Vale George! July 09, 2005; Phillip Adams, The Weekend Australian.

GEORGE is dead. For months readers have been asking, "How's George getting on?" And he was getting on fine.

No longer cowering when you reached out to pat him, he was even conducting tentative experiments in tail-wagging. For the first time in his miserable life he was having fun. And that's what killed him.

Over the years so many dogs have come and gone, but George's death is the most wrenching. It's not that we haven't lost dogs under equally dramatic circumstances. Annie, the Jack Russell, came off second best in a fight with a snake, dying beside me as I drove like crazy to the vets. Timmy, a kelpie, got run over by a neighbour. Willie, another Jack Russell, kept running under anything with wheels - trucks, tractors, ATVs - until he ran out of luck. But whether dying of misadventure or old age, like dear old Rosie, they'd had happy lives.

But not George. I won't tell the story again. Suffice to say that he arrived in our lives snarling, terrified, feral. A refugee escaping abuse and seeking asylum. Ignoring advice as to the hopelessness of the task, I spent hours, days and months trying to teach a dysfunctional dog to trust. If no-one else, at least me.

And it worked. Wherever I walked, he'd trot at my heels. When I went riding around the farm, he'd run behind. Twenty, 30 kilometres, it didn't matter. The only time he'd leave me was if Tommy, his new best friend, would take him chasing kangaroos. Barking ecstatically, they'd be gone until dark.

Last week we'd yarded 200 head, cows with calves, for weaning. It's always a sad day on the farm, with the mums loudly protesting the separation. We'd also rounded up 13 bulls. Time to separate them as well.

It was a bedlam of bellowing, all dust and drama. The trick was to put some distance between them. Cows from calves. Bulls from cows and heifers.

For the past five years we haven't had much feed or water. Though we've plenty of paddocks, many will be useless until the drought breaks. If it ever does. So, with limited options, we pushed the bulls across the sad little creek that used to be our river and watched them pushing and shoving as they lumbered over to a trough. Trouble is, they kept shoving and managed to wreck it. Water gushed from a broken pipe - and our biggest water tank began to rapidly empty. Disaster.

The bulls' paddock was only a few hundred yards from the homestead. So, because of the drought, a few dozen kangaroos were munching away in the olive grove. And while I was trying to save the water supply, the dogs started chasing the roos. Just for fun. They've never caught them, any more than Tommy catches the dragonflies he likes to hunt. But for the first time ever, the dogs managed to trap a whopper between the last remaining stretch of water - always known as "the billabong" - and a 20-metre cliff. I could see the big roo sitting back on its tail, towering over the dogs as they lay panting in front of him. With all three motionless it looked like a religious tableau, as if the dogs were worshipping a superior being. I yelled at them to leave the roo alone - but was too deep in mud to pay more attention.

As well as watering the bulls, the tank also supplied troughs for the calves and cows kilometres away. By the time I'd fixed the pipe, I was choc-coated in mud. And so was Tommy, who'd come bounding back ages ago. But where was George? In that instant I knew the roo had killed him. I searched and called for an hour but he wasn't coming home. I looked in and around the billabong for a drowned dog, then walked the gullies to find his body. I've known a male roo to kill another with a couple of mighty kicks, the loser hopping away to die from internal bleeding. So killing a dog is easy. And I've heard many stories from neighbours who've lost a favourite dog to a roo. Either kicked to death or drowned in a dam.

There's still no sign of George's body. Probably eaten by feral pigs. Poor little bloke. For the first time in his life he was having fun. I can't tell you how sad it is without him. But at least his death had an epic quality, up there with Burke and Wills and Ned Kelly. George was killed by the national symbol. Half the coat of arms. The trademark for Cinesound Newsreels. The "tails" on an old penny. Skippy's dad. And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong.