Every year these guys come to the Northern Rivers and we do a family portrait shoot with their 2 dogs Thunder and Scooter. This year we did a story as well.
Martin and Gwyn – Part 1 of 2
M – “I was backpacking in Australia in 1989 and landed a job at the State Bank of Victoria. Gwyn was an employee at the bank and I was just a Temp. We worked on the same floor.”
G – “We worked together for about 4 months and Martin asked me out on his last day working there because he didn’t want to live with the embarrassment if I said no.”
M – “Correct! Our first date was Melbourne Cup eve. I went back to the UK but kept in contact with Gwyn the whole time. I returned to OZ the following year and we stayed together for 3 months.”
G – “Martin has neglected to say that we were gagging for each other at this stage and had been since our first date. We were head over heels in love and we got engaged. I went over to the UK to meet his family prior to our wedding.”
M – “Gwyn had a tourist visa so was originally only coming to the UK for 3 weeks but she was offered a working visa coming through Immigration. She was saying no, not really. Meanwhile other people are paying for their working visas.”
G – “I was busting to get through the sliding doors to Martin so I said..Yes, whatever! Give me the visa.”
M – “That changed everything because it offered Gwyn the opportunity to work in the UK which we had never even considered. Gwyn got a job, we married in the UK, Gwyn’s folks came over and we lived there for 4 years. The lack of good employment was a motivator for Gwyn to return to Australia to finish her degree. We planned to come back for 2 years and we are still here. That was 1994.”
G- “We lived in Melbourne for 9 years and began rescuing animals. We started with 2 cats then we got our first dog Latte..a Golden Retriever and our lives changed. We fell completely in love with the 3 of them. We fostered dogs, became Vegetarian at that point and then we became Vegan. It all came from our love of Latte.”
M – “Yes, she opened our minds to the concept of animals. We had lots of dogs come through our house.
We adopted 3 pups from a litter that had been dumped under a house and the ranger brought them to us. They would have been euthanased because they were only 3 weeks old and unweaned. Kaos, Mischief and Trouble. We decided to move to the country as Kaos had social issues and we wanted him to be happy. Every time we fostered other dogs Kaos who had an enormous heart would get deeply depressed when they left foster care so we knew we couldn’t foster anymore.”
G – “We were looking for something else to do animal related and we found the Wildlife Rescue. Our property had lots of Kangaroos, Koala’s, Kookaburras and Echidnas. We started seeing them being hit on the roads and realised they needed help. We enrolled in a Wildlife rescue course which was amazing and we were really drawn to Kangaroos. We hooked up with a wildlife shelter who had lots of Joeys in care. They trained us up and we were going over every day. The kangaroo Joeys we took on needed feeding every 3 hours. Martin who was working from home was going over to feed 3 hourly while I was at work and the shelter did the overnight feeds. When they were happy with our training and saw us as suitable parents they asked us to take over the care so two Joeys came to live with us. ..Sassy who was 1 kilo and Coco-800gms. Sassy’s mum had been hit by a car so that’s how she came into care.”
M – “August 2004 the day before Gwyn’s Birthday and we thought it would be a great birthday present. Little did we know. 2 or 3 hourly feeds for weeks. We were like the walking dead. We lost Coco. It turned out she was blind and she had a badly deformed spine. Sassy was fine and after we lost Coco we needed a companion for her. Along came Aero who was a beautiful little boy. Aero was a tiny baby who was found in a paddock all alone. He was sickly all the time. We don’t know why he wasn’t with his mum and we tried to save everything at that time. With knowledge you realise not all can be or should be saved.”