In the Wild (1992) s01e13 Episode Script

Ooh.
What a glorious place.
For me, this is where it all comes together, the centre of the outback.
It's nothing special.
It's not even marked on a map.
But you've got sandhills and mulga and rocks and the whole outback is here, now.
It's not a hostile place.
It's just totally indifferent to people, animals, life.
If you know how to use it - and every surviving animal and plant out here does know how to use it - then it's a very pleasant place.
(THEME MUSIC) Bite, bite, bite.
Here's a mulga snake, or king brown as he's known over most of Australia.
This one's only a 'prince' brown.
He's only about half-grown.
Easily told from all the other poisonous biteys in this country by this peculiar pattern on the underside of the tail.
It's not a good idea to go around checking them to see what they are because this is a biting snake.
It's a killer, or a potential killer.
Up here, he does no harm.
He predates out, works through all of this material, uses all this cover and comes out He's just going home to bed now, having had a good evening's hunting, slept during the cold of the night and the warmth of the morning sun has brought him out.
He's having a final hunt around - perhaps for a grasshopper or something like that - and off he'll go, probably got a hole over in those rocks somewhere, hole up for the day and come out at about 5 o'clock tonight and start feeding again.
Now, when I say "start feeding", that's a pretty difficult thing to do in a country that's got very little food.
So his main using ability is to use this very lack of food and he can go for enormous periods of time.
In captivity, I've had these animals that have refused to eat.
They've sulked for 20 months and then suddenly, "Chomp, chomp, chomp," three mice in a row, eaten the lot.
Normally, however, they'd eat about oh, once a month, once every two months, something like that.
If you can get over your fear of them, snakes are very lovely animals, delightful patterns, but of course they are dangerous.
We let even the dangerous ones go, though.
Off you go.
Ooh, yes! Now, that's his defence pattern - the flattening out of the body, the tongue flickering to taste the air and rearing up, showing me the biggest, fattest side of him that's possible.
As soon as he gets away from me and the danger stops threatening, he flattens out and into the bushes for safety.
This apparently empty country is rich in history - a history of exploration, a history of exploitation.
It's the furthest out that our exploitation has taken place, right on the edge of the great desert heart of Western Australia - the Gibson and the Sandy deserts.
(CAR DOOR OPENS) (CAR DOOR SHUTS) This is John Forrest's fort.
John Forrest was probably the first white man in this area.
His party came up here in the late 19th century searching for new areas for development in the state of Western Australia.
This was before Federation, of course, and the state was actually the colony.
Now, John Forrest and his brother were remarkable men for colonists.
They had a lot of respect and feel for the Aborigines and the only time on record that Forrest was attacked by Aborigines was right here.
He writes in his diary I can't remember the exact words, but, "We made camp at this rather nice place "and suddenly over the hill" - that hill there - "came a horde of plumed and painted savages "and we reluctantly had to fire over their heads and they ran away "and then we built a fort.
" This has always puzzled me because the Aboriginals were never plumed and painted in this country, excepting during ceremony, and Forrest was very, very careful about trespass.
He understood their ways.
When I came here and looked around, to me at least, the fact that those stone circles there, I believe that this was a sacred ground and that Forrest unwittingly stumbled upon a ceremony.
The Forrest party was the first explorers through here, but they were followed about the same time by a number of other groups, people like Giles, Warburton, Carnegie - great names in Australian history.
Carnegie summed it up.
He says, "It's a howling wilderness of spinifex and sand.
" Unfortunately, nobody believed him because Giles, Forrest, all of the others, came through in good seasons and they put in glowing reports - this was good country, this was potential stock country.
And so the pastoralist moved out, the fox moved out and the Canning Stock Route evolved.
(ENGINE STARTS) This stock route, created to move cattle from north to south Australia, is really one of the greatest achievements - almost unrecognised - of the Australian pioneers.
An 80-foot monument down in the ground to the most remarkable desert traveller of, I think, this whole area - a man called Canning remarkable for his ability in this desolation.
Wherever he sunk one of these holes, he got water and that is a remarkable achievement in a waterless land.
Canning's job was to build from the Kimberley to the markets to the south-west a cattle trail.
That meant that the wells had to be one day's march apart - in bad country, 12 miles, in good country, maybe 20 - and every well had to be exactly the same.
The reason - after a full day's march in the dust and heat of a cattle drive with one white drover probably riding behind and the black boys coming in initially, there was no time to work out a different system.
It had to be simple and the same all the way through.
Over there, the whip where a horse could pull a rope that went around that pulley and down into the well.
The pulley itself a most important part.
Out here, you're not gonna find trees like that.
No way.
So one, two, three distinct trees - beefwoods - went into making that up, all bolted, morticed, and even wooden washers used.
Just in case a fella was on foot, doing a perish perhaps, there was also a windlass made from bloodwood but all the forks made from mulga and desert oak, all braced, morticed, angled up, and a steel cable with a bucket, down into the well and bucket it up.
But usually what happened - the horse pulled out that way, the bucket came up, the drover or the fella stood here and kicked the bucket over this edge.
You can see the grooves that have been chopped by years and years of pushing and bashing in this desert oak, running down into the troughs, ready for the cattle coming in.
Ooh, look at that.
That's a collared sparrowhawk - one of the beautifully efficient little killers in this area.
Ahh, I see what's happened.
Good! That's a spotted bowerbird he's hit.
He's broken one wing there.
The bowerbird's fighting back.
No use, though.
This is really exciting.
It's never been recorded.
It's usually things like finches and budgerigars.
Yeah, you can see the rounded wings quite clearly.
He puts them up and hovers, literally dancing on his prey.
This bird must be famished.
To some people, the sight of this bird eating a living victim is cruel and unnecessary, but it's part of the struggle for existence.
Only the strong can survive and the weak must go under.
(WIND WHISTLES) (EXHALES HEAVILY) This has got to be the most desolate, most inhospitable unpleasant, unbelievable shocking place to live that you could ever imagine anybody getting into.
It's like a great snowfield or a tundra.
It's really a salt lake, Lake Disappointment, and a ruddy good name for it too.
As far as you can see, there's a mirage and the little intimation that there might be something over there.
When you dig down salt water and yet animals have managed to adapt themselves to a way of living here.
The animals that surround here, if they happen to get blown onto here or wander onto here, they die unless they can get off it, but within this wasteland - and that's all it is - of strange forms and bubbles of gypsum and salt lives certain animals like, well, there's an ants' nest over there and probably right next to that ants' nest will be a spider's nest.
The spider eats the ants, the ants eat the insects that have been washed out here and probably right out on the edge of the lake live Well, not probably, certainly live lizards about so long which very bravely make dashes out in the evening and early morning and grab the spiders.
Even the very environment of this boggy salt lake can trap the unwary and cause death, but it's natural, nature's way of destruction.
Destruction is far more brutal when man steps in and is the direct cause of death.
(CAR RATTLES) (SPITS) Eugh! Break anybody's heart - a cattleman, a naturalist, Australian.
That's what happens in the dry season with cattle.
From what it was Eugh.
Still, this was the biggest waterhole in the whole area.
If anything still lives here, it'll be in there.
(CROWS CAW) Well, the water's still here.
This is Winditch Pool or Winditch Spring.
From the naturalist's point of view, it's a permanent body of water, a big body.
Five years ago, it was from oh, half a mile down there way up around that corner and still going up for about a mile beyond and Well, you can see the water level - that flat bank where the reeds are.
And the whole of this area was covered in bulrushes.
Yes, there's some.
Still some there.
But they've been beaten and eaten out of existence now - they're gone - because the enormous pressure of cattle has come in, all the cattle from all around have come in to this one remaining waterhole and eaten it out.
It's still good water even though there's a couple of dead kangaroos and a dead beast in it.
The pool is so big and there's so much flow in the spring that it keeps sweet, or relatively sweet.
So within here there should be still surviving the things that can make use of this situation.
Cattle have been drinking here today, they've walked in the water and churned it all up, churned up the mud around the edge.
Now it's starting to clear again.
Remarkably clear and beautiful water.
(COW MOOS) (MOOS) The last time I was here this much bigger pool then had some remarkable animals in it, real survivors of a much wetter period.
Let's see if they're still there.
Oh, look at this.
Hey, hey, hey, hey! Back here.
There's too many there to play with, but that's the animal, that's the thing we're looking for.
We'll let a couple of them go and look at one.
Off you go.
You can go too.
Yeah, you can go too.
Now we come back to him.
Dinner-plate tortoise - that's what they're called - and they're only found in these isolated inland waters.
And, of course, they're one of the snake tortoises.
That means their head goes sideways into their shell.
They don't go straight back.
Most of the Australian tortoises are like that.
You can see the clawed webbed feet and the great big mouth and the little tiny nostrils up on top of the head.
So he goes under water and just the tip of the nose will stick out and that's the only part that needs to show and breathe.
Nothing can get him.
But this is amazing - animals like this right out here in the middle of the desert.
That's why this big waterhole is so important - because it's the last refuge.
If these disappear, there's no way they can get back here.
They're gone forever.
Last time I was here, there was about 50 of them, a little colony feeding around.
They won't breed at this time of the year, but when the floods come again and the rains come and the water builds up, then the tortoise will climb up these banks very laboriously, dig a hole and lay 15, 20 eggs.
The foxes will come and dig the eggs up and the crows will eat them and the young tortoises will get out and have to scurry to the water again and they'll all get eaten on the way.
The goannas and hawks Everybody will have a feed of tortoise.
A few survivors will make it and since each tortoise probably lives about 50 or 60 years, it's just as well they don't survive so much because otherwise we'd be overrun with tortoises.
That slime on his back - part of his camouflage.
When you dive for them, swimming along the bottom, you just see them nestling on the bottom in the weed.
You look down and the weed is growing around.
The only thing that shows up is their head looking up.
They suddenly panic, start scrabbling and little clouds of mud comes up.
That's how you know where they are.
We'll let him go gently.
He's not going to go.
There's his feet.
Just a minute, fella.
Just a minute.
Be nice and just show us how your feet move.
Come on.
You see him coming out, feeling his way, legs starting to move.
I'll let him go and off he goes, straight down into the weed again 'cause that's a safe place for him.
Most people like cows and yet this is the innocent cause of catastrophe.
All of this bare-grazed plain was once really lush, thick bushland, with tall rivergums, wattles and plenty of trees around.
Then the cattle came.
They eat off first of all the grasses and the ephemerals.
Now there's nothing left here because they've all been eaten off.
Then they graze on the young plants and the trees like those up there and when there's nothing else left, they chew off the existing trees up to as high as a cow can graze.
Now, the end result of this is that the shadow or the shade that keeps the ground cool from trees moves across with the sun so no part of the ground under the trees stays in shade all the time.
That's one result.
And this bakes the ground, brings the ground heat up, higher evaporation, water loss and it cooks the roots, the shallow roots of the trees.
The survival mechanism of the trees then trigger the drought response, which is dropping all surplus leaves and normally this covers the ground underneath the tree and stops that loss of water, but the cattle eat those dropped leaves or else they blow away and so the trees die.
Then the dead trees are uprooted and blown away and the whole thing becomes a bare plain with just a few big trees left in place and when they die, nothing replaces them.
Another part of the problem is the track made by the cattle coming down to drink.
Their hooves churn up the ground and the rain carries the dust down and silts up the waterhole.
Each time, there is less water for animals.
Just cattle drinking, there's another problem involved.
Enormous numbers of cattle drink a vast amount of water each day.
Some animals, such as the red kangaroo, are helped by the development of pastoral leases.
And animals like the goanna who feed on carrion and dead things are also on the increase.
Native animals are very dainty in their drinking.
They don't churn up mud.
They drink very carefully and they're forever cautious and aware, looking about, like this charming red kangaroo family.
Even as the emu lifts his head to let the water run down his neck, he's looking about.
Observation for survival.
So this is the problem - how do we maintain a pastoral industry and this wealth of wildlife and natural heritage that's so peculiarly Australian? There are some answers and they're not terribly expensive.
All of this can be fenced anywhere these occur.
It's a fairly cheap proposition.
A windmill pumps the water up onto the flat and the cattle drink there.
"Why? Why not just let them drink here? "What does it matter? We've got all these millions of acres of land.
"Does it matter if a waterhole dies?" You can cut a man's arm off or his leg off and he still lives, but if you cut his heart out, he's dead.
And this is the heart of this country.
There is so little of it, it's so precious, it's part of our heritage and we cannot afford to throw it away for the sake of a little bit of gain.