by Tim Flannery
Then I see the chips of stone and the bleached and broken bones of a desert rat-kangaroo—like the scattered skeleton of a young rabbit in the sand. This animal was last sighted before I was born—indicating that a Wangkangguru hunter once sat here, relishing a delicious meal of oolacunta, as the tribe knew the marsupial.
Perhaps the lucky Wangkangguru had been given the belt, and maybe a pair of pants as well, in exchange for leading an explorer to water or in payment for mustering cattle for some forgotten pioneer. Or perhaps the solitary half-buckle had been traded in from the coast by Aborigines before the European pastoralists ever arrived, its lively depiction of the dragon and metallic lustre endowing it with a power that moved it along the great trade routes in exchange for pituri or stone axes, until at last it pierced to the heart of the continent.
Whatever the case, the buckle had reached its resting place in the sand by the time of the Great Depression, for that is when the oolacunta was last seen alive. The diminutive creature had the finest lines of any member of the kangaroo family—all legs, grace and energy—with fore-limbs so tiny that they almost disappeared when, in full flight, it tucked them up close to the body. At under a kilogram and with fur the colour of fine beach sand, it was a mere atom of life in the vastness of the inland, an almost ethereal being whose appearance and disappearance is a profound biological mystery. First described in 1843 by the great English naturalist John Gould, who gave no indication that it was rare, the oolacunta promptly vanished into thin air and was not seen again for nearly ninety years.
Almost everything we know about the creature was learned through the agency of a single man—the one-eyed, one-handed Hedley Herbert Finlayson, a chemistry tutor from Adelaide University who braved the desert on camelback during the height of summer in 1931 to investigate sightings of a tiny rat-kangaroo in the far northeastern corner of South Australia. Finlayson is a true unsung hero whose achievements as an amateur mammalogist, at a time when so many scientists were seeking advancement through study at Oxford and Cambridge, read like high adventure. His journeys, which twice nearly cost him his life, were made at a time when many Australian mammals were disappearing, and they give us a glimpse of many now vanished creatures. To find the desert rat-kangaroo Finlayson had to penetrate the endless plains and sand-dunes of the Lake Eyre Basin. At times all he had to eat was curried oolacunta, for he had great success in his quest.
He found the species living in the vicinity of Cooncherie waterhole, and was flabbergasted to observe that, in this hostile country where the temperature at ground level is often in excess of 50 degrees Celsius, the oolacunta never sought shelter in a burrow, instead making do with a loose nest of sticks constructed on the open plain. Despite their size they were as brave and dogged as the largest red. Finlayson wrote:
We had ridden less than half an hour when there came a shrill excited ‘Yuchai’ from the horse-boy furthest out, and the chase was on… Tommy came heading back down the line towards the sand-hill, but it was only after much straining of eyes that the oolacunta could be distinguished—a mere speck, thirty or forty yards ahead. At that distance it seemed scarcely to touch the ground; it almost floated ahead in an eerie, effortless way… as it came up to us I galloped alongside to keep it under observation as long as possible. Its speed, for such an atom, was wonderful, and its endurance amazing.
We had considerable difficulty heading it with fresh horses. When we finally got it… it had run us 12 miles; all under such adverse conditions of heat and rough going as to make it almost incredible that so small a frame should be capable of such immense output of energy …
In his private notebook Finlayson recorded, in a terse, yet admiring way how the chase ended. ‘Finally he staggered and dropped, and lay gasping… Difficult to imagine anything gamer—only stopped to die.’
For twelve miles this tiny creature, weighing just under a kilogram—less than a rabbit or cat—had outpaced one fresh horse after another! What I would give for just a single day with an oolacunta, to observe and learn how this most amazing of kangaroos lived, for it is the very epitome of the toughness needed to survive in Australia. As it was we learned shamefully little about it before it became extinct except that, unusually among kangaroos, the females were larger than the males, suggesting that females were dominant.
In London I glimpsed what were probably elements of its success—a massive nasal cavity which gave the head a unique broadness, a black band of fur below its sandy outer layer, and bare patches on its arms, chest and inner thigh. Its huge nasal region may have cooled the scorching air before it reached its lungs, as well as extracting precious moisture from the exhaling breath. The black band in the fur may have retained warmth on a cold desert day—perhaps when the creature ruffled its coat slightly so as to expose it—and perhaps it licked its bare patches, which would have been shaded as it sat, the evaporation dissipating the unbearable heat of summer. Whatever its many secrets, they added up to a unique animal, one that could lie on the open plain in its flimsy nest all day, enduring the worst of desert conditions, but at the slightest danger rise and take off in a straight line—for twenty kilometres if need be—purchasing its survival with unique speed and endurance. Taken as a whole, the creature’s strategy makes sense; its flimsy nest was simply a resting place from which an approaching predator could easily be spied. For such a creature, seeking refuge in a cool burrow where it might have been trapped was a far poorer option.
There is the faintest glimmer of hope, fanned in part by its previous near-century-long disappearance, that we may see the oolacunta once again. In the 1970s workers on the dingo fence in western Queensland reported a kangaroo the size of a football running along and bouncing off the netting, and from time to time similar sightings are reported in the Lake Eyre Basin. As with the thylacine, however, every year that goes by without rediscovery increases the likelihood that the species is truly extinct.
There is a rather sad ending to the story of Finlayson and his oolacunta, for when he published his bestselling book The Red Centre in 1935, he was taken to task by Ellis le Geyt Troughton, curator of mammals at the Australian Museum, for collecting such rare creatures. It was an attack motivated in part by envy, but Finlayson’s amateur status left him vulnerable to such pronouncements—indeed criticism by professionals seemed to dog him all his life. A particular bitterness came in the 1950s and 60s, when the Australian Mammal Society was founded as an association for ‘professional mammalogists’. Despite pleas from some members, Finlayson refused to join, for he had been sensitised to the stigma of ‘amateur’. For the rest of his life this fascinating man, who lived to be nearly 100, never married, drove a car, or owned a television or phone. He kept his priceless specimens in his house in North Adelaide and only after his death were all 3000 deposited in a collection in the Northern Territory.
From the air the country traversed by Finlayson looks as if its deep geological history has been written in braille, with each dune and ripple telling of bygone winds and weather systems. The dunes run north-south below me, so Uluru must be off to the northwest. I know that because the winds that once marshalled those countless sand grains were generated by a vast high pressure system that sat almost directly over the great monolith. Then—15,000 years ago—Australia was a Sahara, so dry and windy that the heart of my country was little but shifting sand.
Soon Algebuckna waterhole on the Neales River appears, its narrow waterway a glistening thread of silver in the morning sun, pointing straight at Lake Eyre. I imagine the pelicans slowly shuffling in the dawn light, the cormorants at their perches preening as the sun touches the crowns of the red-gums. Then the vast, silvered, extent of Lake Torrens, the Flinders Ranges forming its stately backdrop. After that, Spencer Gulf, and finally touchdown in Adelaide. I’m fresh from the wonders of Europe and America, but this is the most mysterious and beautiful country on Earth.
26
Re-making Country
When I wrote The Future Eaters I put forward
a hypothesis developed by Ken Johnson and Dave Gibson of the Arid Zone Research Institute in Alice Springs, that the extinction of Australia’s medium-sized mammals was largely due to a changed fire regime that occurred as Aboriginal people left the land. Much new information about this has come from the last of the desert nomads journeying back to their country—some of whom made first contact with Europeans as late as the 1960s. The first opportunity many of these people had to return to their ancestral lands came courtesy of biologists, who hoped to discover populations of mammals feared to be extinct. The Aborigines, many of whom were from the Great Victoria and northern Tanami deserts, were jubilant at this prospect. Life on the missions had not been kind to them; many suffered a sharp decline in health and a younger generation, alienated from the land, was growing up.
The returning nomads were confident that they would find plentiful game, including many supposedly extinct species, which had fed them right up to the moment they stepped out of the desert a few decades earlier. Upon entering their country, however, they detected something wrong, for the unburned vegetation was old, and at a uniform growth stage. As they lit fires many remarked, ‘No one’s been caring for the country. It needs to be tidied up.’
But it was only when they began to walk through their land that the full extent of the catastrophe became evident—there were no mammal tracks. The country was empty of game, no longer capable of supporting traditional Aboriginal life. It was a discovery that left many deeply disturbed and depressed.
When the elders were asked what they thought had gone wrong, these experienced land managers gave a prompt and, to European ears at least, extraordinary answer. The extinction of so many animals was, they said, due to their own negligence; they had failed to carry out the increase ceremonies upon which the animals depended, and now the creatures had forsaken the land. Although the biologists put things a little differently, in essence they agreed that the Aborigines’ traditional lifestyles had been the lifeblood of the country. As they moved about they had burned the vegetation into a complex mosaic in different stages of growth, which many marsupial species required to survive. In effect, the very act of living on the land—of hunting, gathering and burning—had maintained its diversity.
By the time European biologists were taking a serious interest in our desert marsupials, only a single colony of the rufous hare wallaby, also called the mala (Lagorchestes hirsutus), survived on the mainland. It held on in a region that had been managed by Aboriginal people until well into the twentieth century, at Dragon Soak in the northern Tanami Desert. Perhaps it was a matter of luck that this population alone survived; nevertheless, I can’t help but bitterly reflect that had action been taken a decade or two earlier, we may have saved half a dozen species from extinction.
Nothing it seems could save that last colony of the mala, for despite the best efforts of biologists to protect it, it was exterminated by fire in November 1991. Fortunately, just before this a few individuals were taken into captivity, and there they bred prolifically. Some were released back into the area around Dragon Soak, but these were swiftly eaten by cats. Such are the changes that have occurred to the Australian environment since this once widespread species vanished, that no success has been enjoyed in establishing any wild-living populations anywhere in the continent. So today mala can only be seen in fenced areas, where they are protected from feral predators and fire. Still, the creatures survive, and I’m determined to see them once again living wild in the desert.
You cannot have properly functioning ecosystems unless you have their necessary parts—the plants and animals of which ecosystems are composed. During my lifetime many of Australia’s unique species have been let slip to extinction. A couple have been rescued at the last moment, but with each year more species slide ever closer to the brink.
One spring day in 1998 I stood atop the Darling escarpment, overlooking Perth. The countryside was lovely as only the west can be—wildflowers of astonishing variety bloomed everywhere, while the view down the scarp to the coastal plain, which had been greened by winter rain, was gentle and brimming with new life.
Despite the luxuriant prospect not all was well with the land. When it had been surveyed for wildlife a year or two earlier, the area proved almost devoid of marsupials. An extensive trapping program had located a single brushtail possum, which was captured no fewer than three times! But now a group had come together to breathe life back into this damaged landscape by dedicating close to 2000 hectares of private land as a new wildlife sanctuary. Known as Paruna, it was purchased by a non-profit organisation called the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), which is supported solely by the donations of ordinary Australians, who in this case had given six million dollars for the purchase.
Paruna links two national parks, neither of which at the time had much more wildlife than Paruna itself. Now, however, the whole region could be managed as a unit. Funds were raised to erect a fence that protected the reserve from farmland and houses, and a fox-baiting program was commenced in collaboration with the adjacent national parks. With fox numbers reduced, the first of the native mammals were released—ten black-flanked rock-wallabies (Petrogale lateralis).
By the time of their reintroduction to the region in 2000 these animals had been gone for over half a century, eliminated by hunting, land-clearance and introduced predators. No one was sure how they would cope, but within months they were breeding well, and today you can see them in many parts of Paruna and the adjoining national parks. They are an affirmation that our country can be healed, and that much of the work required for this to occur can be done by ordinary Australians.
The rock-wallabies were followed by introductions of short-nosed bandicoots, tammar wallabies and truffle-eating woylies (Bettongia penicillata), all of which have thrived and spread widely. Then in 2003 a small miracle happened—a long-vanished marsupial introduced itself to the reserve. The chuditch has become extinct over 95 per cent of its original distribution, with only a few remaining in the southwest of Western Australia. Its arrival at Paruna, unassisted by humans, indicates that the country has now begun to heal itself. Twelve months after the first chuditch sighting, thirteen more have appeared in the reserve, an indication that they are becoming re-established in country that has, for millions of years, been their home.
On 24 May 2004 I was once again in Western Australia on behalf of the AWC. This time I was gliding across the milky-emerald waters of Shark Bay, with Faure Island glowing ochre-red in the distance. The little-known island had been named in 1803 by French explorer Nicolas Baudin, who quickly moved on after one of his sailors was mauled by a tiger shark. The sharks could not long delay European settlement, however, and by the early twentieth century the island was a sheep run, with feral goats and cats compounding the damage done to the delicate desert ecosystem. By 2001 all of the island’s native mammals—which had included woylies, western barred bandicoots (Perameles bougainville) and Shark Bay mice (Pseudomys fieldi)—had become extinct. The mouse, once common throughout the western two-thirds of the continent, by 1950 had been reduced to a single refuge—a few coastal sand-dunes on Bernier Island at the mouth of Shark Bay—making it among the most endangered of all Australia’s mammals.
Faure Island is arid, and when I first saw it in 2001, its vegetation was as close-cropped as the stubble on a bikie’s cranium. Just a handful of spindly, geriatric sandalwood trees had survived the onslaught of goats and sandalwood gatherers. Their nutritious fruit and spreading shade was thus no longer available to wildlife. Things began to change when Dick Hoult, fisherman, sheep farmer and scion of an extended family with roots in the Aboriginal community, passed the island’s lease to the AWC. Dick and his family then became deeply involved in the restoration of Faure’s environment. With the assistance of the Hoults and the Western Australian Department of Conservation, the cats, goats and sheep were removed, and improvements made to infrastructure. The day before we arrived was Dick’s seventy-eighth birthday, which he celebrat
ed by replacing the tin roof on Faure’s main hut.
With his toes gripping the boat’s gunnels like gnarled fingers, the old fisherman manoeuvred our vessel towards the shore. Faure had received thirty centimetres of rain in the first four months of 2004 and, in the absence of the sheep and goats, the island looked glorious. Delicate herbs and fragrant flowers covered the landscape, and even the mangroves surrounding its emerald-blue lagoons seemed revived by the rain. And once again the tracks of native mammals covered the island, for in 2003 the AWC had returned the boodie (Bettongia lesueur) and the Shark Bay mouse to their rightful home.
At first the reintroduction of the mice did not go smoothly, for a pair of boobook owls was nesting near their release site. The birds ate a dozen or so mice before moving on, but the survivors adjusted to the presence of the predators and have since bred apace, more than making up for the losses. Today, Faure is home to the largest population of Shark Bay mice in the world, and after decades of hovering on the brink, the species is on the road to recovery.
I was at Faure to release a third, very precious species in the new reserve: the banded hare wallaby (Lagostrophus fasciatus)—a relative of the short-faced kangaroos of the ice age—which by early 2004 was also facing extinction. The only wild populations inhabited Bernier and Dorre islands in Shark Bay, and a park ranger who had visited Bernier earlier in the year discovered that the few wallabies there were starving. Something had occurred on Bernier—and perhaps Dorre as well—that favoured other native species over the banded hare wallaby, and now, with only a handful remaining, it was likely that this wondrous creature was to become extinct.