Merv Wortley Senior and Billy Forrester

A SHORT SHIRT STORY

If ever anyone could tell a good yarn it would be “old Merv Wortley”. This distinguishes him from Merv Wortley Jnr – manager of Ruby Plains Station.

“Old Merv Wortley” (See Story) and Billy Forrester (See Story) are good mates, with a distance of 700kms between them, from one side of the Kimberleys to the other.

Straight away, here’s a yarn, which goes as follows:

Merv bought two Blue Dog brand shirts when we visited Ruby Plains in 2007; one for himself, and an identical one (apart from the size!) for Billy Forrester.

Merv asked us to take the shirt to Billy, along with the following message. “Tell Billy, this is from old Merv Wortley. This is a pup out of that shirt that I had the other day. You know that Blue Dog? well, she had pups and this is one of them!”

Five days later, we delivered the shirt and the message to Billy, in Derby, and he said “I much appreciate this shirt from Mr Wortley; I’ll never hear the end of this! I’ll have to ring him up and say “What’s the go?…. he’s scheming something!” Merv had mentioned that he and Billy wore identical shirts to a party near Fitzroy Crossing, and Billy, once reminded, remembered. “Yeah, I got one shirt off Lyle Kent and we (Merv and Billy) went to a do…. and he had one exactly the same and I said, “No matter where I go, you gotta dress the same as me!”

Billy summed it up with “I get along extra well with that ol’ fella”.

Image captions:

1) Merv in his Blue Dog Shirt

2) Billy in his Blue Dog Shirt