trip with a few old school friends.

It was a three hour drive to the accommodation, we arrived and showed Storm around the place. It is a beautiful mud brick cottage surrounded by bushland. We were settling in for the afternoon of sitting around the campfire and catching up on news from our friends. Storm was also sitting around the campfire with us relaxing when all of a sudden he stood up and ran away with a speed and passion I’d never seen before.

I’d rather tell this story from the kangaroo’s perspective. He was grazing in the paddock near the cottage as he’s done his entire life. He had three other kangaroos with him and they were having a great day. All of a sudden he looks to his left and sees a white haze of fur running towards him with a huge stupid grin on it’s face. Barry the kangaroo (I assume that’s his name) had never seen such a strange creature before but luckily his instincts kicked in and he starting hopping away at great speed.

Barry looked over his shoulder briefly and laughed at this strange creature, which was in pursuit because Barry knew something Storm didn’t. Barry knew there was a fence coming up and Barry had the ability to jump over it with ease as he’d done it thousands of times before. Storm reached the fence with great speed and tried slowing down as quickly as he could, then barked over the fence at the group of kangaroos that had stopped a safe distance a few hundred meters away.

Storm didn’t mean any harm by chasing the kangaroos, he only wanted to be friends with these new weird friends that he’d seen but unluckily for him they frighten easily so it was never going to be a great friendship as they run at the first hint of harm.

He soon tired of the kangaroos once he came to the conclusion they would never be friends so just started looking at the trees. There were thousands of trees around the area where we were staying, and Storm had to checked out every single one of them. He smelled them, peed on them and ran around and around then did it all again. He spread so much pee as he scented the trees he’s of the firm opinion the entire outback is now his personal property.

He met several lizards, a couple of snakes which he luckily stayed away from and he found many holes in the ground. He’s never actually met a rabbit, but he now knows they sleep in holes in the ground and they smelt delicious.

He ran around all day experiencing the world, came back to the cottage for a quick drink and sleep then went out and did it all again. If this was heaven then Storm had found it.

We returned to Melbourne a few days later, the car ride was depressing for Storm. He now knows the world is much bigger and exciting than he ever imagined. There are things in the world called kangaroos. They hop in a funny way but don’t want to be friends. That’s fine; we go there every year so he’s got twelve months to prepare a plan to win over his new friends.

How could they say no to Storm?