Category: music

1994: Toby is Dead. Long live Toby.

I never saw him in his final days but I did get a last good-bye.

(last updated: 7 March 2025)

In 1994, I made the film “Toby is dead” with our Border Collie for media class and it was shown to the class for inspiration.

I used all the tricks he knew and completed the film without editing as a string of one-shot takes where he walks around Como park, swims in the Yarra River, crosses the road, passes a beer bottle and cruises around until he finally makes it home to be greeted by my mum at the end of the hallway!

While that film is now lost, there is a short snippet of Toby here (at 0.13) that I filmed in 1989:

Toby did die within a year when we were on a trip to Bali in early 1995.

I must’ve had a premonition about it as he looked to be slowing down and seemed more tired, and that’s why I called the film ‘Toby is Dead.’ But perhaps I was mentally preparing for him dying, due to my memory of Cocoa. He was in the same litter.

In Bali, he was being looked after by my grandparents by the sea and he was sick when we left him.

So it was a bittersweet holiday, that’s for sure, with the regular phone updates from my grandfather.

Prior to us leaving, we thought he would recover. The diagnosis was vague.

Like with Desmond…

[ 2000 ] [ 2001? ]

…I never saw him in his final hours. Perhaps he would have wanted it that way.

However, the local vet kept the corpse and after arriving home from Bali, Toby M (the musician, not the dog) and I dug a grave for him in the front garden behind the fence. The vet came over and put the corpse into the grave and the pair covered him in lime. (see T below)

At that moment, I was waiting near the house because I didn’t want to see the dead body due to my distress. When the vet left, Toby M and I filled the grave. The vet said he probably had stomach cancer and at the time we put it down to him drinking Yarra River water when he went for a swim as he splashed around. He looked to be snapping away at the splashes he made.

And Last Good-bye came out around that time too. But it never made it onto the soundtrack.

Maybe Toby heard the song too.
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