By and large, before the coming of man the marsupials had a pretty idyllic set-up. There were some predators in the shape of the Tasmanian wolf, wedge-tailed eagles, and the larger constricting snakes, but by and large they led a fairly trouble-free existence. Then came the aborigines and with them (one suspects) came the dingo, a very cunning predator who rapidly became, together with his owners, the aborigines, Public Enemy Number One to the fauna. Although the dingoes multiplied and spread, they did not appear to upset the balance of nature very much; neither did the aborigines, for there were too few of them, but with the advent of white men, the picture became very much blacker for the marsupials. Not only were their numbers depleted by human beings, but their habitat was invaded by introduced creatures such as the European fox and rabbit, the fox on the one hand acting as a predator and the rabbit acting as competition to the grazing marsupials for the food. Then came the sheep, and this is where the larger grazing marsupials started to acquire a bad reputation, for now they were in competition with the sheep and the sheep was more important to man. The farmers opened up whole new areas which, prior to this, had been arid and unsuitable country even for kangaroos and wallabies, and by driving wells and bore-holes they produced lush pastures for their sheep. They also found, to their annoyance, that the kangaroos and wallabies were deeply appreciative of this and poured into these new areas in numbers equalling, and in some cases exceeding, the sheep. So what is called the ‘kangaroo menace’ came into being.
Before you can control any wild animal, you have to know something about its basic biology; a simple policy of slaughter – quite apart from its threat to the survival of that particular species – is liable to do untold damage to the whole ecological structure of the country. An unbiological approach in different parts of the world to problems of this sort have, in the past, proved disastrous. So if an animal is becoming a pest you must set to work to learn everything you can about it; it is a case of ‘knowing thine enemy’. The Wildlife Department of CSIRO was set up with just this object in mind. As soon as an animal is proclaimed a pest, CSIRO moves in and investigates the whole problem. They have to act, really, in the capacity of a High Court judge, because in many cases a creature has been labelled a pest and, upon investigation, has proved to be considerably less of a pest than was thought. At Canberra, CSIRO have a large laboratory where one of their major studies at the moment is the two species of kangaroo – the great red and the great grey – so it was here that we went to get first-hand information on what would be the ultimate fate of the two largest and most spectacular marsupials in the world.
The team is headed by Harry Frith, who is one of Australia’s foremost biologists and, among other things, famous for his brilliant ecological studies of various Australian ducks and geese and the mallee-fowl. He is a stocky, curly haired man, his face browned and seamed by the sun and wind, the possessor of the most cynically amused pair of eyes I have seen for a long time, and of a dry, caustic and deceptively laconic approach towards his work. He had already helped us by letter (and by briefly meeting Chris when he touched down on his way to New Zealand), and it was due to his advice that we had until then been so successful in our filming. Now we wanted to get some sequences on the work that was being done in Canberra, and for this we required Harry’s permission and co-operation. I had never met him before and when we were ushered into his office I found him an intensely likeable but extremely intimidating sort of man. You felt that you had only to put a foot wrong to the slightest degree and he would clam up on you and become about as co-operative as Mount Everest. When I suggested that we would like to do some film sequences of their work, Harry stared at me moodily.
‘I’ll take you down to the yards,’ he said, ‘and introduce you to the boys. I don’t mind you doing some film sequences but it’s up to the boys. They’re all working hard and it would mean they would have to waste a certain amount of time with you, so the decision must rest with them. If they tell you to push off, I can’t do anything about it.’ Then he smiled encouragingly at me.
Hoping that ‘the boys’ were going to be a trifle less misanthropic, we followed him down to the yards, which were a series of paddocks in which various species of kangaroo and wallaby were kept and bred. Here we were introduced to Geoff Sharman, a tall and utterly charming Australian scientist who is probably one of the world’s foremost authorities on the biology of the marsupial. Having, as it were, pushed us into the lion’s den, Harry then retreated to get on with his work, leaving me to try to make my mark with Geoff Sharman. This, to my relief, proved far easier than I had been led to anticipate; not only was Geoff a charming person, but so enthusiastic over his work that anybody who evinced the slightest interest in it became somebody worth talking to.
‘We’re looking for information that can be used for assessing the wild animals we find in the field. In other words, we’re measuring the young in the pouch to see how they grow, and from this we can build up growth curves, which can be used to tell the age of the wild-caught young ones,’ Geoff explained to me. ‘We’re also looking at their teeth. This is very important because the eruption pattern of the teeth seems to be a good way of telling the age of a kangaroo. This will give us some idea of the actual age structure of any population we are dealing with in the wild. Once we’ve found that out here, the next thing is to go out and get a wild population of kangaroos marked in some way so that we can identify them. Then we examine their teeth every time we capture them, and see if we get the same kind of eruption pattern in the wild animal.’
‘What’s the breeding potentiality of a female kangaroo?’ I asked him.
‘Terrific,’ Geoff said. ‘It’s like a Ford production belt. She can have one growing inside her, one in the pouch fastened to a teat and another one out of the pouch but still feeding from her.’
I asked him about the actual birth of the kangaroo, a thing that had always fascinated me, and it was at this juncture that he dropped his bomb-shell.
‘Oh, the birth,’ he said casually, ‘I’ve got a bit of film I can show you of that.’
I stood rooted to the spot and stared at him.
‘You’ve actually filmed it?’ I said incredulously. ‘But I thought that very few people had ever witnessed a birth, let alone got it on film.’
‘Well, I think we’re the first to get it on film,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got it down to quite a fine art here. We can tell you to within a few hours when the female is going to give birth.’
Chris and Jacquie were further down the yards, making love through the wire to an enchanting and precocious wallaby. I rushed down to Chris.
‘Chris, do you know what Geoff Sharman’s just told me?’
‘What?’ said Chris without interest, continuing his lovemaking with the wallaby.
‘He’s just told me that he’s got some film of the actual birth of a kangaroo!’
‘Oh?’ said Chris somewhat mystified by my obvious excitement, and appearing to be under the impression that to have a piece of film of a kangaroo birth was most commonplace. ‘So what?’
‘What do you mean, so what?’ I said. ‘You moron, don’t you realise that very few people have ever seen a kangaroo birth, and I didn’t think anyone had ever filmed it. In fact, I think that Geoff is probably the first person to do so.’
‘Um,’ said Chris, brightening a little, ‘is it very interesting?’
‘Well, of course it’s interesting,’ I said. ‘The thing’s only about the size of a hazelnut, when it’s born – it’s virtually an embyro, in fact, and once it’s born it then has to climb all the way up its mother and get into the pouch.’
‘That sounds as though it would make a good sequence,’ said Chris, displaying more enthusiasm. ‘I wonder if Geoff would let us use his film?’
We went over to where Geoff had extracted a hairless and rather revolting-looking baby kangaroo from its mother’s pouch and was solemnly weighing it in a cloth bag.
‘Geoff,’ I said wheedlingly, ‘is
there any chance of you letting us have that piece of film on the kangaroo birth?’
‘Sure,’ he said instantly, and then dampened my hopes by adding, ‘but you’ll have to check with Harry first.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll do that, but look, if the film for some reason is not suitable, is there a chance of our re-shooting it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Geoff, ‘that’s easy enough, we’ve got several females that will be ready fairly soon, but again I can’t let you do that without permission from Harry.’
‘But,’ I said, getting things quite clear, ‘you’d have no objection to our doing it providing Harry says it’s okay?’
‘None at all,’ said Geoff. ‘I’d be glad to help.’
We had arranged to meet Harry for lunch and during it I cunningly kept off the subject of marsupial births until Harry had engulfed several lamb chops and a couple of pints of beer and was beginning to look a little bit benign round the edges. Then I took a deep breath, and started.
‘Harry, Geoff Sharman tells me that you have some film of a kangaroo birth,’ I said.
Harry eyed me inimically.
‘Yes,’ he said cautiously.
‘I suppose it wouldn’t be possible for us to have a print of that to include in the series?’ I said.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Harry, ‘but I’m afraid the decision must rest with Geoff’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘well that’s all right then, he has already said yes, but he had to have your confirmation.’
Harry ruminated on this and there was a faint twinkle in his eye.
‘But supposing,’ I said, hastily pouring him out another glass of beer, ‘that the film is not entirely suitable for television?’
‘Well,’ said Harry, ‘let’s suppose it, what then?’
‘Well, would it be possible to re-shoot it?’
‘I presume,’ said Harry dryly, ‘that you’ve already got Geoff Sharman’s permission for this?’
‘Well, in a tentative sort of way,’ I admitted, ‘but he said that you’d have to give the final word.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Harry. ‘If Geoff feels he can fit it in with his work and if he can organise it for you, I don’t mind a bit.’
I heaved a deep sigh of relief and beamed at Christopher.
‘This, dear boy,’ I said, ‘is going to be the climax of the series. If we get it!’
After lunch we went jubilantly back to Geoff Sharman to tell him that Harry had agreed. Geoff was delighted and had very soon fixed up a projector in his room in order to show us the coveted piece of film. This, however, proved disappointing, for although it showed the details that were of importance from Geoff s point of view as a scientist, it was unsuitable for television. This meant that we would have to put into operation Plan Two, which was to re-film the whole thing.
‘I think Pamela is probably our best bet,’ said Geoff, staring at a doe-eyed grey kangaroo who was busy picking up pieces of carrot in her monkey-like front paws and chewing them vigorously. ‘She is due in about a week’s time and, anyway, if we fail with her we can fall back on Marilyn or Marlene, who should be giving birth shortly afterwards.’
‘What’s the drill then?’ I asked.
‘Well, the first signs,’ said Geoff, ‘are that she starts to clean out the pouch. This generally happens a few hours before the birth itself. If you are somewhere within easy reach, we can phone you and it will give you time to set up the lights and the cameras.’
‘Won’t the cameras and lights worry her?’ asked Chris.
‘I shouldn’t think so for a moment,’ said Geoff, ‘she’s a very placid creature.’
So began a period of waiting, while we hovered round Pamela like expectant fathers, filming her every move. But we wanted to try to show the full picture of the kangaroo problem as well as the birth, if we were lucky enough to get it, and so Harry, together with Bevan Bowan, took us out to a ‘spread’ not far from Canberra (a tiny little smallholding of some 200,000 acres) on which they were investigating another facet of the kangaroo’s biology.
‘We’re endeavouring to find out a number of different things,’ said Harry as we bumped our way over the sun-bleached grass in among the eucalyptus trees. ‘Firstly, we want to know how the groups of kangaroos move – how much territory they cover in, say, a week or a month. This we can only do by catching them and marking them, so that they are recognisable from a distance through fieldglasses. We do this by putting a coloured collar on them, with a number. You’ll see how we do it presently. The other thing we are trying to find out is whether or not the kangaroo is a selective feeder. Now take East Africa; there’s a country that supports vast quantities of game animals and the reason they haven’t turned it into a gigantic dust bowl is because they are selective feeders, so that one species of antelope feeds on a certain series of plants and ignores others, which are, in turn, eaten by a different species of antelope. Where your undermining of the country and the creation of erosion comes in, is when you introduce a species that is an indiscriminate feeder. In East Africa the damage is largely done by the huge herds of skinny and totally unattractive cattle, and flocks of goats which just chew up everything in sight. It’s possible that we might find a roughly similar situation here. It’s possible that we might find that the kangaroo is a selective feeder and therefore, in fact, does less damage to the country than the rabbit or the sheep, although, of course, if this proves to be so, we are going to have the devil’s own job persuading the sheep farmer that this is the case.’
He chuckled reminiscently.
‘I remember up north,’ he said, ‘when I went about telling the rice farmers that the magpie goose was not the pest that they claimed, I nearly got lynched on several occasions, and once I was pulled out of my car by a giant of a man, who would have flattened me if it had not been for the fact that I luckily had Bevan with me.’
‘I never knew conservation could be so bloodthirsty,’ I said.
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Harry. ‘No, but it’s quite obvious that the kangaroo is a problem. I’ve known of farms where the kangaroo population has outnumbered the sheep population by about three to one. Obviously this is detrimental to the sheep farmers’ interests and something must be done about it. What we hope to achieve is a control over the kangaroo so that we don’t have to exterminate them. I see no reason why, if we can learn to control them successfully, we should not have both kangaroos and sheep.’
We had been driving for some considerable time along the edge of a barbed wire fence and we came now to a curious structure at one corner of this gigantic field. A sort of funnel had been built alongside the fence, using the fence as one wall and wire netting for the other. This funnel led into a small paddock some thirty feet square.
‘This,’ said Harry, ‘is the trap. Now the art of catching the kangaroos is this; first you find your kangaroos and then you chivvy them gently until they’re heading along the fence. Gradually you increase speed, but you have to do it very cautiously – if you are too quick, you’ll panic them and they’ll jump over the fence and get away. You must chivvy them at just the right speed to keep them on the go so they’ll hop right down that fence, through the funnel and into that trap, and then you’ve got to run like hell to catch them before they jump out of the trap.’
He leant out of the window to shout some instructions to Bevan, who was driving the other Land-Rover, and then both vehicles were off, circling the paddock, searching for the kangaroos. Travelling at thirty-five miles an hour over that bumpy terrain, swerving in and out of the eucalyptus trees, was quite a hair-raising experience. The first creatures we disturbed were a flock of emus, who behaved in a fairly typically stupid manner. Instead of breaking away from us, they seemed so panic-stricken and fascinated that they ran to try to cut across our bows. Having got just in front of us, they then appeared to become quite hysterical and incapable of running to one side, and thumped along in front of us, their great feet almost touching their chins
in their efforts to out-run us. Presently we came to a fence and, to my astonishment, the emus made no effort to stop, but just ran straight at it. One went through, leaving a cloud of feathers behind him, but the other one struck the barbed wire at an angle and bounced off. He staggered back and then took another run at it, and this time he was successful, although he, too, left enough feathers behind him to stuff a small cushion.
‘That’s why the farmers don’t like emus, either,’ said Harry, ‘they do the hell of a lot of damage to the fences.’
We progressed for about another quarter of an hour, then suddenly heard Bevan honking his horn. Looking over, we saw a flock of about ten grey kangaroos sitting stock-still at the edge of a little wood, staring at us with their ears pricked. Harry swerved violently round a tree to correct our course and we headed straight for the kangaroos, while Bevan drove out further to prevent them from breaking back. As we drew close to them they started hopping off in a rather nonchalant fashion, but as the vehicles accelerated the kangaroos panicked and started running away in real earnest. It was fascinating to watch them taking those prodigious leaps, using their tails purely as a balancing organ. Soon we had chivvied them round so that they were lolloping along the length of the fence towards the trap, and here both vehicles suddenly put on a burst of speed. I would not have thought it was possible to drive through that sort of country at fifty miles an hour, but we did it. Not only did you have to cling to your seat to prevent being thrown out through the top of the roof or through the windscreen, but you also had to be prepared for the violent swerves that had to be made to circumnavigate the many small trees that dotted the grassland. The kangaroos were by now thoroughly panic-stricken, and although some of them stopped and made an attempt to leap the fence, we always managed to prevent them by putting on another burst of speed. At last, the trap came into sight. A final burst of speed from the two Land-Rovers and the panic-stricken kangaroos raced down the funnel and found themselves at a dead end. We clamped on our brakes, leapt out of the Land-Rovers and raced down the fence into the trap amongst the milling mob of kangaroos. There is only one way to catch a kangaroo successfully and that is to avoid, at all costs, his massive and potentially lethal hind legs, and grasp him firmly by the tail. He then proceeds to bounce in front of you until he is exhausted or until someone else comes to your rescue and grabs other parts of his anatomy. This we proceeded to do until we had all the kangaroos firmly hogtied. Under the baking sun, the poor things were panting and sweating with the exertion and the heat. Carefully each one was dressed up in a neat, celluloid collar in different colours and with a different number on each, and we then took them, one by one, outside the trap and let them go. Most of them hopped away rapidly and with obvious relief, but there was one small one who, when placed on the ground, remained standing stock-still, staring into space. Harry went up behind it and patted it gently on the rump, whereupon the kangaroo turned on him ferociously, and an extremely amusing boxing match took place, with Harry endeavouring to shoo the kangaroo away and the kangaroo endeavouring to get its own back on Harry. As the kangaroo only measured about three feet high and Harry was a good six feet, the marsupial’s attacks on him had all the temerity of David’s encounter with Goliath. At last, however, it decided that its desire to disembowel Harry was doomed to failure and so, with a certain amount of reluctance, it hopped off to join the others.
Two in the Bush (Bello) Page 15
