After two days of driving through the outback of New south Wales and Queensland there is little doubt in my mind that what my newly adopted country lacks in quality (read diversity if you like) it makes up for in quantity. There is so much flat mulga scrub that it literally defies description. You drive and drive and drive and nothing changes, it’s just flat, red and dry, except when it rains then it’s flat, red and boggy. I ask myself how can anybody make a living out here? Yet they do. Probably one cow or a couple of sheep per hundred acres or so, the poor critters fighting tooth and nail against the feral pigs, goats, camels and whatever, not to mention the native stock of kangaroo, wallaby, emu etc. You have to admire the owners and managers of these outback-alternate universes they really do make something out of nothing.

Now to a more serious matter, I am not happy about the way you earlier migrant interlopers have been treating our wildlife. The wholesale slaughter of Kangaroos and Emus has to stop right now!

Already these noble creatures are on the menu in restaurants all over Australia (particularly South Australia, the culinary vandal state) and it’s just not right. Today Jen counted over a hundred Kangaroo carcasses and that wasn’t all day it was in ten kilometers! I kid you not there are millions of these little skippies out here lining up to get squashed by the next eighteen wheeled assassin that happens by. I know what you’re thinking, if there are so many why worry about eating them, well, if you hadn’t noticed they are on the coat of arms and they do adorn every letter from the big house in Canberra. They are our representatives in the animal kingdom. Do we want to end up like the USA where the eagle has been hunted almost to extinction? Or England where there is not a Lion to be seen? Or New Zealand where they have to settle for a Kiwi because there is just no better alternative.

Just think about getting rid of your cat or dog and getting a nice joey or emu chick that’s all I’m saying. Think of the benefits as they grow bigger and bigger over the years… what joy they will bring to the family, what a great conversation piece at the next dinner party.

By the way we are in the boring part of Australia. That’s not to say this blog site will get any better…I’m just saying that’s all.

National Treasures out for a stroll Hungerford

Click to enlarge.