The
Hon Richard Jones is a Member of the Legislative Council in
the New South Wales Parliament.
The
kangaroo is the symbol of Australia. When people in China or
Brazil or Canada or England or France think of Australia they
automatically conjure up the image of the kangaroo. Some even
expect to see kangaroos in the streets when they come here.
Tourists want to see our kangaroos. They want to marvel at their
antics, laugh as a joey scratches its head while hanging out
of its mother’s pouch, gasp at how far a red kangaroo can
bound. They have no such creatures in their countries. Kangaroos
are Australia’s most recognised symbol, not the koala,
not Uluru, not Sydney Harbour Bridge. Everyone knows kangaroos.
For tens of thousands of years kangaroos have been part of the
Dreamtime. They have been sacred totems of indigenous Australians
who have revered and respected them long before white people
invaded their country. They feature in ancient stories as very
special spiritual beings, not as pests as many modern pastoralists
regard them today. When Europeans came to this ancient and fragile
land they brought their brutish European ways. They cleared
sacred sites, they wrecked the landscape, they destroyed ancient
cultures. They brought their unsuitable cloven hooved animals,
they brought cats and foxes and pigs which hunted the native
wildlife to extinction. They had no respect for kangaroos and
our other wildlife and many still don’t. Pastoralists complain
about a plague of kangaroos when they see a dozen or so and
yet run tens of millions of sheep and cattle which have destroyed
native vegetation and are turning inland Australia into one
giant desert. The economic yield from sensitive inland areas
is minimal but the damage being caused by that economic activity
is huge.
The
real plague in Australia is European animals. Landholders have
not yet learnt the lesson that live wildlife is worth a good
deal more money then dead wildlife. Australia was one of the
largest killers of whales until 1978, by which time the whalers
had almost completely wiped out the humpback whales on the east
coast. Today those whales have partially recovered from the
slaughter and more money is being made from tourism, from whale
watching than was ever made from killing the whales. Koalas
were killed in the millions in the 1920 ’s until the President
of the United States, Herbert Hoover stopped the importation
of their skins. They too are now worth far more alive then dead.
Reputedly one live koala is worth more than a million dollars
overseas.
When
will we learn the lesson that our kangaroos are precious and
special?
When will we learn the lesson that they are worth more alive
than dead?
Tourists would love to be able to watch the spectacle of great
mobs of kangaroos leaping at sunset towards a distant thunderstorm.
To them it would be like a real life Jurassic Park.
