by Tim Flannery
With action urgently needed, national parks staff established a small captive group in an enclosure on the mainland. Six of these precious animals were to be released on Faure. Despite the fact that I had studied their fossil relatives for decades, I had seen nothing of the creatures but museum specimens, and so was unprepared for the magic of the living animal. They have large, dark and liquid eyes that are surrounded by white fur, and their muzzles give them something of the appearance of a lemur. They are soft and gentle creatures—even their footpads are remarkably soft—and their fur is a glorious greyish silver, banded in silver and dark chocolate on the back.
As the last rays of the sun fled the western sky a small group of AWC supporters stood amid the mulga, hessian sacks in hand. One by one we opened our sacks, releasing the banded hare wallabies. Most
Releasing one of seven banded hare wallabies on Faure Island in May 2004.
scampered off at once into the night, but the wallaby carried by the founder of the AWC, Martin Copley, wanted to stick about. It fed calmly, experimentally nibbling at the bushes a metre or so from us.
Half a dozen prior attempts have been made to establish colonies of banded hare wallabies, but all have failed; some because of cats, some because of eagles, and others from causes uncertain. As the last banded hare wallaby hopped calmly off into the night, I reflected on the nature of the age we live in. Those wallabies and their ancestors have been a part of my country for over 10 million years, but now, without human assistance, they might not even see out another decade. A responsibility comes with that knowledge, for with a little care they could enjoy a further 10 million years’ tenure on our continent.
Australia was once dominated by people who loved the mother country—a land of lush greens and as alien to my country as any could be. Today Australians are more likely to proclaim a love of things native, yet because they often lack a true understanding of their environment, theirs is a love that can kill. Such well-meaning but uncomprehending enthusiasm is one reason why many Aboriginal communities continue to struggle under insupportable burdens, why native species keep vanishing, and why our future is being cut short by an insatiable addiction to fossil fuels. It is also why I wrote this book. We have now embarked on a new phase of our national existence, and just where it will lead I do not know. But I have a sinking feeling that unless every Australian searches profoundly for ways to help our land survive, things are likely to end badly for both ourselves and this great island continent.
Clockwise from left: quokka, bridled nailtail wallaby, musky rat-kangaroo, euro.
The western grey (left) and eastern grey kangaroos (top); Bill’s and my Moto Guzzis on the Nullarbor Plain, 1975 (above). Note the esky strapped to the back of my bike.
Me as an eighteen-year-old in the middle of a sweltering summer, unearthing diprotodon bones for Tom Rich at a location near Bacchus Marsh, Victoria.
Clockwise from left: bugaree (swamp wallaby), burrowing bettong, red kangaroo-the symbol of Australia.
With dingiso, a black-and-White tree-kangaroo, Tembagapura, West Papua, 1995.
Postscript
For the month following the release of the banded hare wallabies on Faure, AWC staff monitored them daily. The creatures quickly spread to the island’s four corners, and at the end of this critical settling-in period they were all still alive. With each day that passed we felt more certain that the translocation would succeed. By the time spring brings its brief blossoming to the island there will be nine banded hare wallabies roaming Faure, for the three females released all had tiny, pink young in their pouches.
Acknowledgments
I owe Doctors Tom and Patricia Rich special thanks, for it was they who opened up a career in science to me, and who encouraged me to study kangaroos. As I was drafting this book Tom also provided details of our very early field work, before I kept field diaries.
Many people who have doubtless long forgotten me—Stolarski of Perth, the inhabitants of the Broome caravan park at Christmas 1975, and a huge number of country people Aboriginal and white—have extended exceptional generosity and hospitality to me as I have travelled the outback. They are the salt of the earth—the true Australians—and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their many kindnesses. Bill Ellis, my long-suffering travelling companion, deserves special mention, and apologies, Bill, for abuse of the billy.
Australian science is, on the whole, warmly collegial. I thank those who have shared their discoveries with me and who have helped keep petty jealousies and destructive criticism out of our profession. Ron Strahan has been a lifelong friend and mentor, and I owe him particular recognition for several important historical works of his dealing with kangaroos.
As usual, Michael Heyward and Melanie Ostell have brought their exceptional editorial skills to the shaping of this work. And thank you to my family, who put up with my solitary confinement on weekends and evenings, as I wrote. Your support means everything to me.
General Bibliography
For those interested in the larger kangaroos Terry Dawson’s excellent book Kangaroos: Biology of the Largest Marsupials, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1995, is a must. An outstanding account of European perceptions of kangaroos (which also includes many images) is Ronald Younger’s Kangaroo: Images through the Ages, Hutchinson, Sydney, 1988. The Kangaroo Keepers, Hugh Lavery ed., published by the University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1985, is an invaluable resource on kangaroos and kangaroo harvesting in Queensland. It includes an account of the saving of the bridled nailtail wallaby. A species by species description of the living kangaroos is included in The Complete Book of Australian Mammals, Ron Strahan ed., Cornstalk Publishing, Sydney, 1991, while an account of the extinct species can be found in Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea, by John Long et al, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2002. An important summary of studies relating to kangaroos (which also gives an indication of how the creatures were perceived at the time) is Kangaroos and Men, a special edition of the Australian Zoologist, vol. 16, part 1, 1971.
Historical works consulted include: Watkin Tench’s account of early Sydney, republished as 1788, edited and introduced by myself, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1996; Ray Parkin’s H. M. Endeavour, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 1997; H. H. Finlayson’s classic The Red Centre, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1943, 4th edn; A Truly Remarkable Man: The Life of H. H. Finlayson, and His Adventures in Central Australia, Seaview Press, Henley Beach, 2001; Obed West’s reminiscences, first published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1882, and reproduced as The Memoirs of Obed West: A Portrait of Early Sydney, Edward West Mariott ed., Barcom Press, Bowral, 1988, and The Birth of Sydney, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999. References to what the Dutch made of the quokka can be found in Voyage of Discovery to Terra Australis, by Willem de Vlamingh in 1696–97, Phillip Playford ed., Western Australian Museum, Perth, 1998.
References relating to ice-age kangaroos include my research on the diet of Propleopus, published in M. Archer and T. Flannery, ‘Revision of the Extinct Gigantic Rat-Kangaroos (Potoroidae, Marsupialia), with Description of a New Miocene Genus and Species and a New Pleistocene Species of Propleopus’, Journal of Palaeontology, 59, 1985, pp. 1311–49; W. D. L. Ride et al, ‘Towards a Biology of Propleopus oscillans (Marsupialia: Propleopinae, Hypsiprymnodontidae)’, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 117, 1997, pp. 223–328. An account of the Cuddie Springs site is J. H. Field and J. R. Dodson, ‘Late Pleistocene Megafauna and Archaeology from Cuddie Springs, South-Eastern Australia’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 65, 1999, pp. 275–301; Robert Boyle’s experiments with things that glow are related in John Emsley’s The Shocking History of Phosphorus, Macmillan, London, 2000; dating the timing of megafaunal extinction in Australia (which also gives evidence of the mixing of sand grains at Cuddie) is given in R. G. Roberts et al, ‘New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-wide Extinction about 46,000 years ago’, Science, 292, 2001, pp. 1888–92.
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Nick Evans and Rhys Jones’ seminal paper on the Pama-Nyungan language is ‘The Cradle of the Pama-Nyungans: Archaeological and Linguistic Speculations’, chapter 22 in Archaeology and Linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective, Patrick McConvell and Nicholas Evans eds, ANU Press, Canberra, 1997.
Important papers documenting the existence of ancient placental mammals include T. Rich et al, ‘A Tribosphenic Mammal from the Mesozoic of Australia’, Science, 278, 1998, pp. 1438–42; T. Rich et al, ‘A Second Tribosphenic Mammal from the Mesozoic of Australia’, Records of the Queen Victoria Museum, no. 110, 2001; H. Godthelp et al, ‘Earliest Known Australian Tertiary Mammal Fauna’, Nature, 356, pp. 514–16, 1992. Dissenting views include Z. Luo et al, ‘Dual Origin of Tribosphenic Mammals’, Nature, 409, 2001, pp. 53–57; the two papers on placental mammal origins are Murphy et al, ‘Resolution of the Early Placental Mammal Radiation Using Bayesian Phylogenetics’, Science, 294, 2001, pp. 2348–51, and Marsden et al, ‘Parallel Adaptive Radiations in Two Major Clades of Placental Mammals’, Nature, 409, 2001, pp. 610–14; an account of the Riversleigh discoveries is given in Mike Archer, Suzanne Hand and Henk Godthelp’s Riversleigh: The Story of Animals in Ancient Rainforests of Inland Australia, Reed Books, Melbourne, 1994; Duncan Stewart’s original manuscript notes ‘Notes on the Buandik Aborigines of the South East of South Australia’ is held in the archives of the South Australian Museum; the history of kangaroos in the Tidbinbilla Reserve is given by Mitch Reardon in ‘Too Many Roos?’, Australian Geographic, no. 73, Jan-March 2004; Alan Newsome’s fascinating study of infertility in red kangaroos was published as chapter 13 in The Biology of the Marsupials, Stonehouse and Gilmore eds, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1986, pp. 227–36.
