Australian native Galahs
derived from indigenous Yuwaalaraay word ‘gilaa‘
(Eolophus roseicapilla)
Just because Galahs are currently abundant, gives no-one the right to steal them and imprison them from the wild
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Wildlife does not exist so that it may be petted!
Wildlife exists for its own right, as members of fragile yet disappearing ecosystems, defying the hand of humans. Many humans are not content to observe and respect wildlife in their native habitat. Such folk are anthropocentric, wanting to own wildlife as property and label them as ‘pets‘.
The mindset is as backward as colonial Europeans once owned Black slaves. Such anthropocentric thinking folk would not have a clue about the concept of ‘ecology‘ where humans are part of the environment, but instead control and dominate it. Such folk may even naively only comprehend the term to be that recently hijacked by Information Technologists – in the realm of commerce.
The Atlantic Slave Trade once was Legal…doesn’t mean it was right, just culturally acceptable
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While 21st Century society mostly has morally matured:
to abolish the Slave Trade
to respect the rights of Children
to respect the rights of Women
to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples
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.. still the Wildlife Slave Trade persists in 21st Century society, as if somehow it is morally distinguishable from theHuman Slave Trade.
No law has yet legitimised this distinction. Instead, society relies upon prevailing socio-cultural norms to allow the immoral trade in wildlife to persist.
This is unacceptable.
Humans breed wildlife and keep wildlife as pets for their own gratification, not for the benefit of wildlife per se. Pet shops are permitted by the Australian Government to keep and sell wildlife as pets such as native birds, native reptiles, native marsupials and native Dingoes. Animals are excluded from the Crimes Act. But this is no different to excluding Australian Aborigines from criminal law during early colonial Australia up until 1838 (Myall Creek Massacre). It is no different to the use of child labour during the Industrial Revolution, nor any different to the patriarchal prejudice assigning women less rights somehow than men.
It is ‘moral exclusion‘, like when soldiers before battle are conditioned to dehumanise the enemy in order to psychologically distance themselves from selected humans to permit massacring other humans with impunity. Such ‘dehumanization‘ can make violating generally accepted norms of behavior regarding one’s fellow man seem reasonable, or even necessary (Maiese, 2003) – like the Australian Airforce helping the United States bomb the Vietnamese back into the Stone Age.
“Tell the Vietnamese they’ve got to draw in their horns or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.”
~ US General Curtis LeMay, May 1964
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Australians witness this moral exclusion mindset being translated into Australia’s ongoing kangaroo slaughter on an industrial scale.
But sentience is sentience, a life is a life. Breeding and trading in domesticated animals is treating animals as property, like clothes and a car. Ancient Romans treated slaves as property and their ancient laws upheld their immorality.
Australia is not the ancient Roman Empire. Respect for the equal rights of humans is enshrined in Australian cultural values and laws. Yet our moral relativism judges excluding wildlife from our cultural values and laws. Why? How is this legitimate, appropriate and right? It isn’t.
Wildlife come under threat from humans from over a dozen exploitative excuses – deforestation, bushfire, poaching, etc. Wildlife smugglers and wildlife traders (‘pimps‘) make a profit from the theft, breeding and trading in wildlife. It is exploitation and is morally wrong, yet the laws do not uphold morality in the case of wildlife. When laws fail to uphold moral cultural values, civilised society is undermined. The Roman Empire may have thought of itself as a civilised society in ancient times, despite its institutionalised slavery; but in the 21st Century, Australian civilised society warrants a higher standard.
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Dural Pet Superstore Burns Down
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Then when a pet shop burns down killing all animals inside including wildlife, one can only imagine the suffering as the animals are burned to death, locked up inside, abandonned.
This morning at around 2am, the Dural Pet Superstore in outer north-western Sydney caught fire in an industrial complex, the Dural Business Centre at 915 Old Northern Road Dural, as a result of an adjoining commercial premises igniting. Police say the fire broke out at a tyre factory although the cause was not immediately clear.
Animals being burned to death in the Dural pet shop fire
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It was the fire alarm of the pet store that alerted the fire bridage to attend, but it was too hot and too late for the amimals in the pet shop.
Pet native reptiles for sale on the Dural Pet Superstore website like our native Water Dragons and Bearded Dragon Lizards (above)
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Inspector Ben Shepherd from the NSW Rural Fire Service said some parts of the complex, including the Dural Pet Superstore, had been destroyed.
Hundreds of animals from the store are assumed dead. The store sold rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens and budgies.
“We stock a wide range of finches, as well as young and adult budgies… we also sell quails, cockatiels, canaries, peach face lovebirds and more.”
~ Dural Pet Superstore website
Native Galahs being offered for sale on the Dural Pet Superstore website
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The store housed birds, chickens, fish and the renowned rainbow lorikeet ‘Pierre’ – who had been with the store for 11 years.
Rainbow Lorikeet for sale at the Dural Pet Superstore
(Trichoglossus haematodus)
Native parrot of Australia and the south west pacific region
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The Tyrepower Store, next to the Dural Pet Superstore
Picture by Natalie Roberts
Would a creche or nursing home with unattended sleeping occupants be permitted at this location?
Typical official answer: No, animals do not have the same value as humans, so it doesn’t matter.
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo for sale on the Dural Pet Superstore website
[Cacatua galerita]
Just because Cockatoos are currently abundant, gives no-one the right to steal them and imprison them from the wild
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[Sources: ‘All animals dead as fire guts Sydney pet shop’, April 24, 2012, AAP, http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/all-animals-dead-as-fire-guts-sydney-pet-shop-20120424-1xifv.html, ^http://www.hillsnews.com.au/news/local/news/general/fire-investigation-for-dural-factory-blaze/2531860.aspx]
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New South Wales Rural Fire Service spokesman Ben Shepherd said seven businesses were damaged during the fire, which included a tyre store, a mechanic and a pet store.
“There was considerable loss to the pet store and there were pets inside”,’ he said.
“The owners were visibly shaken and the business is well known for keeping fish, birds and puppies.”
Investigations into the origin of the fire will take place when the fire cools and the integrity of the building is established. Mr Shepherd said it was too early to tell if the fire was suspicious. [Ed: How qualified is the RFS in large urban fire fighting; is this not the task of the professional urban-trained Fire Brigade?]
Time to ban the sale of animals (especially wildlife) from pet shops
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Pet shops should only be for the sale of pet food and accessories.
However, since the Australian pet shop market for live animals represents the lure of big money, ‘backstreet breeders‘ and ‘puppy farmers‘ are indiscriminately producing enormous quantities of puppies and kittens and selling them to pet shops.
The Australian Government needs to outlaw puppy farms and backyard breeders to put them out of business. Unfortunately they do trade through many Pet Shops, so Pet Shops have become a big part of the problem. We certainly recognise that Pet Shops are not the only cause of the problem. But however you look at it, there are too many animals bred and not enough homes for them all. That’s why so many are euthanased every year. Anything we can do to stop excessive breeding and impulse selling will reduce the numbers killed. Animals should not be bred for profit only to end up being killed when the money has been made.
‘More puppies inside’…pet shop in Missouri, USA
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Pet shops encourage the impulse purchase of animals by ill-informed people who later discard their pet when they realise that pet ownership is not as easy or cheap as they thought. These are the animals that end up in the pounds and many thousands are euthanased each year.
Even though statistics are difficult to obtain and are poorly kept, we estimate that 130,000 dogs and 60,000 cats are euthanased each year in Australia by animal welfare agencies. There are simply too many bred and not enough homes. This is an absolute disgrace and no humane Australian could possibly want this situation to continue.
How much is that doggy in the window?
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People can buy their animal companion from pounds, animal shelters or rescue centres and save a rejected animal’s life in the process!
Or visit a reputable, registered breeder. They will receive better information on the future care of their pet and be vetted for suitability as an owner.
Pure Dingo
(Canis lupus ssp. dingo)
Rare and ‘Vulnerable’ on Fraser Island, Queensland
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The Dingo is possibly as old as the last Ice Age
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The earliest archaeological evidence for dingoes in Australia, indicates that the arrival of dingoes in Australia can be dated back to about 18, 000 years BP (before present), based upon mitochondrial DNA data collected by scientists from The Royal Society. [Source: ^http://savefraserislanddingoes.com/pdf/Evolution%20of%20the%20Dingo.pdf, [>Read Report(512kb) ]
Significantly, 18,000 BP was when the last Ice Age ended in Australia, referred to as the Last Glacial Period (Glacial Maximum) when much of the world was cold, dry, and inhospitable. It is the geological epoch in world evolution known as the Pleistocene Epoch, which in archaeology corresponds to the end of the human Paleolithic Age. At this time, Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania were one land mass called Sahulland. Note, this is not to be confused with ‘Gondwanaland‘, which existed between about 510 to 180 million years ago (Mya).
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Sahulland or just ‘Sahul‘ was the name chosen by archaeologists at a conference in 1975 [Allen, J.; J. Golson and R. Jones (eds) (1977). Sunda and Sahul: Prehistorical studies in Southeast Asia, Melanesia and Australia’]. Other names offered include ‘Australasia‘ and ‘Greater Australia‘, and this larger land mass forms the basis of Australia’s Continental Shelf, half of which is less than 50 metres deep under the Torres Strait to New Guinea and Bass Strait to Tasmania.
Evolutionary global warming melted the glacias and so rose sea levels, which overflowed the interconnecting lowlands and separated the continent into today’s low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. Not surprisingly, flora and fauna across these long separate lands have a comparable biota. Since Papua New Guinea and Australia were connected via a land-bridge until 6,000 years ago, travelling from one to the other would have been possible.
DNA-analysis has shown that New Guinea Singing Dogs have a genetic line back to Australian dingos. Genetic analysis reported in March 2010 by Australian Geneticist Dr. Alan Wilton (1953-2011), from the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences found the mtDNA-type A29 among Australian dingoes concluded overwhelmingly that genetically, the Australian Dingo and the New Guinea Singing Dog are closely related to each other.
Australian Geneticist Dr. Alan Wilton (1953-2011)
an expert on Australian Pure Dingos
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Dr Alan Wilton’s study paper published in the journal Nature suggests that those two breeds are the most closely related to wolves and may be most like the original domesticated dog as it was across Asia and the Middle East thousands of years ago, according to one of the 37 authors of the study, making both Australia’s dingo and the New Guinea Singing Dog possibly the world’s oldest dog breeds.
“This paper examines the domestication of the dog from the wild wolf using genetic differences,” Dr Wilton says. “48,000 sites in the dog genome were examined in hundreds of wolves, almost a thousand dogs from 85 modern breeds of dog and several ancient dog breeds. “The data suggest most dogs were domesticated in the Middle East, which was the cradle of agriculture 10,000 of years ago, rather than in Asia as had been suggested previously.
“It also shows dingoes, which have been separated from other breeds of dog in Australia for the past 5,000 years, are the most distinct dog group with most similarity to wolves.”
The dingo and New Guinea Singing Dog stand out as being most different from all other breeds of dogs and closer to wolves than other breeds.
To gather all of the results from many dog breeds and wolves from many locations, a worldwide effort was mounted. Dr Wilton and Jeremy Shearman – from the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences and the Ramaciotti Centre for Gene Function Analysis at UNSW – have been working on dingoes and methods to differentiate between pure dingoes and crosses between domestic dogs and dingoes. They contributed the genetic data from seven dingoes, which is a small amount of data but makes a large contribution to the paper. The data from all samples was analysed together at Cornell University and UCLA.
New Guinea Singing Dog
(Canis lupus familiaris hallstomi)
An ancient genetically pure dog breed with links to the Australian Dingo
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Further biotechnical research published in September 2011 by The Royal Society (UK) has found direct genetic links between ancient Polynesian dogs of South China, Mainland Southeast Asia and Indonesia to the extent that the Dingo has been found to be a direct descendant species dating back to 18,000 BP. The oldest dog remains found in the world are fragments of a dog’s skull and teeth discovered in a cave in Switzerland dating back more than 14,000 years BP, so the dingo is 4000 years older that this.
Genetic study by Klutsch and Savolainen in 2011 concluded that South China was the probable source population for Dingoes and Singing Dogs dating the arrival of dingoes in Australia between 4,640 years ago and as far back as 18,100 years ago. They find “a clear indication that Polynesian dogs as well as dingoes and NGSDs trace their ancestry back to South China through Mainland Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
Yet after 18,000 years, the Australia Pure Dingo has evolved into a pure unique subspecies in its own right – ‘Canis lupus ssp. dingo’[ssp. = subspecies]
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The Dingo is not a breed of dog, but a distinct subspecies of ancient wolf (Canid lupus).
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Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are a separate subpecies of wolf, and of course domestic dogs have multiple breeds mainly due to human interference, referred to as ‘selective breeding‘. Other modern subspecies of the ancient wolf is the Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus), the Coyote (Canis latrans) and the Black-backed jackal (Canis mesomelas) as well as many other subspecies globally.
The Dingo for thousands of years has been Australia’s largest mammalian predator. It has evolved to become an integral part of the native Australian ecology, as apex (top order) predators at the top of the natural food chain and highly adaptive and naturally distributed across every habitat and region of Australia, except Tasmania.
The Dingo’s natural prey consists of small native mammals and ground-dwelling birds, as well as small kangaroos and similar ‘macropods‘ (kangaroo botanical family ‘Macropodidae‘). In this way, naturally occurring population of dingoes has played a key role in maintaining the populations and diversity of these native species.
Unlike domestic dogs, the Dingo yelps and howls, but generally does not bark. It has a different gait to domestic dogs with almost with a cat-like agile habit. Its ears are always erect and it uses its paws like hands. In its natural state the Dingo lives either alone or in a small group unlike many other wild dog species which may form packs. Dingoes tends to survey their surroundings from a height.
Whereas traditional Aboriginal occupation of Australia evolved over thousands of years with harmonious ecological interaction and respect, European colonial invasion of Australia and the widespread deforestation and introduced species that came with it, has destroyed or otherwise perverted Australia’s natural ecology. Dingos and Colonist-introduced domestic dogs interbreed freely resulting in very few pure-bred dingos in southern or eastern Australia. This is seriously threatening the dingo’s ability to survive as a pure species. Public hostility is another threat to the dingo.
Australian Aboriginal peoples commonly refer to the dingo as the ‘Warragul‘. This name has been used for a town 100km south-east of Melbourne, reflective of the traditional presence of the dingo as far south as southern Victoria. Other Aboriginal names for Dingo across Australia include include ‘binure‘ and ‘mirragang‘ (Gundungurra language), ‘mirri‘ (Darug language), ‘nurragee‘ and ‘mirragang‘ (Tharawal language).
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Pure Dingo at Risk of Extinction
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Pure-bred Dingo numbers in the Australian wild are declining as Colonists and their decendants continue to encroach deeper into wilderness areas, releasing feral dogs that inevitably compete, socialise and breed with pure Dingoes.
Professor Bill Ballard of the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales has conducted research showing that there are few remaining pure dingoes are left in wild. [Read More].
According to Dr. Alan Wilton’s mitochondrial DNA testing of Dingoes from 2000, most Dingo populations throughout Australia are 80% hybrids, with some 100% hybrids. Only a few populations remain ‘Pure Dingo‘. One area isolated from colonial incursion is the southern Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, which has been designated a Dingo Conservation Area, supposedly to control wild dogs in this area in order to prevent cross-breeding with pure Dingoes and the hybridisation of the Dingo species. [>Read More (480kb) ]
In 2005, the Dingo was listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as ‘Vulnerable‘ due to a 30% decrease in numbers (IUCN = ‘International Union for Conservation of Nature’). [^Read More]
However, the IUCN wrongly groups the Australian Dingo (Canis lupis ssp. dingo) with the New Guinea Singing Dog (Canis lupus familiaris hallstomi) and with other South East Asian dogs under its Red List classification ‘Canis lupus ssp. dingo‘. This fails to assign proper genetic distriction of the Pure Australian Dingo as a discrete subspecies, which has evolved in Australia over thjousands of years quite separately from these other South East Asian subspecies. The IUCN contradictorily uses the term ‘dingo’ to refer to the Australian Pure Dingo and at the same time in a generic sense as a common name to describe the wild dogs of Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Guinea. The IUCN interpretation is contradictory and wrong.
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The ‘Australian Pure Dingo’ is not a Polynesian domestic dog!
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On the one hand , the IUCN explains the difficulty of distinguishing pure dingoes from hybrids and states that the “pure form may now be locally extinct (Corbett 2001)” and that “such quantitative data is not available for countries other than Australia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea“. Yet the IUCN website shows only two known mapped locations of this subspecies – both being on Fraser Island (Aboriginal: K’Gari).
The IUCN concludes that where the most genetically intact populations live is where conservation efforts should be focused.
Fraser Island (K’Gari)
Showing possibly the last of the planet’s Australian Pure Dingo distribution,
according to the IUCN in 2011
[Source: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2011.2, ^http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=41585]
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Given the severely restricted distribution of the Pure Australian Dingo, this subspecies deserves discrete classification and listing by the IUCN as ‘Critically Endangered‘. Clearly more intensive research by the IUCN is warranted, particularly recognising the recent and expert studies in this specific field by Professor Bill Ballard, Dr Alan Wilton and Jeremy Shearman, amongst others.
Recognition of the Pure Australian Dingo as at risk is given inconsistent hotch-potch protection by Australian jurisdictions. In New South Wales (NSW), Dingo populations from Sturt National Park, the coastal ranges and some coastal parks have been nominated as endangered populations under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. At Australian national level and under the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974, the Dingo remains unprotected despite being considered a native species. Under the Rural Lands Protection Act 1998 (NSW), Dingoes are still declared a pest species, a throwback to the colonial mindset.
Dr Wilton predicts that within 100 years, the pure dingo will be extinct in the wild.
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‘Dingo’s are going away the Thylacine unfortunately, unless somebody does something about it soon we won’t have any dingo’s left.’
The Thylacene
Persecuted by misguided Colonists until its extinction in the 1930s
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Dr Wilton has identified that there remains only one genetically confirmed population of pure dingoes – those on Queensland’s Fraser Island – perhaps as few as 120 individuals left. This clan was long isolated from early colonial invasion and disturbance, but in recent times has increasingly been threatened by growing tourism incursions (400,000 tourists annually) and mismanagement and persecution by Queensland wildlife rangers. Yet despite the precarious viability of this precious pure Dingo population, in 2001 Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie ordered a mass slaughter of forty dingoes in retribution for a boy tourist being killed that year by Dingoes on the island. [>Read More]
Clearly the Queensland Labor Party and the delegated custodian, the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) (or whatever its latest rebranded name) values Fraser Island for anthopocentric tourism more than the survival of the Australian Dingo as a species. Fraser Island is World Heritage Listed, but the Queensland Government has always interpreted this as a tourism branding strategy.
‘Dingoes are often in headlines for all the wrong reasons – agressive behaviour to tourists, culls by national park authorities – but behind the scenes, conservationists hold concerns that dingoes may be interbred into extinction.
Fears for the dingo’s future are proliferating. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) upgraded the dingo’s conservation status to vulnerable in 2004 and dingo experts such as Dr Ricky Spencer from the University of Western Sydney, have predicted Australia’s native canine will go extinct within the next twenty years.
But it’s not just their white socks that are changing though. One recent study found that average dingo weight and size has risen by 20 per cent over the past two decades, probably because of hybridisation. This change could alter the way dingoes hunt, allowing them to attack livestock and wildlife they’ve previously found an unmanageable size.
Behavioural changes also cause ecological problems. There is some evidence, for instance, that the dingo breeding season has grown longer under the influence of domestic dog genes; dogs breed twice a year, in contrast to the dingo’s single season. This might be one reason for the explosion in dingo and wild dog numbers across the country.
Another might be the breakdown in the pack structure of dingo societies. In the wild, dingo packs sometimes centre around a breeding alpha pair which suppress the breeding of subordinate members – a possible natural population control measure. Domestic dogs, however, seem to form larger packs with uncontrolled breeding, again possibly contributing to the current population explosion.
Hybridisation with domestic doges is the Dingo’s greatest threat. Dingoes and domestic dogs, both subspecies of Canis lupus, can interbreed with ease and this has led to a massive influx of domestic dog genes into the dingo gene pool.
In many places around Australia (some experts say ‘most‘) dingoes have been almost totally replaced by dog-dingo hybrids. Even those animals that appear to be dingoes are often now, in reality, mostly domestic dogs. “The only way to tell for sure,” says Dr Guy Ballard, a dingo researcher with the NSW government’s vertebrate pest unit, “is by analysing their skulls, or taking DNA samples”.
But it’s not just their white socks that are changing though. One recent study found that average dingo weight and size has risen by 20% over the past two decades, probably because of hybridisation. This change could alter the way dingoes hunt, allowing them to attack livestock and wildlife they’ve previously found an unmanageable size..
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Saving the Purebred Dingo
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This inexorable tide of hybridisation has lent new urgency to the question of how best to save the dingo. Most experts are pessimistic about the chances of preventing interbreeding, pointing out that contact between dog and dingo populations is only going to increase.
Some proponents advocate the establishment of refuges where remnant populations of pure dingoes could be maintained. The best known of these is Fraser Island, where the Great Sandy National Park protects what is regarded as the purest population of dingoes left in Australia. However, the culling of problem dingoes on the popular tourist island has led to fears that the dingo population there is now too small to be genetically viable.
Such concerns have led some conservationists to opt for a different strategy: establishing their own private breeding refuges on the mainland instead. One such is the Australian Dingo Conservation Association’s (ADCA) 92 ha compound at Colong station in the Blue Mountains National Park.
There the ADCA maintains a breeding population of 31 purebred dingoes.
“We try hard to maintain that genetic purity,” says ADCA vice-president Gavan McDowell. “We even separate our breeding packs into sub-types, like mountain, desert and tropical dingoes.”
The Association’s ultimate aim is to breed a number of pure dingoes that can be released into the wild to recolonise areas, cleared of feral dogs.
Silver Lining
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Other researchers, like Guy, are more optimistic of the dingo’s plight.
His research includes several field projects looking at dingo purity around Australia. While Guy acknowledges that hybridisation is a major threat, he says that wherever his group tests dingoes, even in heavily hybridised areas of NSW, they still find good numbers of purebred dingoes.
“People often don’t realise that the environmental factors that lead to large numbers of hybrids also mean large numbers of pure dingoes,” Guy says. “It’s impossible to prove, but I suspect there are actually more purebred dingoes around today than at any other time in history.”
Best of all, says Guy, is the fact that his team has identified several hotspots where pure dingo numbers are consistently high. One is the Tanami Desert, where the dingo population is 90 per cent pure, apparently due to the area’s remoteness. Two others, however, lie on the heavily settled NSW coast: at Myall Lakes National Park and Limeburners Creek Nature Reserve.
Quirks of geography – Limeburners Creek is on a peninsula, and Myall Lakes is connected by green belts to the wilder lands out to Sydney’s west – have apparently allowed both areas to sustain populations of pure dingoes, despite their proximity to settled areas with large populations of domestic dogs.
Guy also believes that with careful management – such as continual DNA tests to identify and euthanise hybridised dogs – the populations at Limeburners Creek and Myall Lakes can maintain their purity for some time to come.
“Dingoes have survived two hundred years of interbreeding already,” he says.
“I don’t see why, with a little help, they can’t survive for another two hundred.”
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Aboriginal Respect for Dingoes
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‘Following its arrival into Australia, the dingo was readily accepted into Aboriginal life, both practically and spiritually. Dingoes have long been valued companion animals to Aboriginal peoples, serving as hunting companions, camp guard dogs, camp cleaners and as bed warmers on cold nights.
Spiritually, dingoes have been regarded as a protector (particularly by traditional Fraser Island tribes) and representing ancestral spirits – able to perceive the presence of evil spirits undetectable by humans. Mythological or Dreamtime stories about the Dingo in Aboriginal cultures across Australia are for Aboriginal people to convey.
Dingoes are valued companion animals to traditional Aboriginal peoples
Dingoes are as Australian as Aboriginal peoples.
“It’s the Dingo’s environment, WE are the ones who should be monitored. Please leave them alone, let them live their lives how they should be lived, NOT HALF STARVED. Please go to Fraser Island and look for yourself, then feel what your conscience tells you.” ~ Australia.
[4] ‘Genetic diversity in the Dingo‘, by Professor Bill Ballard [Head of School], School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences -Faculty of Science, University of New South Wales, ^http://www.dingosanctuary.com.au/dna.htm
“Fraser Island (K’gari) lies off the coast of Queensland, Australia, approx. 200k (120miles) north of Brisbane. It is the largest sand Island in the world. In 1992 it was World Heritage listed by UNESCO because of its natural beauty and unique flora and fauna. The apex predator on the Island is the dingo (canis lupus dingo) and may well be one of the last pure strains of dingo remaining in Australia. The conservation of this gene pool is of national significance.”
“Australia’s only wild dog, the iconic dingo, has survived a couple of hundred years of persecution – from shooting, trapping and poisoning. Ironically, it is now at grave risk of disappearing. The greatest threat isn’t so much over-hunting or the usual culprit, habitat destruction; it’s the friendly domestic dog.” [>Read article(1140kb)]
A Crimson Rosella (juvenile green plumage)
(Platycercus elegans)
(click photo to enlarge)
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Yesterday was the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic which caused the deaths of 1,514 people at sea. Last week was Easter. I am not a religious person, but it is a time of death on the Christian calendar and supposedly a time for resurrection or rebirth.
One morning just before Easter, I went out into the backyard and heard a bird chirping; not unusual as we have many birds in the Blue Mountains. But the chirping was excited and at ground level coming from the other side of the neighbour’s fence. I peered over and there he was, a juvenile Crimson Rosella, on the ground in a small depression hobbling around trying to get out.
I knew he was a juvenile because he still had his green winged plumage, whereas adult Crimson Rosellas are a magnificent blue and crimson only. I knew he was male because he was a large bird, distinctively larger than many Rosellas. I knew ‘him’, because being large and distinctive from most others, I had noticed him over recent months in our backyard and taking advantage of our bird feeders. He had become a regular and growing into an adult.
Rightly or wrongly we have a bird feeder (or two) and encourage the native birds into our backyard by both having planted many trees and by providing bird seed in bird feeders. We see Crimson Rosellas (which are parrots), King Parrots and Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos.
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo – a regular in our backyard and apple tree
The neighbours were not home, so I grabbed a small cage and put gloves on and went next door to collect the injured Crimson Rosella to take him to the local vet. When I got close, he chirped frightenedly and tried to evade capture, but he was stuck in the small depression and he could only use one leg. For some reason he could not fly away, but I couldn’t see anything wrong with his wings. They were folded up on the normal way.
I carefully picked him up and put him in the cage and covered the cage with a towel to quieten him down. I knew to do this because I am a member of Blue Mountains WIRES (Blue Mountains Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service. I brought the cage inside, placed it carefully on the floor and phoned the rescue hotline. The bird was happily trying to get out hanging on to the side of the cage. He seemed happy enough; just needing some expert attention to his leg.
Australian King Parrot
(Alisterus scapularis)
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I phoned WIRES’ hotline and they advised me to take the Rosella to the local veterinary clinic, as this particular vet was registered with WIRES for caring for injured wildlife.
I placed the cage carefully in the car and drove straight to the vet.
Local Vet
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When I arrived, I asked if there was a fee, as I was happy to pay for their services. I had $150 cash in my pocket just in case. The receptionist explained that there was no charge and that they would examine the leg, X-ray it and keep the bird at the clinic, then contact a WIRES carer to take the bird for rehabiliation until it was fit to return to the wild. I explained that I would contact them the next day to see how the bird was coming along. They gave me my cage back and I returned home.
The next morning I phoned the vet as soon as they opened and asked after the Crimson Rosella. Another receptionist answered the phone. She told me that they had received four Crimson Rosellas yesterday and that three had been euthanized (killed).
I couldn’t believe it. I asked specifically about the large green juvenile that I had brought in with only an injured left leg. She said yes that was one of the parrots that they had euthanized. She gave me some spiel about psitacosis, (parrot beak and feather disease) and then about Crimson Rosellas not being a threatened species anyway.
I said that the bird was quite healthy and vibrant and only had an injured left leg. The bird was not x-rayed and probably not even tested for psitacosis. It was convenient to the vet to just kill the wild birds. I assume the previous receoptionist had not ven xplained that I was happy to pay for the treatment/surgery/whatever to the Crimson Rosella that I had rescued and brought in for care.
I hung up. I felt terrible and empty. That bird had entrusted me, yet I had facilitated it’s killing by taking it to this vet, not to be looked after, but to be killed. This vet played at god. I have lost trust in this vet.
Garbage skip at rear of vet
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This is the Veterinarian Oath
. “Being admitted to the profession of Veterinary medicine, I solemnly swear to use my scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through the protection of animal health, the relief of animal suffering, the conservation of livestock resources, the promotion of public health, and the advancement of medical knowledge.
I will practice my profession conscientiously, with dignity and in keeping with the principles of veterinary medical ethics. I accept as a lifelong obligation, the continual improvement of my professional knowledge and competence.”
Clearly a lesser ethical standard applies to animals in comparison to humans under the more stringent Hypocratic Oath…
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Hypocratic Oath (Modern Version)
“I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not”, nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.
Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, be respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.”
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[Source: Hypocratic Oath, 1964, by Dr. Louis Lasagna, former Principal of the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences and Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, ^http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html]
Read Also: Australian Medical Association Code of Ethics [Read Code]
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But we do play at god, us humans. We can kill and justify it – birds, animals, other people, for convenience or choice excuse.
Life is very precious and it doesn’t matter whose life it is. Some religions believe in reincarnations and afterlife. But to those living we only are sure of the life we have now. It can end so soon. Life is so short when one looks back on how quickly it seems to have gone.
Those people on the Titanic who died in the freezing waters shouldn’t have. A few people in charge were playing god recklessly with their lives. Once a life is gone, it can’t be brought back.
Also on the day of the centenary of the Titanic’s sinking, as it happens, a close friend of ours passed away from a brain tumor. We had only just seen him in the hospice a few days prior, very aware that it was going to be the last time we would ever see him. He died on 12th April 2012, coincidently exactly one hundred years after the Titanic sank. He was just 47 and has left a family behind to fend for themselves fatherless, husbandless. It is no-one’s fault per se. Sometimes fate deals randomly to those just going about their lives. It doesn’t make it right. Life is so precious but we perhaps take it for granted, especially when we are young , so full of beans and have so much to look forward to.
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Then, after we returned from visiting our friend in the hospice a few days prior, we returned home to find police and forensic officers in ‘The Gully’ nearby. What was going on?
The police said nothing, but human remains were being gathered from bushland. The following article sheds some light on the tragic find, but not all is yet known at the time of writing.
Yesterday, a retired Presbyterian minister and I went to inspect the site. We wanted to understand the death. The Gully has always felt to be a happy place. We both felt a sense of sadness about the circumstances of the death.
Blue Mountains Gazette 20120411, p.1 .
It was just a clearing in dense bushland. But there seemed a feeling not of foul play, just of sadness, that a young woman had lost her life there. It is a calm sheltered spot with dappled sunlight through the trees. The minister said a prayer. It had been a sad Easter.
Dappled sunlight in a native forest in Ireland
(Photo by Editor)
‘High on the hills above the tiny village of Lahardane in County Mayo, a wooden cross juts from a mound of earth towards the sky. The cross sways back and forth, creaking as gales blow across the valley, through what locals call the “Windy Gap”. As I look towards the village on this April morning, a fine mist has settled low on the hillside.
Little has changed in a hundred years. It was from here, in the shadow of the distant crags of Nephin mountain, that the group known as the Addergoole Fourteen had a last glimpse of home as they made the long journey to board the RMS Titanic. Three men and 11 women left the parish of Addergoole that spring morning in 1912. They travelled 19 miles on foot to the nearest station, where they caught a train to Queenstown, County Cork, 16 hours away. There, they joined 111 other passengers who boarded the Titanic in Ireland, a day after it started its maiden voyage from Southampton.
Seventeen-year-old Annie McGowan was accompanying her aunt Catherine to Chicago. In a letter to relatives, she wrote: “I am coming to America on the nicest ship in the world.” Delia McDermott, 31, was moving to Missouri to work as a housemaid. Before she left, her mother bought her a new hat and gloves, so she would “look like a lady” when the Titanic docked in New York.
Four days later, 11 of the Addergoole Fourteen were dead; their bodies lost at sea. Although the remaining three survived, none returned to live in Ireland. The impact on Lahardane was unique: proportionately more people from this tiny village lost their lives on the Titanic than anywhere else in the world. In a population of 200, 11 deaths was more than a tragedy. It ripped the heart out of the community.
For years, locals refused to talk about the Titanic. All this changed in 2002, when villagers started to hold a bell-ringing ceremony, marking the time the Titanic sank into the Atlantic. Every year, at 2.20am on April 15, relatives of the victims chime the church bell – 11 mournful rings followed by three joyous rings – paying their respects to those who never returned.
This year, things are different in Lahardane. As the village prepares to mark 100 years since the tragedy, locals have started to talk publicly about the impact it had on their families’ lives. For the story of the disaster, once too painful to remember, has become Lahardane’s biggest attraction. Tourists are flocking to the remote spot, now signposted “Ireland’s Titanic village”, to learn more about the untold stories of locals on board the ship.
Bridget Donohue was 21 when she left her job in McHale’s shop to set sail for New York. Her third-class ticket cost £7 15s, equivalent to six months’ wages. Before she left, Bridget asked Maura McHale, the seven-year-old daughter of the shop’s owner, if she would like a gift from America. “I’d like a ring,” Maura replied. Bridget measured the girl’s finger with a piece of string, which she put in her pocket and carried on board. Months later, Maura couldn’t understand why she hadn’t received the ring.
Bridget’s nephew, Davie Donoghue, 80 this year, still lives in Lahardane. He is reluctant to talk about the Titanic. “It was five weeks before my father knew his sister had drowned,” he explains. “Her name was printed wrongly in the passenger log – it was down as ‘Burt’, instead of Bridget. They thought she was still alive. Losing her was very emotional.”
McHale’s corner shop, where Bridget worked, is getting a fresh coat of paint this week, along with other buildings that are enjoying a makeover before April 15. A cultural week, with historical re-enactments, has been planned in the village. There’s a new gift shop and a Titanic memorial park with a bronze sculpture shaped like the ship’s bow.
“It only took them 100 years to do the place up,” jokes Donoghue. As one resident says, the “boreens” (narrow tracks) around here don’t know what’s hit them: the past month has seen reporters from as far afield as New York, and television trucks from Brazil and France, trundling through the Windy Gap.
But, behind the Titanic hype, there remains a muted sense of grief; a respect for dead relatives never known. Since childhood, many locals have picked up snippets about the Titanic. They describe listening in at closed doors as older generations grieved.
Vincent O’Callaghan never knew his great aunt, Delia Mahon, who was 20 when she boarded the ship. “I remember my Nana Kate, her sister, crying about it,” he recalls. He treasures a handful of photographs, showing Nana Kate sitting astride a fence with no shoes on. Sadly, there are none of Delia. He has just one memento of his great aunt, from the passenger logs of April 1912: “Miss Bridget Delia Mahon, Ticket No: 330924, Destination: 438 Franklin Avenue, New York”.
According to survivors, Delia was helped into a lifeboat by her neighbour Patrick Canavan, who found a ladder leading from steerage to the upper decks. First, she had to be coaxed out of a cupboard, where she had hidden when she heard the ship was going down. O’Callaghan, 54, says it can be hard to separate fact from folklore. “I’ve heard that her brother Pat read her tea leaves at a party before she left. They spelt out that there would be an accident on the way to America. Delia got angry when Pat told her not to go.”
For local historian Michael Molloy, this anniversary is a chance to learn about the village’s past. “In the early 20th century, around 30,000 Irish emigrants a year left the country to escape extreme poverty,” he explains. The Titanic was one of many such opportunities – the archives of the local Connaught Telegraph show a list of cross-Atlantic liners offering tickets.
As a child, Molloy met Annie Kate Kelly, one of three Addergoole passengers who escaped the Titanic. She became a nun in Michigan but returned home in the 1950s to visit her family. She flew to Ireland – none of the local survivors would travel by ship again. Annie Kate’s memories of what happened on the ship have become symbolic to the residents of Lahardane, who used her account to commission a stained-glass memorial window for St Patrick’s Church.
Inside the church, sunlight streams through the coloured panes, casting a kaleidoscopic glow over the pews. The scene, entitled “Titanic Rescue”, shows a small girl being lowered from the ship in Lifeboat 16. She looks up at grief-stricken figures on the deck above, wailing and clutching rosary beads as they pray to be saved.
Little else is known about the Addergoole group’s final hours on the Titanic. April 14 was 22-year-old Nora Fleming’s birthday, and a survivor from nearby County Sligo remembers hearing singing and dancing down in third class. Nora, she recalls, was a beautiful singer. They may still have been celebrating at 11.40pm, when the ship collided with the iceberg – and perhaps even at 12.05am, when the first lifeboats were lowered. Nora’s nephew, 71-year-old John Lynn, says her loss left his mother devastated. “She never talked about it; not to the day she died.”
Nora’s relatives waited weeks for confirmation from White Star Line, the company that owned the Titanic, that she had drowned. Her name still appears incorrectly in the passenger lists as Norah Hemming.
This centenary year, members of the Addergoole Titanic Society will gather by candlelight in the small churchyard. They will ring the bell and lay a wreath, before heading to nearby Murphy’s pub to share stories until sunrise. One bell-ringer is Willie Cussack, 78, the second-cousin of Annie McGowan. It was Cussack’s uncle Peter who took Annie and her aunt Catherine to the railway station at the start of their journey to America. Annie survived the tragedy but Catherine, 42, drowned after they became separated.
“When he talked, you could see the sadness in his face; his eyes would well up with tears,” Cussack says of his uncle. For Cussack, the bell-ringing is a particularly poignant tribute to Lahardane’s Titanic victims. Years ago, he remembers hearing a boy crying as he cycled through the Addergoole hills; this is how he imagines the cries of grief in 1912 when locals found out their loved ones had died. For him, this is what the bell-ringing represents.
“Do you know what an echo sounds like in these mountains?” he asks, pointing towards the craggy hills. “The cry is gone and it comes back and it is all around you, all over the village. I can imagine the way it echoed across the bog lands that morning. When we hear the bell ringing in the church, we imagine just a tiny piece of what they went through.
It’s the most haunting sound you will ever hear.”
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Footnote
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A week after posting this article, the local paper The Blue Mountains Gazette published information about the human remains found in The Gully (20120418, page 3)…
Queenstown Moonscape Tours – once was temperate rainforest
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A wee ‘tea and scones’ tourism boom could be encouraged in Tasmania, treating visitors to Tasmanian reality art exhibitions – with themes such as:
‘Convict Tourism’ – Cannibal Alexander Pearce at it, days in the life at Maria Island, Cascades, Port Arthur, Martin Bryant’s gun collection, Risdon’s worst.
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‘Ecoterrorism Tourism’ – See Forestry Tasmania at it in the Florentine Valley, See Stihl at work felling old growth, take Clearfell Tours, watch the wildlife scurry, see a ‘Scorched Earthing‘ photographic exhibition.
Watch loggers Rodney Howells, Jeremy Eizell and Terrence Pearce ecoterrorism videos: Sample video below on 21st October 2008, shows these Tasmanian loggers attacking two young forest defenders in a car, using sledge hammers. [^Read More]
WARNING ! THIS FOOTAGE CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND MAY BE DISTRESSING
(Turn sound up)
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‘Grenade Fishing’ – see it demonstrated on Tasmania’s Penstock Lagoon, now that petrol outboards are banned.
‘Wildlife Bagging’ – see the live action on Tasmania’s Moulting Lagoon – Black Swans and Pied Oystercatchers – shot plucked and gutted. Fun for all the family!
‘Mutton birding’ Tourism – Visit Flinders Island. Watch them rip the native Short-tailed Shearwater chicks out from their burrows and throttle their necks – give it a go yourself – it’s easy!
[Source: Gourmet Farmer 6th October, Flinders Island, Series 2, Episode 7, SBS Television].
“Hi Everyone, Just a quick reminder that mutton bird season is open from the 2nd April 2011 until 17th April 2011 on Flinders Island…
Just remember if you don’t have a mutton birding licence then please visit your nearest Service Tasmania Shop or their website to obtain one. A mutton birding licence will set you back $27.20 for a full fee or $21.75 of a concession fee.”
Or try Flinders Island Wallaby…”Bennetts Wallaby and Pademelon Wallaby are found in large numbers on the Island. The gathering of wallabies are restricted on a quota basis that is reviewed annually and is independent of market demand.” [Source: ^http://www.flindersislandmeat.com.au/]
Bennetts Wallaby
Native to Tasmania and surrounding islands such as Flinders Island
[Source: ^http://www.davidcook.com.au/images/images_mammals/bennetts_wallaby.jpg]
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“Native animals are considered pests by the Tasmanian rural community and their control a wasteful cost. Lenah Game Meats of Tasmania..”is attempting to turn this situation around so that with time and market development it is hoped the rural community will come to see the animals adapted to the Australian landscape as ‘friends’ rather than foe….Lenah were the first people to harvest and process wallaby and market it to the restaurant trade.” [^Read More]
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‘1080’ PoisonTours – how it works, watch it in action, proof exhibits, discount taxidermy home delivered
‘Queenstown Memories’ – Mount Lyell moonscape tours, Queen River cruises, spot the three eyed fish games, sample Macquarie Harbour cuisine
See the copper flows in the once pristine Queen and King RiversIf the copper doesn’t kill you, then the cadmium, lead, cobalt, silver or chromium will.
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‘Self-drive Tourism’ – play ‘I spy with my little eye’, or ‘count the roadkill’, or dodge the log trucks
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Photo taken by Editor while driving along the Tasman Highway, Tasmania 20110927, free in public domain
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Cape Grim Heritage Tourism – discover its namesake (massacre of Tasmanian Aborigines on 10th February 1828) – learn about early colonial hunting. [^Read More]
‘Burn offs by Air’ – see the smoke by air
‘Tassie Holes’ – see the mines by air
‘Scarefaces by Air’ – see the native forest clearfells by air
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All such Tasmanian Reality Tourism can be delivered direct from the window, and what better than with home made piping hot Tassie tea and scones!
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“The Styx State Forest will continue to be sustainably managed, providing the public with Australia’s finest timbers, protection for Tasmania’s unique biodiversity, and a popular recreation resource. Tours of the surrounding forests are available from the Maydena Adventure Hub.”
~ Forestry Tasmania
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Wilfred Batty of Mawbanna, Tasmania, with the last Tasmanian Tiger known to have been shot in the wild.
He shot the tiger in May, 1930 after it was discovered in his hen house.
Source: State Library of Tasmania eHeritage
‘A man has been fined after being stopped by police for allegedly speeding in the state’s Southern Highlands.
About 5.44am yesterday (Monday 5 March 2012), police were patrolling the (6-laned) Hume Highway at Mittagong, when they allegedly detected a white B-double (truck) travelling at a speed of 142kph in an 110kmh zone. They stopped the vehicle a short distance away and issued the 41-year-old male driver with a traffic infringement for exceed speed over 30km/h.
The fine for the offence is $1112.
[Ed: A poultry slap on the wrist fine? When 60+ tonnes is hurtling along the road at 142kph, how is this not attempted murder?]
Killer on the Road
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Mar 2012: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’ (south of Oberon)
[Source: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’, bigpondnews, Saturday, March 31, 2012, ^http://bigpondnews.com/articles/National/2012/03/31/Fatal_head-on_in_NSW_734843.html]
‘A truck driver has been killed, and three men have been airlifted to hospital, after two trucks collided head-on near Oberon, west of Sydney.
Police say the Isuzu table top truck and Mack prime mover logging truck crashed on Abercrombie Road, at Black Springs just before midnight (AEDT).
The Isuzu driver, aged in his 30s, died at the scene. Two other men inside suffered head and chest injuries, while the driver of the other truck, aged in his 60s, has an injury to his leg. Abercrombie Road is expected to remain closed until around 7am (AEDT).’
Typical prime mover logging truck (empty)
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Jul 2009: Recall the fatal truck crash east of Oberon three years ago…
‘One man died and another was airlifted to a Sydney hospital after a car and truck crashed head-on near Oberon yesterday afternoon.
Emergency services received reports about 1.12pm of a car hitting a truck on the Duckmaloi Road near Fearndale Road on the Sydney side of Oberon. Ambulance officers arrived and began treating the men involved in the accident. The passenger of the car was declared dead at the scene.
The 20-year-old male driver of the car was airlifted to Westmead Hospital with multiple fractures to his legs, arms and chest as well as head injuries. The truck driver was assessed by ambulance officers and did not require hospitalisation. Late last night the Duckmaloi Road was still close to non-residential traffic as spilt fuel and debris was cleaned from the site.
An Oberon trucker driver, who wished to remain anonymous, later said the Duckmaloi Road needed to be seriously looked at due to the large amount of traffic it carried.
“Along with the Bathurst road it is one of the two main veins into Oberon,” he said. “I believe around 200 trucks a day would use that road to get from Oberon to Sydney and back again.”
The truck driver added that for people who did not frequently use the Duckmaloi Road it could be very dangerous. “It can be bloody treacherous if you don’t know it,” he said.
“In one day I think we send about 50 trucks out and have 50 trucks come back in on it [the Duckmaloi Road]. “If you also add in the log trucks and the chip trucks than you would easily have 200 trucks a day on that road.”
[Ed: Two years later, $395,000 from the Australia Government went into widening the Duckmaloi Road. ^Read More]
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Fatal truck head-on near Oberon, NSW (2009)
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2012: Great Western Highway – Wentworth Falls East ‘trucking upgrade’
No 1 Feature: “Widening the highway to four lanes with sealed shoulders“!
No 1 Benefit: “Quicker journeys – in the region and to Sydney“!
‘Delays are expected today on a section of the Hume Highway in NSW after a crash involving two trucks near Marulan. NSW Police says a B-double carrying furniture rolled about 5km south of Marulan at 12.45am, spilling its load and blocking all northbound lanes. A semi-trailer travelling behind crashed into the rear of the truck…’
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Jul 2011: Near the same spot a year before..’Fatal crash near Marulan’
‘A report will be prepared for the coroner following a fatal highway crash near Marulan in the early hours of the morning.
About 12.45am this morning a B-double truck travelling north on the Hume Highway left the road and plunged into a deep roadside gully, rolling on to its side and taking out trees and a 10-meter section of guard rail in the process. The cause of the crash is still unknown and police investigations are continuing. No one else was injured in the crash.
The driver, a 47-year-old man from Glenfield, suffered severe injuries and died at the scene. He was travelling from Albury to Sydney when the accident occurred approximately 15km north of Goulburn.
[Ed: All night 60+ tonne all night bats out of hell and 60+ tonne all night zombies being driven to death by greedy retailers demanding pre-dawn delivery times. Overnight linehaul is al about unnatural sleep depravation. It is death waiting to happen. Driving on Australian highways aafter midnight has become Russian Roulette death wish to all road users. Meanwhile, Australian Truckers Association chairman David Simon says the government should also be encouraging more “AB-triples” — which are 51m long — and “BAB-quads”, which are two connected B-doubles.” [Read More]
Why have railway tracks, when trucking companies keep adding carriages and ring feeders?
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Mar 2012: B-Double truckers tampering with speed governors
[Source: ‘Police blitz on trucks widens’, by AAP, 20120307, ^http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/03/07/453455_machine.html]
“Faster, faster..you’re a good operator!”
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‘New South Wales police have seized two South Australian trucks as part of a crackdown on unsafe practices in the road transport industry. Officers in NSW had intercepted 13 trucks from Scott’s Transport Industries as of today in a nationwide blitz on the Mt Gambier-based firm, which operates a fleet of 322 trucks and is suspected of serious safety breaches.
NSW police launched Operation Overland after one of the company’s B-doubles was detected travelling at 142kph on Monday.
An analysis of the company’s trucks’ movements has shown speeding by 32 of them.
Superintendent Stuart Smith said the two trucks were stopped after being identified as having defects, but it was too early to say if the defects were the result of tampering.
He said more of the company’s vehicles would be targeted for interception and comprehensive mechanical inspections.
“It’s not the 300, but it’s a large number,” Superintendent Smith said. “There’s a large number to go and the operation will continue for a number of days.”
Further actions by NSW Roads and Maritime Services will likely lead to a prosecution and significant fines.
Premier Barry O’Farrell said transport companies had been warned checks would become more regular. “Trucking companies should understand that what was then unprecedented action would become more regular if we had suspicions that there were cowboys driving trucks across the state’s roads, that it was likely to cause safety concerns for motorists,” Mr O’Farrell told reporters in Sydney.
Police have said an investigation of Lennons Transport Services, based in Sydney’s inner west, found eight trucks had been tampered with, including seven that had been modified to exceed the maximum speed of 100km/h. They have also charged a Lennons’ driver with dangerous driving causing the deaths of three members of one family on January 24.
Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s, were killed when a Lennons‘ B-double truck careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway, near Menangle in southwest Sydney.
B-double truck driver Vincent Samuel George (33) killed three members of one family with his B-Double.
Court records also revealed that between 1998 and last year, George had his licence suspended five times and he has been convicted of 17 offences, including speeding and drink driving.
[^http://www.truckinlife.com.au/articles/2012/truck-collision-menangle-bridge]
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Police allege the driver’s truck had been tampered with to make it go faster.
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The RMS has also filed a series of summons in the NSW Supreme Court relating to driver fatigue at South Penrith Sand and Soil.
RMS alleges a series of offences relating to drivers’ work hours, rest hours and fatigue management. A cyclist was killed and three were injured after a truck driver working for the company veered into a breakdown lane and hit them on the M4 motorway on April 10, 2010.
The driver pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter.
Sydney’s M4: this is supposedly an RMS cycle lane
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Recall, RMS ‘upgrade features‘ at its Great Western Highway Wentworth Falls East section include:
“Improved cyclist access and safety – access for commuter and long distance cyclists will be provided by a 2.5 metre shoulder between Nelson and Dalrymple avenues.”
Try riding a bicycle through the Leura section, just up the Great Western Highway from Wentworth Falls
Spot the cycle lane…Russian Roulette anyone?
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Great Western Highway – being transformed into a trucking expressway so that bigger and more trucks can travel faster, all night long..Trucking Expressways are the antithesis of road safety
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Mar 2012: ‘Twelve more trucks had speeds tampered’
Another 12 trucks have been discovered with tampered speed limiters during a two-state police probe into dodgy practices (Ed: read ‘criminally culpable‘) in the industry.
Police inspecting Lennons Transport Services B-Double truck
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‘Operation Overland’
Operation Overland was launched into Scott’s Transport Industries on Monday. Ninety-eight of the South Australian transport company’s fleet of 322 heavy vehicles have since been intercepted for mechanical inspection.
On Thursday, police said they had found six trucks with tampered speed limiters. A day later, 12 more had been discovered, taking the total to 18.
Overall, 71 offences have been identified, including two trucks found to be overloaded.
Almost 70 defect notices have been issued. The probe into Scott’s Transport Industries began after one of its drivers was clocked travelling at 142km/h on the Hume Highway at Mittagong about 5.45am (AEDT) on Monday.
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Earlier this year, police swooped on Lennons Transport Services, in Sydney’s inner-west, where they discovered eight tampered trucks, including seven modified to exceed the 100km/h maximum.
Police Blitz at Lennons Transport Services
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It came after a Lennons driver was charged with dangerous driving causing the deaths of Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s.
The truckie’s B-double allegedly careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway near Menangle and crashed into the trio’s car.
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Feb 2011: ‘Man dies after trucks collide on Hume Freeway, Baddaginnie’
Six-laned Hume Freeway – the wider and faster the expressway…All night trucking zombies
[Photo: Jon Hargest, Herald Sun]
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‘A man has died following a collision between two trucks on the Hume Freeway in Baddaginnie (Ed: Victoria, just south of the NSW border) just after midnight.
It’s believed one driver lost control of his truck which rolled onto the freeway moments before a second truck collided with it at 12.08am.
The driver of the second truck died and police are investigating the cause of the collision. The identity of the dead man is yet to be established.
The Hume Freeway is closed northbound at Violet Town and diversions are in place.’
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Comments:
Patrick of Rooney (20110215):
“Wake up and sip the coffee Victoria! We need thousands more speed cameras out there!”
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Andrew of Flemington (20110215):
“Worksafe Victoria, where are you?? Another tragic death caused by unsafe work practices. How many more deaths and injuries must occur before you finally step in?
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Feb 2011: ‘Logging truck driver kills car driver stopped at traffic lights outside Bathurst’
[Source: ‘One killed in truck crash‘, by Jo Johnson, Western Advocate, 20110201, ^http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/general/one-killed-in-truck-crash/2062626.aspx]
Media news often doesn’t travel outside one’s local area, so other Australians don’t realise the extent of the trucking carnage being inflicted across the country..Who says truck drivers are ‘professionals’?
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‘A 59-year-old local man is dead and two others seriously injured after a truck ploughed into three cars stopped at roadworks traffic lights on the O’Connell Road yesterday. The tragedy occurred at lunchtime, about 15 kilometres south of Bathurst.
Emergency services rushed to the scene to find people trapped in their cars. The road was immediately closed to traffic in both directions. Initial investigations have revealed that an unladen logging truck struck the vehicles, which were all making their way towards Bathurst at the time.
Police, ambulance and fire and rescue crews were called to the crash site at about 12.30pm. An air ambulance helicopter landed on the road near the accident to provide additional assistance.
Bathurst police Inspector Ross Wilkinson confirmed the driver of a red Toyota Camry died at the scene. He was a 59-year-old male from the O’Connell region.
The logging truck was travelling north when it slammed into the rear of the Toyota Camry, killing the man and seriously injuring a female passenger.
The driver of the next car in line, a silver Mazda Astina, was also in a serious condition yesterday afternoon, while the driver of a bronze Holden Rodeo was taken to Bathurst Base Hospital for observation.
Inspector Wilkinson said Chifley Local Area Command’s crash investigation unit attended the scene and investigations into the fatality would continue. The driver of the logging truck was uninjured and is helping police with their inquiries.
Traffic was diverted via Brewongle and The Lagoon and drivers heading to Oberon from Bathurst late yesterday afternoon were advised to divert at Hartley via Jenolan Caves Road.
The roadworks were being carried out by the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (Ed: recently rebranded ‘RMS’) , between the Wests Lane turn-off to Brewongle and Ridge Road.
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Feb 2010: ‘Speeding B-Double Blayney Cattle Truck Rolls Over – kills/maims 21 cattle’
Injured cattle shot after speeding cattle truck overturned on bend near Blayney (Central NSW)
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Traffic between Blayney and Bathurst was detoured through Millthorpe yesterday after a semi-trailer cattle truck overturned while negotiating a sharp left bend about three kilometres out of Blayney.
Drivers on the Mid Western Highway had to slow to avoid runaway cattle after the accident on the outskirts of Blayney shortly after 11am.
Inspector Ross Wilkinson from Chifley Area Command said that police were continuing their investigations into the cause of the accident that disrupted highway traffic for four hours and killed 21 of the 96 cattle on board the truck.
“Police will issue an infringement notice to the truck driver at a later stage,” he said. “It’s a timely reminder for drivers to take care when driving in the changing weather conditions.” [Ed: Yet another dangerous coyboy truckie gets but a slap on the wrist. The driver deserves a custodial sentence for recklessly causing pain and suffering to the cattle, and barred from cattle truck driving for life].
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The road between Bathurst and Blayney was closed for 30 minutes while cranes were brought in to lift the truck back onto the road. RTA workers, who were among the first at the accident scene, began directing traffic and slowing motorists down to avoid the cattle before police arrived.
“We’ve been trying to keep things flowing,” one RTA worker said. “A couple of steers got away but they’ve pretty well got them under control.”
Blayney Shire Council overseer, Paul Wade, said that Blayney Shire Council staff were working with the RTA to divert Bathurst bound traffic through Millthorpe. Mr Wade said that council staff worked with the emergency services and the truck’s driver to help control the traffic and move the surviving cattle into a nearby paddock. The council’s ranger euthanized a number of cattle at the scene…
Yesterday’s accident is the second time a semi-trailer has overturned on the same winding stretch of road on the outskirts of Blayney in recent months. On January 28 traffic on the highway was disrupted for four hours when a semi-trailer travelling towards Blayney overturned while negotiating a left bend near yesterday’s accident scene.
Play Video (Prime News):
Click image to play video
(when running, double click on video to enlarge)
NB. The Rural Fire Service at Canobolas have since deleted the above video, so here is one from Channel 9:
All night truck driving solo – another dead truck driver
The driver of this B-Double was killed when it hit an embankment on the Pacific Highway near Corindi (Ed: north of Coffs Harbour) on Friday night
[Photo by Frank Reward]
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A man was killed in an horrific crash near Dirty Creek, west of Corindi, on Friday night in what is amounting to a horror weekend on NSW roads.
A B-Double being driven by the 48-year-old man, from Queensland, had been travelling south on the Pacific Highway when it appears to have left the road and crashed into an embankment.
According to a police statement, police and emergency services were called to the crash just after 11pm where the driver, the sole occupant of the truck, had suffered serious injuries and died at the scene. According to the statement, the impact of the crash had detached the two trailers from the prime mover, but no further details were available last night…
This crash adds another death to the mounting NSW road toll with the number rising to eight since the start of the long weekend, five more than for the same long weekend last year.
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Mar 2007: Hume Highway again.. ‘head-on truck crash kills driver’
A fatal truck crash has closed the Hume Highway near Coolac, in southern NSW. Two trucks collided head-on on the highway, sparking fires in both cabs, about 6.15am (AEDT) today, police said. The driver of a semi-trailer, carrying groceries north on the highway, died at the scene after rescue efforts failed to save him. The driver of a southbound truck, carrying metal, escaped with minor injuries…
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Ed: The Truck Menace is blatantly out of control. ‘Industry self-regulation’ never works and is nothing but a costing cutting government cop out. Meanwhile Australian Liberal Labor governments continue to pour billions of taxpayers’s money into building bigger and faster dedicated trucking expressways. And so the trucks get bigger and faster and Australia’s highway carnage of families continues unabated…
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Watch video:
(includes sound)
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Postcript:
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Well we didn’t have to wait bloody long. The day after posting this article there was another B-double multiple fatality…dead driver, dead and maimed cattle under his care…
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Speeding truckie hooning a fully laden B-Double cattle truck, loses it on bend – kills himself and the cattle
‘A salvage operation continued into last night to remove a laden cattle truck that crashed into the Tangaratta Creek Bridge near Tamworth yesterday, claiming the life of the driver.
Oxley Highway was closed for hours as emergency crews worked at the scene, first freeing the driver’s body from the truck’s cabin, which had been crushed against the bridge pylons, and then removing dead cattle and the truck from the scene.
The B-double truck left the road and rolled at the bridge on the Oxley Highway, about 10km west of the city, about 3pm. Police believe the truck was travelling south, bound for Cargill abattoir at Tamworth, when it lost control on a sweeping bend that has been the scene of other serious accidents over the years. [Sky News: Police said the vehicle failed to negotiate a right-hand bend near Tangaratta Bridge, causing it to roll down an embankment.]
An off-duty police officer was first on the scene.
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Police officers euthanased distressed cattle that had been crushed or injured in the trailers, which rested on their sides near the creek.
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Oxley Local Area Command duty officer, Inspector Jeff Budd, said the recovery effort was expected to continue late into last night. He said firefighters had set up booms to contain the diesel spill in the creek.
…Yesterday’s fatal crash happened at the same bridge where a horrific bus accident occurred on January 5, 1992, claiming the lives of five people. A double-decker Pioneer bus en route from Brisbane to Melbourne slammed into the bridge on a Saturday night. The crash claimed the lives of an eight-year-old girl, as well as three women and a man.
Inspector Budd said police were continuing their investigations into the cause of yesterday’s crash and a report would be prepared for the coroner.’
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Meanwhile pig carcasses have been scattered over a motorway in Sydney’s southwest after two trucks collided early today. Police say the heavy vehicles crashed shortly after 2am on the M7 westlink motorway at Prestons, near the Bernera Road off-ramp. The truck carrying the pig carcasses rolled, throwing the meat all over the road.
Pig carcasses picked up off M7
http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=735802&vId=
"We're coming to you from the custodial lands of the Hairygowogulator and Tarantulawollygong, and pay respects to uncle and grandaddy elders past, present and emerging from their burrows. So wise to keep a distance out bush."
Australian native Galahs
derived from indigenous Yuwaalaraay word ‘gilaa‘
(Eolophus roseicapilla)
Just because Galahs are currently abundant, gives no-one the right to steal them and imprison them from the wild
The Atlantic Slave Trade once was Legal
…doesn’t mean it was right, just culturally acceptable
Animals being burned to death in the Dural pet shop fire
Pet native reptiles for sale on the Dural Pet Superstore website
Native Galahs being offered for sale on the Dural Pet Superstore website
Rainbow Lorikeet for sale at the Dural Pet Superstore
The Tyrepower Store, next to the Dural Pet Superstore
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo for sale on the Dural Pet Superstore website
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‘More puppies inside’…pet shop in Missouri, USA
How much is that doggy in the window?
The only good pet shop is a closed pet shop
