Nature Keeps Score

Picture a quiet but far-away corner of the world… a place where wisdom sometimes trails behind ambition, and where a man—blessed with time, money, and just enough knowledge to be dangerous—decides that nature could use a little help.

 

Meet Thomas Austin, self-appointed architect of the new and improved. A man who looked at the ancient balance of tooth and nail, root and rain, fire and frost… and concluded it could be improved with a little adjustment.

 

But every adjustment demands correction.

 

And in the quiet overgrowth of a world down under lies a lesson  for the next man with too much time, too much money… and not nearly enough caution.

Thomas Austin had a fondness for animals—particularly rabbits. But there were none in Victoria, so in 1859 he imported two dozen European wild rabbits and released them on his estate.

Australia turned out to be a paradise for rabbits—plenty of food, mild winters, and few natural predators. They multiplied at a staggering pace, spreading across the continent at nearly eighty square miles a year. Within decades, millions became billions. Vegetation vanished, topsoil eroded, native species were pushed aside, and farmland suffered. What began as an idea to generate  one man’s hunting opportunities became an ecological catastrophe.

 

By the early 20th century, the problem had outgrown simple solutions. Fences stretched for miles. Poisons were deployed. Nothing worked for long. The rabbits always came back. Not until the introduction of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV) in the 1990s did the population sharply decline—and even then, only temporarily. Resistance soon developed

 

Today, billions still roam Australia, and they remain the country’s most destructive invasive species.

 

Until I met Wayne, Australia was little more to me than Crocodile Dundee, dangerous wildlife, and a few colorful sayings.

That’s what I thought until I stared at the stuffed kangaroo in Wayne’s office.

 

“That’s a small one—an Eastern Grey” Wayne said. “About 1.5 meters..… sorry—around four feet. The big boys? Five, six feet tall. Two hundred pounds. And they box.”

 

That got my attention.

 

 

Wayne was an attorney. We had just finished discussing a legal matter when I noticed the stuffed kangaroo in his office.

 

"Vacation souvenir?”    “In a way, yes,” came Wayne’s reply. I was on holiday when I saw the wanted poster.”

 

One of the proposed solutions to Australia’s rabbit problem was increased hunting. Locals had little time for it, so the call came out and hunters from New Zealand, the UK and the US joined in the hunt.

 

Then in his early twenties, Wayne   answered  a call for help from a land as vast as it is forgiving. Where distance is not measured in miles, but in hours, and water—whether from rivers, rainfall, or hidden underground—is never something you could count on. It was a place that demanded self-reliance. If something went wrong, there was no one to call. You handled it yourself.

 

Sometimes with a gun.

 

“I wasn’t exactly Paladin or Josh Randall,” Wayne told me with a grin, “but close enough.”

 

It sounded like the American frontier—dust, danger, and men who lived by their wits and their aim.

 

But this “Wild West” wasn’t in America.

 

It was Australia, in the 1960s.

 

Wayne had come on vacation. What he found was a job as a hired gun.

 

“We worked in small teams,” Wayne said. “Competition was fierce. And if you weren’t careful, someone might steal your pelts or horses.”

 

The work was hard, the pay uncertain, and the danger very real. He spoke of tense, sometimes violent confrontations in remote stretches of the Outback—places where law and order were more suggestion than reality.

 

“At night, we kept a big fire going,” he said. “Two men on guard at all times, four-hour shifts. Nobody slept through a watch. We all carried sidearms, and there was always a shotgun or rifle within reach. It wasn’t optional.”

 

He paused, then added with a slight smile, “There were outlaws on the Outback.”

 

 

"Bounty hunting never really had a chance," Wayne said. "Rabbits bred faster than hunters could kill them. Vast areas were never touched, and some hunters even cheated the bounty system. In the end, it was just another Band-Aid on a wound that refused to heal."

 

He shrugged.

 

"Nature keeps score."

 

Epilogue

 

As I was leaving Wayne's office, I paused in front of a painting hanging on the wall.

"Aboriginal dot painting," Wayne said. "The dots aren't just decoration. They tell stories—tracks, waterholes, journeys. This one was painted by Arthur, an Indigenous Australian who hunted rabbits with me years ago. We became good friends."

 

Wayne studied the painting for a moment.

"Arthur always said the winding shape was like those S-curve warning signs on country roads. It's telling you to adjust your course early. Once you're in the bend... it's already too late."

He smiled.

 

"Nature gives us warnings. We just don't always pay attention."

 

Then, with a laugh, he added,

"And one more thing,,.."

 

"Never step on a snake."