Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

They are even built across the roads, so that travelling along the highways is often a dreary business of opening and closing gates in the rabbit fences. In some sections where there are gates about every five miles, the men passengers on mail coaches usually arrange “gate watches” between them. There is a heavy penalty for leaving one open.

The extent of the fences is amazing. One built by the government of New South Wales along the South Australian boundary is three hundred and fifty miles long. Southern Queensland has one six hundred and twelve miles long. The state of South Australia has more than enough to make a girdle round the earth, and New South Wales has spent more than thirty millions of dollars in building her one hundred thousand miles of rabbit fence.

As a result of these various measures, in the more closely settled areas the rabbit pest is pretty well under control and is now at its worst only in lands so poor that it is unprofitable to fence them.

Moreover, the rabbit has in recent years been made to pay something for his keep. Frozen rabbits are shipped to the markets of Europe to the number of twenty millions a year, and along Australian country roads one may see thousands of rabbit carcasses hung on fences awaiting wagons to take them to the packing houses for freezing. Rabbit skins worth some eighteen million dollars are annually exported for making felt hats, coat linings, and women’s furs.

In the early nineties, when the news of the discoveries of the great German bacteriologist, Doctor Koch, was being flashed about the world, Australia hoped that some bacillus might be found that would rid her of her rabbits. It was claimed that an assistant of Pasteur had found a culture which would spread an infectious and deadly disease among rabbits, but from which other animals would be immune. Pasteur was invited out to Australia to try out this specific, but, as he was too old to undertake the voyage, he sent a representative. A small island stocked with every kind of animal on the continent was handed over to this scientist but he failed to satisfy the authorities that his system of inoculation could be carried out without danger to other animals, and so the wonder-working bacillus is still to be discovered.

The states have had no better luck in introducing other animals to prey upon the rabbits. Some years ago West Australia turned two hundred cats into one of the rabbit districts, thinking they would exterminate the vermin. When the government inspectors went around a year later to check up results they found that the cats were living in the rabbits’ burrows on the friendliest terms with their long-eared landlords.

Foxes were brought in with the same object as well as for sport. But now that Reynard takes annual toll of about one hundred thousand sheep the foxes are shot, trapped, poisoned, and fenced against. In some places they are more dreaded then the wild dogs, or dingoes.

When the Australian aborigines were first seen by the white settlers from England, they had with them many dogs, which they had trained to hunt. Some people claim that these dogs are native to Australia, some that they were brought in by Malay invaders from the north, and some that they are the descendants of a number of sick dogs left by a Dutch vessel on the shores of Australia in 1622. If the last theory is true, the climate must have agreed with the dogs, for they have multiplied and spread all over the country. To this day the southwest corner of Queensland and the northwest corner of New South Wales are badly infested with them. In a recent year dingoes and foxes were responsible for the loss of one hundred and forty thousand sheep in New South Wales alone. Strangely enough, the dingoes generally eat only the tongues of the sheep they kill.

The “dogger” employed by the station manager to get rid of the dingoes is usually the station rabbiter as well. As he makes his rounds to lay baits of phosphorized grain for the rabbits, he drags along at the tail of his cart a bit of mutton or other fresh meat. At intervals of a mile or so he leaves some meat with strychnine well rubbed into it. The wild dog will follow the trail to the bait, gulp down the meat, and shortly thereafter fall dead in convulsions.

Each sheep station is represented on the nearest local county board, generally by the store-keeper. When the “dogger” presents the scalp and the tail of a dingo, joined by a strip of skin cut along the back, the storekeeper credits him with the sum of one dollar and eighty-seven cents. Three times a year vouchers are turned in to the secretary of the board and the employee receives his check. As a rule the station owner adds enough to make up the amount paid for each dingo scalp to five dollars, so that, whether he is a regular station employee or an independent worker, the Australian “dogger” makes a good living.