Still A Slice Of Heaven: Footrot Flats at 50
A man and his dog – it’s a tail tale as old as time, and this year, the beloved comic series ‘Footrot Flats’ celebrates 50 years of laughs, love, and companionship.
For half a century, ‘Footrot Flats’ has turned the mud, mayhem, and quiet tenderness of farm life into something instantly recognisable: a world where fence posts lean, rugby loyalties run deep, animals have opinions, and the bond between Wal Footrot and his loyal Dog carries the heart of every joke.
In 1976, New Zealand cartoonist Murray Ball introduced the world to Footrot Flats, a rural farm near the fictional town of Raupo, and began building a comic universe that felt both wildly comic and deeply rooted in everyday country life.
Ball had already made a name for himself with strips including ‘Stanley The Palaeolithic Hero’, ‘Bruce The Barbarian’, and ‘All the King’s Comrades’, but it was ‘Footrot Flats’ that became his defining creation: a comic that found humour in hardship without ever losing affection for the people and animals doing the hard yards.
The Dog, officially unnamed and endlessly opinionated, quickly became the strip’s secret weapon. Through thought bubbles, sidelong glances, and heroic bursts of cowardice, he gave readers a view of farm life that was both practical and gloriously absurd. He was a working dog, a loyal mate, a dreamer, a schemer, and often the only character who seemed to understand exactly how ridiculous everyone else was being.
Around Wal and Dog grew a cast that made the Flats feel like a real community: neighbour Cooch Windgrass, Aunt Dolly, Cheeky Hobson, Rangi, Horse the cat, the Murphy clan, and a parade of sheep, pigs, geese, goats, and household nuisances who all seemed to have their own agendas. The result was more than a gag-a-day strip; it was a living rural comedy, one where every gate, paddock and kitchen table could trigger a new disaster.
Its reach soon moved beyond the newspaper page. ‘Footrot Flats’ became a publishing phenomenon across New Zealand and Australia, inspired a stage show and theme-park attraction, and in 1986 reached cinema screens with ‘Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale’, New Zealand’s first full-length animated feature film. For many fans, the sound of Dave Dobbyn’s ‘Slice Of Heaven’ remains inseparable from the image of Wal and Dog thundering across the paddocks.
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What has kept the series alive for five decades is not nostalgia alone, but recognition. Ball understood the comedy of mud, weather, stubborn animals, bruised pride and small-town routines, but he also understood loyalty. Beneath the slapstick was a genuine warmth: the sense that Wal and Dog might bicker, blunder and fall into every ditch available, but they would always end up side by side.
Fifty years on, ‘Footrot Flats’ still feels unmistakably itself: muddy, sharp, affectionate and proudly local. It remains a tribute to the bond between a farmer and his dog, and to the strange, stubborn, funny business of getting through the day together. As anniversaries go, this one feels less like a farewell to an old comic than a chance to open the gate again, hear Dog’s thoughts one more time, and step back into the paddock.
