by Tim Flannery
I had engaged Viare Kula, of the Papua New Guinea Department of Conservation and Environment, to undertake most of the radio-tracking work. Each day during the month or so I spent with Viare, we struggled up and down a succession of near-vertical slopes some 500 metres high. The rain was incessant, the food repetitive and limited. We were never dry. And we saw one of our radio-collared animals only the once. Over the hour I observed it, the Tenkile sat impassively, only occasionally twitching an ear. This highlight could hardly sustain us for the months necessary for the study.
The broken topography and wet conditions made it close to impossible to source radio signals, even if one spent all day chasing them. Sometimes we would hear a distant thump as the animal being tracked detected us and jumped from its tree into a steep gully. When we found two of the tracked animals dead, we decided to terminate the program. Dogs had probably bitten the two when they were first captured and after some months they had succumbed to chronic infection, despite being given antibiotics as a precaution against this upon initial capture. The despair that comes with killing rare animals that one has worked so hard to preserve defies adequate description. It makes the continuous, chill drizzle of Tenkile’s habitat more biting.
HUNTING WITH DOGS
Rocket isn’t the only four-legged tree-kangaroo hunter I have worked with. Others include Photocopy, Dingo and, the finest hunter of them all, Sime of Wilbetei. Photocopy, well named, looked like a good hunting dog, though he did not act like one. His companion Dingo, however, was an outstanding hunter and therefore especially valuable. Both dogs were owned by Jonas Tidal, an Ilaga Dani man living at Tembagapura. Jonas had named Dingo in honour of an Australian friend. This dog caught the first Dingiso (Dendrolagus mbaiso, a new species of black and white tree kangaroo) I ever saw, but like many thoroughbreds he was temperamental.
Wishing to help Jonas and his wives, who had spent several days living in the bush, I offered them a ride in a vehicle back to their village. Hunters, wives and dogs duly entered the cabin—all, that is, except Dingo. He ran off and hid in a drain instead. For days rumours flew about that he had been caught by Bugis miners from Sulawesi and that they had turned him into curry. Others had seen his poor mangled body on the road, smitten by a vast mining truck. All hope appeared lost until one day, nearly two weeks later, Dingo appeared back at the village, fat and sleek. He had merely been hunting for himself for a change.
Sime was the best four-legged hunter I have ever met. He was already old when I knew him in 1989. A distinct greying on the face betrayed his age, but he still had a sleek and muscular physique. Despite having been deprived of his masculinity, Sime walked with a confident swagger possessed by few dogs in New Guinea. He never ran in fear, as other dogs did when someone scowled or shouted, and he was aloof with strangers. Although we spent months in camp together, Sime never allowed me to touch him.
Sime’s canines were worn almost to stumps. He doubtless relied on the younger dogs (his acolytes) to make the kill, but it was his wealth of experience and keenness of attention that brought success in the hunt, for without him, hunting was a highly uncertain affair. Whenever we hunted with Sime in the Torricelli Mountains we met with success. One time he bagged four Finsch’s tree kangaroos (Dendrolagus inustus finschi). On the triumphant walk back to the village, Sime wore a wreath of victory, made with leaves from the forest.
The lives of most dogs, even good hunting dogs, are often difficult in New Guinea. Sometimes the best hunting dogs are, by virtue of their predatory temperament, a danger to village chickens and piglets. Among the Goilala, such dogs are progressively whittled away from behind for their crimes. A first offence results in the loss of half a tail, while a second (if male) means the testicles go. The third results in a finely cropped wagger. Any further breaches and the offender is usually dispatched to the stew pot.
One of the finest tree-kangaroo hunters of all time was a dingo named Balnglan. The explorer Carl Lumholtz travelled high into the mountains near Cairns in 1888 to meet the animal, having heard much of his expertise. Balnglan was in a class of his own as far as tree-kangaroo hunting went. Lumholtz’s triumph in obtaining a boongary (later to be named the Lumholtz tree kangaroo), and Balnglan’s part in it, is best told in the explorer’s own words:
I had just eaten my dinner, and was enjoying the shade in my hut, while my men were about smoking their pipes, when there was suddenly heard a shout from the camp of the natives. My companions rose, turned their faces toward the mountain, and shouted ‘Boongary, boongary!’ A few black men were seen coming out of the woods and down the green slope as fast as their legs could carry them. One of them had a large dark animal on his back.
Was it truly a ‘boongary’? I soon caught sight of the dog ‘Balnglan’ running in advance and followed by Nilgora, a tall powerful man.
The dark animal was thrown on the ground at my feet, but none of the blacks spoke a word.
Lumholtz’s joy, however, was short-lived. After skinning the tree kangaroo and lacing the skin with arsenic, he made the fatal mistake of leaving the skin in the roof of his hut. The number of specimens I have lost to pole-climbing, lid-lifting or similarly acrobatic dogs that could reach specimens stored in seemingly impossible places is horribly high. Imagine Lumholtz’s dismay to find, upon his return, that his unique specimen had disappeared!
I was perfectly shocked. Who could have taken the skin? I at once called the blacks, among whom the news spread like wild-fire, and after looking for a short time, one of them came running with a torn skin, which he had found outside the camp. The whole head, a part of the tail, and the legs were eaten. It was my poor boongary skin that one of the dingoes had stolen and abused in this manner.
Everyone tried to convince me that it was not his dog that was the culprit. All the dogs were produced, and each owner kept striking his dog’s belly to prove its innocence. Finally, a half-grown cur was produced. The owner laid it on its back, seized it by the belly once or twice, and exclaimed ‘Ammery, ammery!’—that is, ‘hungry, hungry!’ But his abuse of the dog soon acted as an emetic, and presently a mass of skin-rags was strewed on the ground in front of it.
The biologist’s preference for arsenic as a preservative was to lead to the tragic death of Balnglan. Lumholtz had rubbed arsenic on a ringtail possum and left it as bait to catch a large carnivorous marsupial known to the Aborigines as Yarri. Balnglan found the bait.
TRAPPING AND RETALIATION
In 1889 Messrs Cairn and Grant were dispatched from the Australian Museum to the forests of north-east Queensland to obtain tree kangaroos. They soon realised that they could not do this without help from the local Aborigines and were apparently delighted to find that ‘natives had been brought in by the police at Atherton ten miles from [their] camp’.
The collectors employed some of the Aborigines to obtain mammals for them. These hunters knew Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo as Mappi, and they used an interesting method to catch it:
On finding one in a tree, [they] build a sort of brush-yard round it a few feet from the roots; one of the natives then climbs up until he is above the animal, which he compels by pelting it with sticks to descend to the ground, where being unable to jump any height it is easily killed with waddies.
Hunters in the Torricelli Mountains of Papua New Guinea have described a variant of this method to me, whereby a fence is built much further out from the base of the tree. The hunter then climbs the tree and either attempts to get the tree kangaroo to leap to the ground, or throws it down by grasping its tail. Hunters and dogs waiting below then dispatch it. Hunters always claim that tree kangaroos always try to flee downslope when hunted in this manner. Sometimes, if there are plenty of people, the fence is done away with and a ring of people and dogs is used instead. In her behavioural study of Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo, Elizabeth Proctor-Gray placed a fence made of fishing net in a six-metre radius around the tree and shook the tree kangaroo out.
Tree kangaroos are powerful animals, which, if h
andled carelessly, are capable of inflicting considerable damage. The Aboriginal hunters who obtained Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo for the Australian Museum in the nineteenth century made a fence around the tree in which a tree kangaroo was found. They would not enter the fence, and instead grasped its tail from outside, for fear of its powerful claws. Males of Bennett’s tree kangaroo, which are much larger animals than Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo, have a reputation for pugnacious behaviour. Early explorers in the region found that many Aborigines were fearful of approaching them. Residents living in the area today tell of male tree kangaroos climbing out of trees to fight with dogs that are baying at them from the ground below. If the fight were one on one, I am uncertain which would come off the better.
Mr Bob Whiston, an Irish durian-grower who lives on the Bloomfield River near Cooktown, recorded a three-way tussle between a male Bennett’s tree kangaroo, a dog and a human. In a letter to me dated 28 July 1995, he related the following:
My notes from 28-9-74 as follows: Adult male, [one] mile [east] of Hook’s Crossing on Gap Creek. Heard grunting and sounds of a scuffle, thought pig caught by dingo but large male climber [a tree kangaroo] baled up by dog.
Climber held both hands in air, palm outwards. Chased dog, grabbed tail of climber and said to Ruth, ‘I think it’s surrendered’, but [it] brought both arms down with stunning speed and slashed my wrist cleanly and deeply (about three stitches’ worth). First time we’ve seen the obviously effective defence. Bad cataracts but in good nick generally.
The little female would sometimes accompany the ‘I surrender’ gesture with a little hop forward , but always silently and with the face as devoid of expression (no teeth bared, etc.) as only tree kangaroos and the English are capable.
Golila hunters in Papua New Guinea told me that Doria’s tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus dorianus dorianus) is a powerful adversary and will kill hunting dogs either by crushing the dog’s snout with a paw or by ripping open the abdominal cavity. A rather lightly built Mianmin hunter I met in 1984 recounted that he had wrestled with a Timboyok (Dendrolagus goodfellowi buergersi) and was forced to beat a retreat. The story occasioned much mirth among his fellow hunters.
Mianmin have also told me how, when a hunter wounds a Timboyok with an arrow, the animal will pluck the arrow from its flesh and fling it back at its assailant, sometimes even hitting its mark. This behaviour seems unlikely but is widely believed among Mianmin and other New Guinean people.
Roger Schifferle, who lived for some time in a village near Lake Murray, Western Province, found lowland tree kangaroos (Dendrolagus spadix) living in uninhabited swamp forest to the south-east of Lake Murray. He pursued them on several occasions with local hunters, who were quite wary of them—adult males were particularly feared. The locals told him how lowland tree kangaroos band together to hunt wild pigs, just as people do. Indeed, these people recounted that much of the country east of Lake Murray remained uninhabited through fear of these creatures, which had driven out the original human inhabitants! While this story may seem ridiculous to biologists, it indicates how hunters relate to this large, and in some ways anthropomorphic, marsupial. It also neatly illustrates that where there are people, there are no lowland tree kangaroos, and vice versa.
RECIPES
The Western Dani, Amungme and Moni people of Irian Jaya have an intriguing way of cooking tree kangaroos. Evidence of such feasts is readily recognisable, for the stone ovens created for the occasion are large, consisting of a fireplace made of stones with a stone-lined oven pit alongside. The first stage in the process is to light a large fire and to singe the fur off the animal. The carcass is then butchered, the extremities (hands, feet and part of the tail) often being tossed into the fire. The tail tip and some claws are often retrieved for ornaments. Next, the various portions are wrapped in leaf packages.
While the butchering is going on, men are busy collecting large river stones to be placed on the fire. A cooking pit is dug near the fire, and the stones are wrapped in strong leaves and used to line the pit. They are then handled with wooden ‘tongs’. From the forest, women bring fern fronds and edible green plants, which only they know how to find. These, along with the wrapped meat, are placed on top of the stones in the pit. More hot stones are placed on top of the food, and then everything is covered with large fern fronds. The meat and vegetables are thus slowly steamed and ready for eating within an hour.
The Extraordinary Watkin Tench
1996
THE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT of Australia occurred so swiftly, and altered the land and Indigenous cultures so profoundly, that it can be difficult to imagine what the country was like before the first white settler walked ashore. If we wanted to picture that different land, and think about how it has been transformed, there’s no better guide than Watkin Tench’s extraordinary accounts of Australia’s first European settlement. Bestsellers in their day, they vividly describe the land and the Aboriginal people as they were at first encounter, and comprehensively report how they were affected by the new settlers. Despite their early popularity, Tench’s books have remained virtually unknown to Australian readers for most of the past 200 years and are only now claiming their rightful place in our national literary canon, and inspiring new works of national importance, such as Inga Clendinnen’s Dancing with Strangers and Kate Grenville’s The Lieutenant.
Watkin Tench was a lieutenant in the marine corps on board Australia’s First Fleet. Around 1000 people, 700 of whom were convicts, sailed on the eleven ships. Britain’s jails were overflowing at the time, and with the American colonies gaining independence and thus no longer willing to accept convict labourers, a new solution had to be found. West Africa was briefly considered as the site for a penal colony. Joseph Banks, who accompanied James Cook when he mapped Australia’s east coast, vigorously championed Botany Bay as a site. An influential voice in Britain, his arguments carried the day. Unfortunately, Botany Bay did not live up to expectations as a site, and upon arriving Governor Phillip quickly made the decision to relocate the settlement to Port Jackson.
Watkin Tench was born in Chester on 6 November 1758. Very little is known of his childhood. His father, Fisher Tench, was a dancing master who ran a dance academy and boarding school in Chester with his wife Margaritta.1 The building that housed this establishment, probably the birthplace of Watkin Tench, still stands. Today a pizza shop occupies the street frontage and there’s no sign that one of Australia’s finest chroniclers was born there. It was presumably a happy home, one in which the young Watkin was well educated, as his fondness for quoting from Milton and Shakespeare attests. Indeed such were his educational achievements that he would be widely considered the most cultured mind in the colony at Port Jackson.
Tench entered the marine corps at the age of sixteen. At the time the marines were considered to be a distinctly junior (and therefore inferior) service, deficient both in pay and prestige relative to the army and the navy. Perhaps Tench joined the marine corps because in those days you had to buy your position in the military, and the cost of a commission with the marines was within his family’s reach. Whatever the case, Tench saw active service almost immediately, for by 1776 the American War of Independence was in full swing. Just two years later, in 1778, Tench was captured by American forces; he spent three months as a prisoner of war before rejoining the fray. The end of the war, in 1783, must have brought bittersweet feelings to the young marine. The adventure and the chance to distinguish himself had passed, and he faced the boredom of non-active service. He was placed on half pay in 1786—it must have been all but intolerable for a talented and ambitious young man to linger idly on a substantially reduced income.
We can only imagine Tench’s feelings when, just a few months later, the opportunity arose to volunteer for a three-year tour of service (which ended up being nearly five) with the First Fleet. The unusual nature of the commission—it involved having some of the responsibilities of a jailer—must have deterred many officers who perhaps saw such servic
e as beneath their dignity. But in it Tench may have seen the chance to develop a second career—that of a writer.
In early 1787, when the publishing house John Debrett of Picadilly commissioned him to write an account of the voyage to New Holland and the settlement of the new land, Tench had no literary credentials. But such was public interest in the venture that would dispatch around 1000 Britons into the unknown that all the leading figures of the expedition had been signed up to write accounts. They included the governor and lieutenant-governor, the judge advocate and the surgeon. Debrett commissioned surgeon John White, perhaps hoping that his medical training might incline him to document the natural history of the new land, and White did not disappoint, producing a fine account of the flora and fauna of what is now the Sydney region.
It is not known what Debrett expected of Tench, but perhaps the laying out of a few pounds to secure a work from the young lieutenant—who was by far the most junior person commissioned to write—seemed like a reasonable risk. Whatever Debrett’s thinking his investment was amply repaid when a ship returning from New South Wales carried Tench’s manuscript detailing the voyage out and the first months of settlement. Tench’s A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay was rushed to press, appearing on 24 April 1789 as the very first genuine account of the settlement. Published as a pocket-sized pamphlet, Expedition to Botany Bay is by far the most modest of the five ‘foundation books’ of Australia’s colonial history, but it is also the most elegant, perceptive and engaging.2 Even from a distance of more than 200 years Tench’s personality draws us in as he tells us about the very first days of our national story. Tench spent just four years at Port Jackson, and upon his return in 1793 his second book, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, was published by J. Nichol of Pall Mall. Altogether a more handsome publication, it is testimony to both the success of Tench’s first work and the enduring public fascination with the colony at Port Jackson.