Published The Advocate, January 8, 2005


NO EMUS are left in the wild in Tasmania although they once must have been quite common.

Burnie sits on Emu Bay. The emu also appears on the City of Burnie seal, along with the Latin words ``Non Nobis Solum’’

It means ``none but us alone’’. Not if you are an emu.

It seems strange for the emu to be paired with the thylacine as extinct Tasmanian species since there are so many emus at large on the mainland.

Possums are a feral pest in New Zealand. In Tasmania, they are a protected species but the protection extends only so far. They comprise most of the roadkill.

Tasmanian possum is also served as gourmet food in Adelaide. Cheong Lieuw, the Adelaide Hilton’s master chef, produces an excellent ragout using possums processed at Launceston.

I have a friend who has a vest knitted from possum ``wool’’, which he says is lighter and warmer than angora. Since a possum would not take kindly to a shearing, I assume they are killed for the sake of fashion.

Another acquaintance likes to shoot at least one kookaburra a day on his rural retreat outside Launceston.

He says kookaburras are an introduced species in Tasmania and, as such, he regards them as feral pests to be eliminated in the same way that you might shoot a feral cat or a fox.

It raises the question of when an introduced species ceases being feral and becomes part of the local eco-system.

Every introduced species from rabbits to sparrows eventually become part of the system. On the mainland, foxes are now part of the natural balance and Sydney is infested with Indian mynah birds.

They are here to stay, one and all. It’s not as if they can be rounded up and sent back where they came from. Aborigines have come to the same conclusion about whites. It’s too late, mate.

At the Cradle Mountain visitors’ centre, one of the displays outlines the extinction of Tasmanian species over ``30,000 years of aboriginal activity and 200 years of white actions’’.

Note the heavily loaded distinction here between the words ``activity’’ and ``actions’’.

Up to 600 years ago, Tasmanian Devils lived on the mainland. It was not the ``actions’’ of white men that did them in but the result of black ``activity’’, and especially their dingoes.

It is hard to believe Devils could become extinct here.

They are scavengers, likes hyenas and crows, and need only to find a dead animal in order to have a feed. There is more than enough possums lying around to keep them fat and happy.

Unfortunately, the Devils appear to be on their way out. They increasingly suffer from facial tumours, which seem to be spread by their social bonding. They rub cheeks, transfer the tumours and die.

Australia was once a giant wildlife ark. Then Tasmania was an ark. Now there is talk of creating an ark for disease-free Devils on an offshore island, possibly King Is, to ensure their survival.

We seem to be resorting to ever-smaller arks.

Published The Advocate, January 1, 2005


ANOTHER mainlander came this week on a visit to the Australian sub-continent and I was explaining to him how the individual communities here are aggressively proud of their differences.

And yet Tasmania is made one by family inter-connections. Blokes marry their best mates’ sisters.

Sounds like the ALP, the visitor said, still in pain from the federal election.

A long-time Labor member, he sits on various party committees and is still taking election post-mortem phone calls on his mobile. I can remember when a mobile was something that hung above a baby’s cot.

We went to have lunch in a café at Devonport. Jostled by rosy-cheeked tourists in sensible shoes, complaining about slack Australian service standards in their flat-white English Midlands accent, we headed outside.

We took our sandwiches and parked near the Simplot processing plant at Ulverstone to watch the factory chimney blow steam rings into the air.

The people of Ulverstone do not appreciate what they have there. Between Simplot’s ``Old Faithful’’ steam geyser and the mighty Ulverstone clock, they are sitting on tourist gold.

Just as mesmerizing was a robin redbreast, as light as thistledown, which was darting across the road, swooping and perching on a fence post. Sit long enough and the birdlife will come to you.

A beautiful day, you could find few better. There was even a rare heat shimmer in the air, and not just from the car bonnet.

Then the sloppy beetroot from my sandwich fell in my lap. Resolution: Always use absorbent towel to pat dry the beetroot when making a salad sandwich.

My friend could not stop laughing. He knows I have a special talent for bringing chaos to any order and therefore he has never really tried to recruit me to the ALP. He worries about the additional havoc I might cause.

As I’ve told him, I will join the political party that finally does something about the weather. Sue Smith MLC promised me the howling North-West winds would cease on December 1 on the dot. Uh-huh.

I am not a committee kind of person, therefore I would not fit into the ALP or any other party. I find committees, with their meeting procedures and minutes, mind-numbingly tedious.

Resolution: Leave all committees and paperwork until after you are dead.

Speaking of which, since it is notoriously difficult to get out of this life alive, New Year resolutions often contain a nudging reminder of our mortality, that time’s a wasting.

Resolutions such as to give up smoking or promising to become a kinder, gentler person have an eye to imminent death and the hope, or fear, of an eternal afterlife.

The church business is booming meantime. Old picture theatres are turned into Christian Fellowship halls and rodeos carry the static of Creationist Country music over the public address system.

My New Year resolution is to procrastinate more, to put off until tomorrow what I cannot be bothered doing today.

The good thing about procrastination is you always have something to live for.