Wooley: Simple tales of man and his best friend stole our hearts

Charles Wooley writes in praise of the dogged writing of much-loved former Mercury journo Mike Bingham and the terrier that inspired his many columns.

Former much-admired Mercury journalist and travel editor Mike Bingham who passed away in June 2024.

In praise of dogged writing.

I am sure Mike Bingham who died last month was the most popular Mercury columnist in living memory. While I vainly attempt ironic amusement, Barnes frequently infuriates with cogent analysis. And Boyer worries readers with the ‘inconvenient truth’.

Bingham’s best columns simply sought to divert and entertain.

Of course, over a 40-year career Mike covered everything from the Port Arthur massacre to round the world adventures as a travel writer. But it was his weekly local column that everyone in Hobart read and loved the most.

Former Mercury editor Garry Bailey summed it up last week. “His weekly column was a master stroke as it tapped into a rich seam, something so many readers could identify with. The simple story of a man and his dog. In this case his beloved scruffy terrier, Matthew.”

Kiddies, you are too young to remember it, but if you want your own popular newspaper column or indeed a blog, first get a pup or a kitten.

I suppose even in these less literate times it would still help if you could write like Bingham. But certainly, the pet remains essential.

Former much-admired Mercury journalist Mike Bingham, who passed away in June 2024, regularly stole readers’ hearts with tales of his beloved scruffy terrier, Matthew

Mike Bingham became a Hobart celebrity back in the golden age of print. I was a young television reporter on a long-lost show called This Day Tonight and sometimes I wondered sardonically, “How long can he keep writing about his bloody dog?”

But only to myself.

You would’ve said that out loud, only as you were leaving town.

Yes, I was wrong, but in mitigation I was between dogs. My childhood pets were long gone, and I hadn’t yet acquired kids let alone a mutt. So, I didn’t yet fully appreciate the universal appeal of the man-dog relationship.

Mercury journalist Mike Bingham.

Decades later in Eastern Europe I would visit an archaeological dig where dogs had been buried with their man-made toys. Some dogs were actually buried with their humans.

Those dogs were all Eurasian Wolves, and the time-line was 25,000 years ago.

Mike Bingham had tapped into a relationship older than human civilization and when I saw those pre-historic graves I remembered the old journo’s description of the death of his pet, which was reprinted last week in this newspaper. “His passing was quick and painless. He just turned to look at me for one last time, then his head dropped, he lay down, and was gone.”

That day Bingham made this city cry.

Mike’s dog stories reach back across a vast stretch of time, back to the last Ice Age and the beginning of our most enduring relationship with a fellow mammal on what was then a lonely and dangerous planet. We can be pretty sure any stone age person who buried a dog with its favourite toy felt the same as Mike Bingham and his readers did 25,000 years later when his dog died.

Charles Wooley’s well-behaved dog Dusty watches on patiently, as highly regarded fly-fishing guide Greg Beecroft hooks a wild trout in the crystal, clear waters of a Central Highlands lake. Picture: Charles Wooley.

This week, a world away from the UK election result, from Joe Biden’s stumbles, and the defection of Senator Payman, join me this bitter cold Tasmanian winter, high on the central plateau where I ventured out like an Ice Age hunter in pursuit of trout.

Alone but never alone. Dusty padded beside me.

My fingers were as frozen as the water pipes back at the shack and I tied a clumsy knot on the fly. Not that the fish would notice. It didn’t see the hook either.

It was a beautiful day on the lake’s edge where the bright clear heavens passed through many shades of blue; azure low on the opposite shore, rising and gradually darkening to indigo, and finally where the great cathedral of the sky closes overhead, the mysterious cobalt of deep space.

I didn’t remember ever seeing such a sky, but I don’t usually fish during record low temperatures.

Dusty the dog isn’t into glorious skies, so much as I can tell.

He was too busy time travelling.

Charles Wooley was rapt with this trout catch in the Central Highlands. Picture: Supplied

His sense of smell might be about 100,000 times more acute than mine. He was reading everything that had happened on this remote shoreline over the last twenty-four hours, maybe the whole week. He is immersed in the richly textured aromatic and velvety dimensions of a world I can know nothing of.

We both love the high country perhaps for different reasons. He loves the animal scat and I love the scenery. But he likes fishing too, because it gets him into the great outdoors which is really why I like it too.

Clearly Dusty likes what we have in common here. Bright eyed, he pants keenly while I tell him how good he is because he stays close and doesn’t scare the fish.

And he tells me what fun the wild world is and how much better than the world of concrete and glass and manicured lawn which is the lot of most less fortunate folk, man and dog.

And so it goes, until I catch a nice two-pound trout (they never went metric) on a tiny fly that impersonates a fish egg.

Yes, a trout egg.

This is indeed as the poet Tennyson said, “Nature red in tooth and claw.”

After being filleted, egged and crumbed, the wild trout Charles Wooley caught earlier, made for a delicious dinner for both himself and his trusty sidekick Dusty the dog. Picture Supplied

They eat their own unhatched babies. But don’t judge. Each female lays about 800 eggs. If they all hatched they would destroy their world the way we are destroying ours.

I explain to Dusty that I don’t mean we should eat our babies. Just that we shouldn’t have so many. He reminds me I’m responsible for five babies, but he loves them all.

When I clean the fish Dusty gets some choice organs. He really loves trout eggs, but this egg-eating fish is a male. Better luck next time.

Mooching back to the car, we find our friend, trout guide Greg Beecroft, the best fly-fisher I know, who has hooked another trout.

Dusty loves Greg because he catches more fish. He only stays with me out of doggish loyalty.

As Greg lands the wild trout Dusty behaves impeccably, just observing, as he has been trained.

And that evening, after I filleted, egged and crumbed the egg-eating trout, Dusty got his reward.

There was plenty left over, and the dog had his day as every dog should.