In the Wild (1992) s01e23 Episode Script

This was what the first white men saw.
They came halfway around the world, and they were driven by despair or by poverty or by crime or by the sheer will to survive.
They came to the unknown continent.
And their first glimpse of this land, and did they see? The bush, coming right down to the beach, alien, unknown, quite different from what they'd left behind.
And they forced their way up the rivers, they established themselves over the beaches, and as far as the eye could see there was still more bush.
And like all animals in all places, the first thing to do is turn this foreign place into home, and so European man proceeded to turn this part of Australia into a little Europe.
(CHIRPING) Once you penetrated the forest, this is what you saw - the long columns of the trees and a clear, open forest.
What undergrowth did grow reached its climax and then died off.
The wildlife, with their scratching and digging and eating seeds and young plants, and the Aboriginals, with their periodic burning, kept the forest an open forest.
The trees weren't the lovely, straight, tall trees that people imagine a forest is.
Many of them were hollow with places for animals to live, places for wildlife to live.
And then the settlers came.
They cleared the forest for pastures and paddocks here in Victoria.
This wet weather and rich soil is what led the pioneers into this country, and they developed it because it was like England.
It was wet and rich and they could grow just about anything.
And as the forests went, the animals that lived here went too.
Well, most of them did.
And as time went on, some of the people couldn't make a living out of these little holdings because they were then competing with a new world, and so the places were abandoned or just became shacks.
It's around these shacks, with their old iron and wood and bark, that many of the animals that can live with or despite man still persist.
But if you're going to fossick around in this sort of stuff, be very, very careful.
That sort of web is one of the most dangerous animals that we have in Australia.
It's a redback spider and the female has a bite which is known to kill man.
It's a very good idea to leave all spiders alone, even ones that you think you know are harmless.
But this one in particular - always leave it alone.
There she is.
Great, fat, gross, red body.
But even they are native animals.
They have a role to play in this situation.
I might put the tin back.
Aha! (CHUCKLES) Whoa.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
There it is.
Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.
Now, somewhere under there we'll find a head.
There he is.
(EXHALES) Now, what are you? Well, he's obviously a snake but he's a most peculiar animal.
Pale brown head, scales The fact that he's so quiet and placid just means that it's a cold, wet, miserable day.
Peculiar marking on the head.
Oh, he's a bitey one.
Any snake like this is a bitey.
He's probably a young Pseudechis, that is, a red-bellied black, one of the black snakes.
Subcaudals That's funny.
Some of them are divided and some of therm aren't.
A most peculiar snake.
But that's not what concerns us, really.
What concerns us is this is an animal that's managed to survive the clearing of the forests because when man came in with his crops and his introduced animals and birds, the small mammals, like mice, and the small birds, like sparrows, became very good food for these little animals.
And so snakes, because they're poisonous, can usually fight off the predators.
Even though every man's hand is turned against them they've got plenty of food, and perhaps most important, they can get into anywhere.
Well, I really am not sure what that one is, so we'll take him back with us and check him out at the National Parks & Wildlife people and their experts can pass on the good information as to what he is.
That's quite exciting.
It really is exciting.
You come into a bit of country.
You don't think there's anything left.
It's highly populated, there's masses of people here, and something like that turns up, and it just goes to show in today's natural history there is so little known about so many things that anybody can find out something new any day.
Mmm.
When I caught this snake I didn't know what it was.
There are a number of books about snakes to which I have reference and any good naturalist uses reference books.
You don't try and reinvent the wheel.
You go on other people's experience.
See, it's still a bit of a mystery.
It's pretty obviously a copperhead on all the scale counts and all the patterns of the head.
These are the diagnostic features.
There's a few differences about the tail and what it appears It's a new species of copperhead which is in the process of being described by a scientist in Victoria.
He calls it the montagne or the wet-humid copperhead and recognises it as quite a distinct species from the lowland one.
All of my previous experience was of the lowland one, so I didn't know it.
However, all good experience.
I now know something new.
At first, only undergrowth was cleared and shade trees and windbreaks were left.
This advantaged certain wildlife.
The sulfur-crested cockatoos, for example, found more places to feed, more grain, bulbs and corms to eat.
This black-shouldered kite was able to hunt more mice and grasshoppers.
Even the magpie was advantaged - more grubs, more places to feed.
And with more grassland, the kangaroos could come out of the forest and feed on the richer graze.
As long as there was forest, they had an advantage.
But the clearing went on until everything disappeared and all that was left was stock, domestic animals, and the dead stumps of trees that were used for firewood.
Massive flocks of introduced birds replaced the native species.
As the forest disappeared, so did those natives that depended on the trees for their living.
There was no place for this fellow to go in the paddocks, not that he cared very much.
He's typically Australian in his outlook.
The absolute symbol of the Australian wildlife.
This is the cuddly teddy bear that everybody regards as Australia's own and it really is a magnificent marsupial, the koala.
It's not a bear, but who cares very much? If people love it, it helps.
He's a forest animal and it wasn't enough just to make legislation to save the animal.
These trees are manor gums and they're one of the few eucalypts the koala eats.
That's his sole diet, the growing tips of those leaves, and he eats an awful lot a day so that it takes a lot of trees to keep one koala, and by the time Australia realised that the koala was in danger of extinction, most of the land where the koala lived had been cleared and developed, and so places like this were planted deliberately by the koala savers, the National Parks people, the wildlife people, who planted rows of gums to feed koalas, and out of the bush, the wild koalas came, seeking sanctuary.
Of course, in this south-eastern wet corner, there's lots of water and wherever there's flat land, you get permanent waterways.
These are magnificent places for naturalists, fishermen, birdwatchers There's a wealth of waterbirds - spoonbills, ibis, heron.
All of these proliferate in the richness of water life.
There goes a white egret, heading off for a safe perching place.
You can spend days just wandering along the river, looking about.
But other people use the river too.
This fellow seems to be using it to some effect.
There's got to be some trick in this.
Nobody catches fish that easily.
And he doesn't stop.
It's a constant process of catching fish.
Well, he's using a bit more equipment than most fishermen.
Perhaps that's the clue.
HARRY: G'day.
How you are there? Sorry if I'm interfering with your fishing, but I noticed you'd stopped.
Really fascinated.
What are you catching? Carp.
European carp, I catch.
Is that all? Yeah.
Just the one sort? Oh, there's two sorts.
There's mirror carps.
Yeah.
Like this one here.
It's a mirror carp.
They only make probably 2% to 3% of the carp population.
And then I've got the normal carp.
Oh, the big carps? Do you catch anything else at all? Do you, you know, kill anything else with the Oh, it won't kill anything.
It's actually only attracting carp and it won't kill the carp, bait, or any other fish.
It only stuns them.
When we pick them up, they revive straightaway.
You can see they're still alive here.
So, in fact, if you did stun native fish or something else, they'd just swim away again.
They'd swim away again.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, how many have you got in there now from half an hour's fishing? 150 kilograms.
Something like that.
(HARRY LAUGHS) It sure beats fishing with a line.
What are you going to do with them? I mean, you can't eat that many fish.
No.
Much of it gets sold for pet food.
We freeze them up and as soon as we've got a big transport we sell them for pet food.
Some of them still get sold for human consumption.
Oh, well.
We'd better let you get on with it, I think.
OK.
See you.
Bye-bye.
Start up.
(ENGINE RUMBLES) HARRY: Those carp are pest species being taken with an electrofisher.
The current stuns them and then they're scooped up into the boat.
Well, that's really exciting to see a man like that, who's a businessman, a fisherman Although he doesn't know it, he's a conservationist because the fish he's harvesting is one of the scourges of these southern waterways.
They're declared a noxious fish.
Now, that doesn't mean they're poisonous or dangerous in an eating way.
All it means is they are so prolific, they grow with such rapidity, and so many of them, that they've taken over the river systems.
Carp are feeders on weed and small animal life and they tend to green up the water.
You can find them in clear water, it's true, but gradually they foul the water up, and anybody who's got a goldfish will know, because goldfish are carp, and if you keep your goldfish in a bowl, after a while you'll see the water in that bowl starts to go green and this is part of the pattern.
Now, that green stops native fishes living and the carp and the trout and all of the other introductions, coupled with the dams and the clearing and the improvement of rivers, have totally changed these river systems of southern Australia, particularly here in Victoria.
There are some things that don't change, though.
Little fellow over there, wandering along, is not changed.
That'll be a lady.
I can tell that, even without checking on her.
Yeah, I thought so.
Seat by the courtesy of the river improvement people who chop off the trees that are hanging over the river to allow the speedboats to go through, which, in turn, wipes the banks away and just adds to the problems the rivers have got.
Now, what would it be that I could tell at a glance lived in the river and yet would be seen on the bank? A good naturalist will know - a tortoise.
And when I said I was right, it was a lady, you can see she's got a very short tail.
How do I know there would be a female out on the bank? Because the only time these tortoises come out is when the females come ashore to lay their eggs or when the pool they live in dries up, and this river obviously hasn't dried up, so it had to be a female.
This is a long-necked tortoise or more correctly called a side-necked tortoise.
You can see there's the head tucked in there and going right around the back of the neck, a great long neck.
No, didn't want to come out.
There it is.
Great long neck that comes right out there and goes back in.
Well, there's another generation there and I won't be the one to interfere with its evolution.
(CHIRPING) The dominant feature of Victoria is not river ways, but the highlands and the forests that cover them.
To walk through the forests gives this timeless feel of something endless that's been there as long as time itself.
(KNOCKING) It probably comes as a surprise to many people to realise that a naturalist has a very broad spectrum of tools.
What's a geological pick got to do with a forest? An enormous amount.
Forests and man have been together ever since man came out of the cave.
But this forest is even older than that because what I'm after here is the evidence Yeah.
There we are.
the evidence that supports that enormous industry out there.
Those smoke stacks are the La Trobe Valley Power, the basis of a white man's way of life in the Western world, certainly, and most definitely here in Victoria and what they're using to power the whole complex of not only our way of life but our standard of living is this stuff - brown coal.
Now, there's not enough in this rock to make it worthwhile.
These are the shales that overlie the coal and those little fossils are 100 million years old.
You can see what it is.
It's a fern.
There you can see the resemblance - a modern fern, a record of two ancient ferns which tells us that the forest 100 million years ago was something like the forest is today.
Long before man ever evolved on Earth, these forests grew, flourished and died to make these great thick levels of coal that we use today.
But there's still forests living in suitable climates and man uses them, and because of this there's a tremendous demand for trees and for the land they grow on.
If the forests are used, then the wildlife that depends on the trees will disappear.
Nobody would willingly destroy this brown thornbill or this grey fantail, but by destroying their habitat, they're doomed.
These look like pig scratchings and if you've been in the dry, dead heart of Australia or in the Queensland area, that's what they look like.
But the whole hillside is covered with them and it's not a pig at all.
It's something much more delightful and much more indigenous.
There he is a male lyrebird.
Isn't he a marvellous thing? A bit worried by me being here, not terribly worried, though, and that's his problem.
Because he's not terribly worried he's easy prey to cats and foxes and the idiot hunter who, despite every real Australian's respect for these animals, still will kill a lyrebird to have its tail.
I'm not the only one who's watching in the forest.
(GRUNTS) Come on.
(EXHALES) That's the sort of thing you see running around the tracks in this forest country.
Ooh, you'd love to bite me, wouldn't you? That's a lace goanna, or monitor, and he's the reason those kookaburras, which are native to this part of the country, are kept in check.
This tree goanna goes up here to where there's a kookaburra's nest and eats the young birds.
Very sharp teeth - they can inflict quite a wound - and a long forked tongue.
They're not poisonous.
Neither the teeth nor the tongue is poisonous.
Very strong claws.
See them digging in there, getting a hold on my hand? And the back claws down on my leg are getting a good grip there.
He's a good climbing animal.
He's an old fellow.
You can see the tip of his tail has been bitten off in a previous fight.
A few scars on him.
Oh, well.
I'll let him go to keep the balance of nature as far as kookaburras are concerned.
Off you go.
Come on.
Off you go.
There you go.
Up you go.
Go on.
Away you go.
He really manages very well indeed, but he relies on the forest in its entirety to manage and the forest is needed for other things, like woodchipping.
This area was woodchipped about 18 months ago, carefully leaving belts of uncut forest to provide sanctuary for animals.
Up comes regrowth in the same proportion as it was previously.
These young plants grow into dense stands of timber and many people imagine that is the restoration of the forest.
But it's not.
That's timber for tomorrow's cutting.
The future of the forest relies on a wide range of young and old trees.
But for these trees, the future is now because 55 years ago, the clearing and cutting went on here and this magnificent stand is the result of careful management and careful, sustained use.
But that is what it is, sustained use and sustained yield, and provided the management allows sufficient trees to remain, we'll have the forest for today, tomorrow and forever.
If those pioneers came ashore today, they'd see much that they knew well because Victoria's become a little Europe.
But they'd also see much that's Australian heritage.
These things are still with us because we have reserves and laws to protect those things which are peculiarly Australian.
MAN OVER P.
A: The penguin you will see, of course, is the fairy penguin.
The only place to witness this happening is here at Summerland Beach on Phillip Island where every night of the year, summer and winter little fairy penguins can be seen coming ashore just on dusk.
It is approximately 13 inches high, making it the smallest of the 18 known species.
Not only is it the smallest, but it is the only penguin to wait until dusk before coming ashore.
HARRY: Fascinating animals and particularly valuable, since thousands of Australians each year see these and learn that our heritage has a value in its own right.
And it's places like this and zoos and sanctuaries which are the one of the hopes of tomorrow's Australian heritage.
If children today can learn about these wonderful things and they're the adults of tomorrow and they will make the decisions that keep them forever.