Heart of the Nation: Agnes Water 4677

It’s impossible to look at this without cracking a smile, isn’t it? Paris the kelpie seems to be jumping for joy, an exuberant canine YEAH!!

It’s impossible to look at this without cracking a smile, isn’t it? Paris the kelpie seems to be jumping for joy, an exuberant canine YEAH!! In fact there’s a flying stick just out of frame above her, but never mind, we’ll choose to see it as a photo that captures the nation’s collective mood as the lockdown finally eases. Paris has certainly helped her owners through it.

Joie de vivre: Paris on the beach. Picture: Jade Davies

Those owners are Jade Davies and her partner Steve, two Poms who met in the British Army. After 10 years of marching around in the rain they came over here in 2018 pursuing what Jade, 28, calls the Australian Dream: sunshine, beaches, a laid-back lifestyle. And what better way to complement that dream than a true blue, dinky-di Aussie working dog for company?

The couple had never seen a kelpie before lobbing at their first job on a Queensland cattle station, where they were smitten by the farmer’s smart, loyal and hard-working dogs. Months later, they found a pup named Paris for sale in Moree, NSW. Never mind the odd moniker (“Most kelpies we’d known until then were called Red or Boof,” Jade laughs), and never mind that home, at the time, was a 1988 Nissan Urvan. The trio toured the country for five months in that campervan, Paris riding up front in the day and snoring like a drunk on the floor at night. Jade and Steve set up an Instagram page (paris_thetouringkelpie) as a sort of diary – and discovered a tribe of other kelpie owners online who were keen to meet up.

Since November they’ve been living and working in Brisbane, and applying for permanent residency. Paris has been a godsend during the lockdown, Jade says, not only for the routine (she gets three hours of hard exercise every day) but for the human contact – albeit on socially distant doggy playdates – she has brought to their new life. “I’d have gone insane without her,” she says.