When I was little boy growing up in the wilds of the NT, I had a pet dog called Bunji. Bunji went everywhere with me including on many walkabouts with the local aboriginal kids and their families. He was my best mate. One day Bunji ran out in front of a roadtrain and got squashed right in front of my 10 yr old eyes. The shock of what I had seen just washed over me like an icy shower. I managed to find some roofing iron and got Bunji to the side of the road but he had gone... Later that day I buried Bunji behind the mango tree and kept his chain collar in an icecream container along with other things of value to me. Later, when going through the ruins of our house in Darwin after Tracey, I found my icecream container on a pile of broken timber and asbestos sheeting. It was empty. I felt such a sense of loss and sadness. My uncle came along and asked why I was upset. I told him about Bungie's collar and he said, "It's only a length of chain mate...." A car is an object not a living thing, of course, but when you invest a lot of time in looking after something for 20 years, I can honestly understand how someone might feel a sense of loss when you have that thing taken away...
