The Crow Eaters Page 13

  It’s little wonder that such discipline was required, as the Kangaroo Island coast had become notorious for shipwrecks, with over 80 wreckages resulting in 71 deaths off the coast here, including the Loch Sloy not far from the lighthouse I’m bunking down in. The 568 ton cargo ship Loch Sloy was travelling from Glasgow to Melbourne and was close to the end of the voyage when it struck a reef in Maupertuis Bay on 24 April 1899. The masts snapped and giant waves engulfed the deck immediately, sweeping many crewmembers into the sea. Of the 34 people on board, only four made it to shore. The remaining crewmen – Duncan McMillan, William Mitchell and John Simpson, along with the remaining passenger, David Kilpatrick, who was also the only one wearing boots – washed ashore below a 30 metre cliff with only a few tins of herring and some whisky that had made it to the sand with them. They scaled the cliff with a rope made from flannel and McMillan hiked inland for help in the direction of where the lighthouse now stands. He had found water, though the others had left after three days with no sign of McMillan. They ranged out towards Cape Borda in the North. Fifteen days later, with hands and feet ripped to shreds and his tongue black and swollen from thirst, McMillan found a homestead inland at Rocky River – he had covered nearly 40 kilometres of dense bushland. Some local farmers and the Cape Borda lighthouse keeper, William Smith, set out to find the three remaining sailors before it was too late. Mitchell and Simpson were eventually found crawling along the coast near the Ravine des Casoars, having survived on plants, shellfish and two dead penguins they found washed up on the rocks. Kilpatrick’s body was found a month later, along with 13 other deceased from the wreck. This precipitated the building of the Cape du Couedic lighthouse, which still shines a light across the Southern Ocean and the rocks off Kangaroo Island’s remote south-west corner.

  I leave the lighthouse early and drive across the southern edge of the island for hours. I stop in at Seal Bay and walk across the sand with Kate, my National Parks guide, to see the Australian sea lions frolic and fight on the beach during mating season. The sea lions here were nearly wiped out completely by the sealing practices in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they are extinct in Bass Strait and Tasmania. Kate says that while there are 12 000 left in this region, their numbers have declined 25 per cent in the past ten years because of modern trawling practices and ocean pollution. The wind blasts across the water, sending a constant spray of sand into our eyes, though the sea lions take no notice, waddling from the dunes to the edge of the frothy water, protecting their mates.

  The conservation effort here is an example of how much has changed on Kangaroo Island. Seals and sea lions were once a means to an end, for their skins and oil. Now people derive an income from them again, though through tourism and conservation. Kangaroo Island feels like a place that hasn’t finished changing. I drive along the dirt roads past Antechamber Bay where Nat Thomas lived and past the wineries, which now dot the coastline, I wonder what will happen with Paul and his scallops, with the next generation of the isolated May family in Parndana, and the relationship of the island to the rest of South Australia. It may once have been a place of crow eaters, though now with electric cars buzzing around the island, sustainable seafood exported around the world from here, renowned vineyards and an easier connection to the outside world, it seems like a place of hope.

  CHAPTER 8

  WORKING THE LINE

  The first thing I notice about Coober Pedy in winter is the light. In summer when I was here it was full and bright, with terracotta-red dirt bleeding across the plains, blue skies and the hot sun radiating across the fields of black rocks and piles of white sandstone. In winter everything here is pale. There is a thinness to the air and the sun’s reflection on the hills; the colour of the compact saltbush shrubs and mounds of dirt from the mines around the edges of town feel shallower somehow. The landscape has a coldness to it now. As soon as the sun dips behind the ‘Coober Pedy’ sign in town, there is no warmth coming from the ground and the wind licks across the dirt roads out of town.

  In the early morning the next day that same thinness is here, though I don’t have time to linger to appreciate it. It is just after sunrise on a cold Thursday morning and Alan Walton needs to get out on patrol. I meet him at his dugout on the edge of Coober Pedy. He shushes his two hunting dogs as I drive into his little desert kingdom, past the big cage of racing pigeons, the mounds of firewood and the old cars waiting for restoration. He throws our swags on top of his ute and ties them down alongside his rolls of wire, drums of water, a chainsaw, spare tyres and his two rifles. Alan is a patrol-man on a 321 kilometre stretch of the dog fence either side of Coober Pedy and he has agreed to take me out with him on a ‘run’.

  The 5400 kilometre dog fence stretches from the South Australian coast near Yalata on the edge of the Great Australian Bight all the way across the state, into the dry desert landscape and enormous pastoral properties of New South Wales and Queensland, before it finishes on the edge of the Darling Downs and the farmland leading to Toowoomba. As James Woodford writes, the fence ‘slices across Australia’s desert heart’ and I am keen to see what – one of the longest built structures on earth, and the longest vermin fence in the world – is all about.

  At its simplest, the fence exists to keep dingoes away from sheep. In the 1890s it was reported that on one South Australian property, dingoes killed more than 11 000 sheep. As a result, the fence was built in the period between the two world wars to link up the numerous private vermin fences that existed in Central Australia. In 1930 in South Australia, there were an estimated 75 000 kilometres of fences to shelter farms from rabbits, dingoes and emus, though these private ‘enclaves’ were falling into disrepair. During this same period, farmers paid 500 000 scalp bonuses on dingoes that were shot or caught. This was an unsustainable model, though, as there was evidence of scalp depots falsifying records and suggestions that in some areas dogs were being bred for this bonus payment. On 17 June 1947, the Dog Fence Act came into effect in South Australia, with a commitment to link up the 2200 kilometre line across South Australia before it continued into the other states. The fence now costs about $1.3 million a year to maintain, though, even with the structure, dingoes and other wild dogs cost Australia’s agricultural industry about $65 million each year.

  This border evokes thoughts of the Berlin Wall or even Trump’s rhetoric on a border wall with Mexico. It separates two sides of Australia – the wild north with its desert and dingoes, and the bucolic south with the sheep stations and farming country – needed to maintain one of Australia’s most revered industries. Dr Thomas Newsome from the University of Sydney told The New York Times that ‘the dingo fence is probably the most extreme length undertaken by any country in the world’ (see Solomon, 2018) to prevent a predator from roaming free in its habitat.

  While the dog fence is nearly twice the length of the US–Mexico border, as Scott Cane writes, it ‘is a great unseen and unrecognized symbol of the Australian psyche and landscape – separating the wild from the tamed – desert from pastoral and, in its remoter parts, the first from the third world in Australia’.

  The dingo is an animal that polarises opinion, depending on where you are in the country. It is forever connected with the voice of Lindy Chamberlain and her cry, ‘A dingo’s got my baby!’ when, on 17 August 1980, in the shadow of Uluru, a dingo dragged nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain from her cot inside the family’s tent. Lindy was initially convicted of Azaria’s murder and spent three years in prison, though it wasn’t until 2012 that the coroner finally ruled that a dingo had been responsible for her death. Despite many people seeing dingoes as majestic-looking native dogs, they continue to be linked to attacks on people, and in 2001 a nine-year-old boy was killed by two dingoes on Fraser Island in Queensland.

  The dingo, as we know it, evolved from the wolf in Southern Asia between 6000 and 10 000 years ago. It is thought to have been introduced into Australia 3000 to 4000 years ago by Asian seafarers, and the spread of the dingo across the mainland
was aided by Indigenous people who used the dog for help when hunting kangaroos, wallabies and possums.

  As Yelland and Fraser write, ‘Outside the Dog Fence it is now regarded as a native animal while inside the Fence it is a prescribed pest’, and this conflicted sentiment also holds with many scientists, who believe dingoes are valuable in maintaining the environmental equilibrium of other pests, such as cats, goats and pigs south of the line.

  We are driving west from Coober Pedy across to Mabel Creek Station. The Pitjantjatjara Council purchased Mabel Creek in 2012 as a way to employ Aboriginal people with a connection to the land and to create an environmentally sustainable and tourism-oriented property managed by Indigenous people. Al’s fortnightly route takes him from the edge of Mabel Creek along the fence to Mount Eva in the east, on the road towards Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre.

  We cut across country to reach the corner where Al’s patrol begins – past red gibber plains, rolling scrub and chalky country where only hardy cattle subsist on what they can find. The track is nearly non-existent and there is no other sign of human presence in any direction, stretching out to the horizon.

  The trail begins to rise and we cross a railway track, dead straight and vacant. It is the Ghan track, that continues all the way to Darwin from here.

  ‘I was out here one night and I saw this headlight. I got out to have a closer look and then the Ghan zooms past, I could see all the tourists and the lit carriages, and here I am on the fence. Lucky I didn’t have my pants down,’ he says with a laugh.

  ‘I’ve been chasing this for 20 years,’ Al says as he slows the ute to between 10 and 20 kilometres per hour as we edge up next to his section of the dog fence. It’s at this speed we roll along the fence for the next two days.

  ‘I remember seeing something about the fence when I was a kid and I thought – this’d be great!’ he says as he watches the 1.5 metre high mesh with its electric top line as it cuts an unrelenting straight path across the red sand and scrub as far as we can see.

  ‘If I didn’t need the money – I do – I’d do it anyway, but I just love being on the fence,’ he says, rubbing the silver whiskers on his face. The entire length of Al’s section is topped with a 14 volt electrical wire charged by solar panels on the fence to prevent camels from knocking sections down. ‘It feels like being hit with a bit of four-by-two,’ Al says from experience of the electrical kick of the wire.

  Before moving to Coober Pedy four years ago – Al is from Victoria – he worked as a firefighter, a sand blaster, he unloaded prawn trawlers in the Gulf, he was a FIFO worker for a while and he cut and sold firewood in Victoria. It’s this sort of adaptability that is essential to work on the fence. I ask him what it was like at the beginning and what his training was like.

  ‘Training?’ he echoes, not taking his eyes off the line. The man he inherited the line from, Jeff Boland, had been doing this stretch for 26 years, so when Al got the job he had to learn the rhythm of the fence for himself.

  ‘I came and muddled through it myself for the first few trips,’ he says. ‘I was told to always be really cautious when it’s wet, though I thought “I’ll be right”. I ended up getting bogged out here for a few days by myself. I was stuck and I didn’t have much tucker. I thought I was going to have to knock off a roo!’

  Despite the general scarcity of rain here, where average rainfall is about 175 millimetres per year, when it is wet it turns the track into custard. ‘I was bogged 15 times in my first two days,’ Al says. The dry creek beds and dirt bowls turn into wetlands and he has had water up over his doors more than once. For the first year Al worked on the fence he was still commuting back and forth from the family home in Victoria.

  ‘I lived on the fence when I was here,’ he says. ‘I’d do a full run in nine or ten days, drive back to Port Augusta for a feed and a sleep and then drive to Victoria before I’d have to turn around and do it all again.’

  We continue on the red track, past saltbush, twisted mulga trees and the odd family of kangaroos bouncing along on either side of the fence. The isolation is real here. In the four years he has worked the fence he has run into Manfred – the man who works the fence west of Mabel Creek – only three times.

  ‘I think it’s a pretty important job,’ he says in his understated way. He’s aware of the debates from both sides and the impact it has on kangaroos, emus and feral populations on either side of the wire, though he’s pleased that so much of Australia’s agricultural success depends on him and others like him to maintain the fence.

  As we drive along, Al places poisoned baits of dried meat laced with 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate) on the edge of the fence every few kilometres. He says that the baits have massively reduced dog numbers here. Al also says that in four years he has never seen a full-breed dingo while on patrol. This is unique I’m told, though here the more common pests on the Mabel Creek section are the camels, which regularly push down stretches of the fence.

  I learn quickly that there is a technique to watching the fence. Al hunches over the steering wheel and focuses his eyes three posts in front so he can see if there are any holes, any spots where an animal has tried to dig underneath, or if any of the posts have come loose, without going cross-eyed. The concentration is intense and I fall into a kind of trance as we watch the line for hour after hour.

  ‘After doing a run it takes me a few days to come good – because you’re concentrating, looking for holes and bent over like this,’ he says.

  We roll down a hill slowly and the landscape changes again. Along the plain it is scattered with knee-high grass and a few clumpy trees. An emu spooks at our approach and runs along the fence line, though rather than scattering into the bush, it keeps running in front of us for kilometres before it slows, as if forget-ting what it was doing and then turns its head again, remembering the ute behind it and it bolts again, skinny legs darting up and down below its thick feather skirt.

  We bounce along in Al’s LandCruiser, sand and gouged holes in the earth making the going even slower than our already creeping patrol. Before each trip Al changes the oil, checks and changes the filters and makes sure his tyres (and two spares) are all in perfect order.

  ‘It’s a long walk if you take a short cut,’ he says. It’s not until I’ve been out here with him in this scorched country for hours that I understand what he means. I can tell that Al loves the isolation, though he respects the seriousness of being alone in the desert country. He carries a satellite phone for emergencies (after getting bogged), though he hasn’t used it yet. One close call happened during summer, when he was out of the ute placing poison-injected baits along the fence.

  ‘The wind picked up and the grass was moving and the next thing a big snake with a dark head was looking at me. He chased me up the fence and I was off,’ he says with a laugh.

  Despite the conditions around here in summer (when 50°C days can occur), the risks and isolation, Al works through the year without a break, only resting in between his runs.

  I look out the other side of the fence and in the distance I see a golden dog. I think it is a mind trick momentarily, though Al sees it too. It’s a full-breed dingo: big, proud and a pure golden colour. It holds its head high and watches us with curiosity as the ute stops. It’s then that I remember why we’re here again. Al slowly and smoothly unlocks and loads his .308 rifle without making a sound. He shoulders the gun and places it on the doorframe of his open window. ‘POP’ the shot echoes across the plain, though the dingo watches us with bemusement; he missed. ‘Fuck,’ Al seethes as he creeps a little closer and rests the gun on the limb of a dead mulga tree this time. ‘POP’. He misses again, though this time the dingo takes the hint and disappears into the brush. He says it’s the first time he’s missed a dog in four years, ‘And you’re bloody here!’

  Most of the dogs he sees along the fence are mixedbreed wild dogs, similar to the many I’ve seen padding around the streets in Coober Pedy. Al admits later on that maybe he wasn’t meant to shoot th
e dingo, the first pure breed he’s seen here, this time. As we start up again I think back to author James Woodford’s first close encounter with a dingo while he travelled the entire length of the fence. ‘Seeing this creature sealed an ongoing debate I have had with myself for years. I finally decided that dingoes are a part of the Australian fauna – they may be relative “newcomers” but they are also highly adapted native wolves.’ After seeing the big, proud dingo on the plain outside the fence for myself, I tend to agree.

  Al finds a small hole in the fence. As I get out of the ute, I can smell the tang of a dead animal. I walk around to where Al has a square of wire he’s mending the fence with and I can see the crumpled carcass of an emu on the other side.

  The journey is straight and through the long hours of the afternoon we drive from one horizon to the next, never at more than 20 kilometres per hour. Recently, the University of Adelaide began a program to monitor the fence using drones – supposedly to save time and money. It might save on some of the monotony, though as Al says, ‘What’s a drone going to do when it finds a hole in the fence, or a feral camel?’ He’s got a point.

  ‘It’s the saddest looking fence I’ve ever seen,’ says Al of the patched and motley structure strung up with stout and twisted mulga posts cut from the trees cleared to make the fence. ‘But it works,’ he adds. And that’s all that matters to him.

  Later we pass by the Tallaringa Conservation Park outside the fence. A gate is not closed properly. This happens with increasing frequency, with the tourists and grey nomads in the area. Al’s silently furious at this, as it undoes a lot of the work he does week after week on the line.