Queensland's Big Fence

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 780, 2 July 1954, Page 9

Queensland's Big Fence

by

SUNDOWNER

JUNE 18

HAD no sooner written my last note than I picked up The Great Australian Loneliness, by Ernestine Hill. It is an old book but in sections still fascinat-ing-especially the chapter on the riders of the Big Fence, the "only fence in the world that cuts a continent into

two mighty paddocks. That fence was erected as a barrier against rab-

bits — after the rabbits had _ crossed.

it 1s 1200 mules of wire netting, 42 inches high and with a mesh of an inch and a quarter, and every Australian believes it to be the longest fence in the world. But I have just read in a Brisbane paper that Queensland is pushing ahead with plans for a 3200-mile fence, strong enough and high enough to stop dingoes, This will not be an ocean-to-ocean fence, but a ring fence round most of Queensland’s sheep country-an area about as big as New Zealand lying west of the Great Divide. I have seen no estimate of the cost, but since the dingo’s

annuai toll on sheep farmers is said to be about 500,000 sheep, or two million pounds worth of wool, Queensland could spend twice as much on this project as New Zealand has earmarked for the Roxburgh power scheme, and still be on the safe side of good business.

JUNE 20

at Ls HAVE had one brief attack of homesickness since I came to Australia, and that was when I met Elsie’s double. We had stopped at a small township

before the world was awake, and there she was bearing down on us

through the mist, and heading, I was almost foolish enough to believe, straight for me. But she had more sense

than that. She was heading for a gate leading into the hotel garden, which she was quick to see someone had left open. To make sure that she was safe she walked round the building, pausing at the open windows and, as any sentimentalist could see, listening carefully

at each. Then she turned to the lettuce and cabbage. At that point the train moved on again, and I don’t know how long her luck held. But for one wild moment I was chasing her round my own garden and calling out "Whoa!" st * ok

JUNE 23

MET a man _ today whose’ occupation is what he calls "crabbing" -a horrifying business but apparently very lucrative. He goes alone into the mangrove swamps and, if he is lucky, comes back a few days later with fifty or a hundred giant crabs tied up in the bottom of his boat. To catch them he lures them into a wire cage, but to secure them when he takes them out of the water he holds them

down with his bare foot and passes a loop of string round their legs and claws.

Carelessness at this point can mean a lost finger or toe, since. these

creatures don’t let go once they take

hold, and are strong enough, I was told, to break the bones in a man’s wrist. I had no difficulty in ‘believing it -after seeing one of them dead. But there are compensations. A crab is worth from four to six shillings, and this man had brought home 1500 in 16 days. But those 16 days had meant four or five journeys into lonely swamps infested by mosquitoes and loathsome crawling things, sleeping on the job most of the time, and exposed all the time to unnerving accidents. Though I have never eaten crab meat, I have once or twice been tempted to try it. Now I am safe. But I can’t help thinking what a strange occupation it is in a country not much older than our own and crying aloud for men to develop it. he ate ate

JUNE 24

USED to believe, and if I ever see Colac Bay again, or Manapouri or Te Anau or Milford Sound, I shail. no doubt believe once more that our sandflies are the most pestiferous in the

world. But they can at least be seen as well as felt. The sandflies of this

part of Queensland are invisible. You see nothing and hear nothing, then an hour or two later you develop itching lumps that annoy you for days. They are as near as living creatures can be to Euclid’s definition of a point. If they have magnitude it is below the register of septuagenarian eyes. If.they could not achieve position-I would not. have a dozen mildly septic sores where their caravans have rested. (To be continued)