As I write Berenice Walters’ biography I am finding it an interesting study on how people’s attitudes and personalities change throughout their life.
Not only did she go from a shy, insecure young woman to one of strength and forthrightness when it involved her beloved Dingo, but her story is also one of changing attitudes to the Australian Aboriginal people.
An example of how her attitude, based on society’s thinking changed to one based on learning, is demonstrated at first in a letter to her mother and later a paper she wrote following her research on the history of the dingo.
The letter is dated 12th March 1957. She is telling her mother about a group of aborigines staying with them while doing boomerang throwing demonstrations and selling crafts at the local show.
As was the way in the 1950s, she refers to them as ‘darks’ and is critical of them for not pushing themselves with their craft work.
Nearly two decades later, while researching the history of the Dingo, a new respect for the Aboriginal people and the treatment meted out by the white settlers grew with earnest.
Her research included studying the original diaries of governors and explorers. The horror of the thoughtlessness of the Europeans was the driving force behind many of her papers. In one she wrote:
I felt unutterable shame on learning of the atrocities to which the Aborigines were subjected; the poisoning of their flour and water, the callousness in dispossessing them of their land, their life blood; the wanton murder of whole tribes that had no weapons to compare with guns; and the ignorance, self-righteousness and greed of the Europeans generally which blinded them to the needs of the former owners.
A one stage she commented on the need to have this history included in school curriculums. I agree with her views totally.
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Australia is a country known for its uniqueness.
Introduced species alter the Australian ecosystem. The introduction of plants and animals has drastically changed our landscape and consequently the history of many of our most treasured species. Australia now has the highest rate of animal extinctions in the world. A third of the global mammalian extinctions in the last 400 years have occurred on our own soil. This has been largely attributed to the introduction of foreign species.
Our country is completely covered in introduced species such as rabbits, foxes, feral cats, camels, goats, donkeys and wild dogs just to name a few. It is now more common to see a rabbit in the countryside than it is to see a bandicoot; the native that fills the same ecological niche but has been out competed by the rabbit.
Conversely, some natives are doing very well from human settlement. Land clearing and dingo culls have favoured the kangaroo’s grazing style of feeding, enabling their numbers to explode. The problem seems almost irreparable.
A simple, solution to controlling pest species; the dingo.
In addition to land clearing, the problematic boom in meso-predators (smaller predators) and herbivores (native and introduced), has also been attributed to the noticeable absence of the dingo; a native apex predator. Comparable to the lions in Africa and the sharks in the ocean, dingoes are at the top of the Australian food chain. Like many other apex predators, humans have killed dingoes in large numbers.
This killing has been rationalised as a way to protect livestock, humans, to keep dingo numbers ‘under control’. Dingoes have even by branded as ‘wild dogs’, implying that they are not part of the native landscape and therefore should be destroyed.
Dingoes restore order to the ecosytstem.
Dingoes are actually a keystone species; an integral component of the ecosystem.
Now recognised as its own species (Canis dingo), the dingoes presence in the Australian landscape helps to sustain ecosystem biodiversity. It does this by regulating the number of meso-predators and herbivores. This prevents native animals such as kangaroos, wallabies and emus from becoming pests and reduces the number of introduced species such as goats, camels and rabbits.
Biodiversity has already been restored in areas where apex predators have been reintroduced. Primary research in Australia has found that kangaroo and wallaby numbers are lower (and not considered problematic) in areas where the dingo is present.
Ecosystem balance is regulated from the top down.
The dingo can easily boost biodiversity; strengthening the populations of many wonderful native species. All that is required is the cessation of dingo shooting. In conjunction with population and habitat rehabilitation programs, our native animals may just have a fighting chance of surviving.
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