Published in: Southerly 2009:69(1), pp.22-33.

RAY and CAROLYN DREW

The Harvest

May 19, 2008, at the former Belconnen Naval Transmitting Station,

Australian Capital Territory

Behind the steel mesh fencing, in fog, kangaroos emerge into feeble sunlight, to stand in

silence. Scattered throughout the valley, some begin to travel through the long grass to drink at

the creek, a finger of Lake Gininderra that terminates inside the southern corner. The mob

rests uneasily; they have spent the night confined by new boundaries. Outside the perimeter

the few observers who have come to check know something is pending, something is about to

happen. They have been checking every day for the past four weeks for signs of the beginning

of the kill, their eyes scanning the paddocks for signs of any new activity. After the fencing

and hessian bagging had been put in place, the chiller bins unloaded on the hill, all was quiet.

All has been quiet for too long.

A mere breath after sunrise three trucks swerve to a stop further up the valley. The watchers

strain to see what they will do. A solitary photographer, pressing a telephoto lens against the

wire, begins to record every move. Men and women in blue overalls jump quickly from the

vehicles. They hoist and assemble the remaining concrete based security fencing that traverses

the length and the breadth of the fields, criss-crossing at various points, the final act to trap

600 kangaroos on the 119 hectare base.

The herding begins. Slowly the handlers walk, flapping their arms like demented birds,

goading the kangaroos through a maze of fencing. The animals begin to panic, bounding along

a fence one way, then another, then another again, zig zagging up the valley and across into a

large funnel shaped paddock that leads them, finally, into the main holding area. The mob

slows, milling around looking for separated family members, as their blue overalled pursuers

run to secure the large numbers they have captured. In front stands the large killing circle, a

high hessian covered scaffold, a jerry built Colosseum. In its centre, a small hut and a single

shooter. A large entrance gate will swing shut when a manageable number are driven inside.

They will not come out alive.

The entrance "funnel" walled by high wire fencing is also covered in hessian. The hessian,

the public are told, is to help keep the kangaroos calm, to stop them from running into the

fences if they panic. But the hessian is also an attempt to stop the public and protestors from

seeing kangaroos die as they are darted then drugged to death. Huddled down, in the middle of

the arena, sits the shooter. A short round middle aged man, stomach protruding over his brown

belt, bent at the knees as if sitting too long. He wears large orange plastic goggles and, when

not shooting, a large overhanging hat. The RSPCA announce he is an excellent shot. He waits.

The killing must take place in the daylight, in the middle of suburbia in Canberra. The

scientists, the bureaucrats, the wildlife rangers, the RSPCA are afraid the public will see how

these kangaroos die. But hessian or not, the practices of those who conduct the killing will, for

the first time, be exposed. Within hours, National press photographers arrive, shouldering

tripods and long telephotos. Newspapers hire light aircraft to see the killing close up. The eyes

of the world will watch a week of death like some bizarre sporting event.

In the preceding year, Wildcare, an animal welfare group from Queanbeyan, NSW, proposed a

translocation of 50 -100 of the kangaroos trapped in the Belconnen Naval Transmission

Station grounds. They proposed the sterilisation of another 200 kangaroos. No need to kill

them, they said. There were alternatives. To the surprise of the public, the Commonwealth

Department of Defence agreed. It was a radical proposition. The nation drew its collective

breath. Around the country, unused to the gentle transportation of kangaroos, there was much

tut tut tutting, if not outright laughter. The radio shock jocks had a field day. Government

ministers, bureaucrats, farmers and scientists called in their disbelief, and their disapproval.

"Field processors" now "harvest" ten thousand kangaroos a night, they said. So why the worry

about 600? "What kind of Defence Force do we have?" a talkback caller whined. "If these

girlies cant kill a bunch of vermin, how would they go in Iraq?"

Dismay spread like a cloud through the ACT government and their scientific supporters,

sans a radical ecologist or a deep Green among them. Not even the opposition Greens

supported translocation. There were too many kangaroos, and they were starving. Soon "the

roos are starving" became the public catchcry. When press photographs provided embarassing

visual proof that the generally plump animals were far from starving, a small coterie known as

the Limestone Plains Group began a concerted campaign with a different tack. While they

may possibly not be starving, they announced, the kangaroos threatened rare native grasslands

and its tiny inhabitants. "Translocation would not work," they declared in the same breath. It

was inhumane. Much more humane to cull them. Another paper appeared in the war of words

between the ideological antagonists. "Shooting is probably the best solution..." or "engineer an

overdosage with a narcotic in the water (assuming that non-target species can be excluded

somehow)...there is an effective and non-stressful way to reduce the population" (Griggs

2008). The once proud Australian icon, under the onslaught of government propaganda, was

to become little more than a native pest.

But compromise was forced. A group of activists, in coalition with Wildcare, campaigned

behind the scenes, wrote hundreds of letters worldwide, challenged assumptions, and forged

submissions. And then came the news. The kangaroos of Belconnen were given a reprieve.

The news, with photographs of the detained macropods, hit the major newspapers across

Australia. The international press were listening. The department of Defence had hired a

kangaroo expert, Dr David Croft, to supervise the transportation. The ACT government, led by

Chief Minister Joh Stanhope, dug their heels in; Defence would need a permit from the ACT

government before the kangaroos could leave. And the ACT government would not grant an

export licence. How strange the need for licences to export native kangaroos from

Commonwealth to Territory, from one state to another. The local media was awash with their

arguments. Vested interests, through concerted and determined media campaigning, called for

the death of the animals. The kangaroos were still "starving" the rumours ran. The rare legless

lizard would die if the kangaroos remained. Farce entered the debate when a politician

announced she was worried about the fate of the "mouthless moth" being killed by

overpopulating kangaroos. And inevitably, the worry about the cost, the cost of maintaining it

all.

"The ACT Community has invested heavily...it has invested in expert

committees...invested many tax payer dollars...in...devising the best means of dealing with the

kangaroo problem. The ACT Community has the right to expect a return on these

investments" (Georges 2008). The National Emblem, represented by the Belconnen 600, were

commodities, but were they more profitably exploited as pet food or a tourist attraction? The

politicians and their scientific advisors saw the animals purely as an exploitable resource. And

as they do not fart, they announced, a phase-out of beef cattle to kangaroo was a possible

solution to the Greenhouse gas dilemma. Inevitably, in an age of commodification, the

kangaroo had to become a pest, a "threat" to its own environment, a threat to the acquisitive

hegemony of a new invasive species - homo sapiens. And the invaders brought with them their

intellectual apologists, their apparatchiks, the neo-Cartesian scientists.

On May 16, 2008, a three hundred a sixty degree about-face. The Defence Department

reneged on their promise of a translocation. Croft, deep into planning the translocation, was

not told. The killing would go ahead as previously planned. The kangaroo supporters, many of

them employed as wildlife carers or concerned with Deep Ecology, were shattered. Their

grief, and guilt, would be long and harsh. Their lives, like those of the kangaroos about to die,

changed forever. The Australian Federal Police stepped in. No shooting allowed in suburbia.

Darting and death by injection were now the only means available.

Like a giant mouth the wide hessian covered gate swings open. The watchers stand, alert.

Four workers move up along the inner fence of the holding area. They walk slowly and

deliberately, chatting between one another. They smile. They laugh. A young woman, a PhD

candidate, smooths her pony-tailed hair as she strides across the field. The men, older, glance

across the paddock at the onlookers, the worlds press, crowded against the wire netting fence

some 600 metres away. Then they turn to the job at hand. The older kangaroos, with strange

dignity and presence, watch them. Those that had been lying down get up on their feet. Some

move away as the people move past them. Some jump to the other side of the holding area,

twitching their ears back and forward, sensing something is about to happen. Joeys jump into

their mothers pouches. Eventually all are on their feet. Standing, tall, swinging their heads

high, straightening, staring hard through the fence at those that threaten them. The workers

come through a gate behind the kangaroos and start to herd them once more. Hesitant and

unwilling, the first of the kangaroos jump through the opening looking for a way out, an

escape from the humans that frighten them. They follow the lead kangaroo bounding into the

now open space before them. The gate slams shut. Kangaroos mill round and round the large

killing arena. Their rhythm broken as they find they can go no further. They dash around in

front of one another, behind one another, a mad melee of interrupted movement. Bodies fall to

the ground, silhouetted on the bagging as puppets in a shadow play. A lull, as the bodies are

placed into the back of a trailer and moved to refrigerated containers.

The others in the holding area are standing around licking their forearms from the anxiety

they experience. Some have thrown themselves on the ground, clearly distressed. A mother

stands in the middle of the mob patiently feeding her joey, ears pricked, staring out beyond the

fence. The humans come again. They move up behind the kangaroos in a straight line. Mother

and joey move off together towards the gate. Others are not so willing. They make a break for

it, rushing back between the humans. One falls to the ground, it doesnt move again. The

mother, separated from her joey, bounds with some of the mob into the killing pen. The gate is

slammed shut. Again, the melee of kangaroos in the centre of the killing arena. Around and

around they bound, accelerating. Stopping, leaping sideways, bounding, stopping again,

leaping sideways again. But always to fall to the ground. Photographers catch a kangaroo in a

five metre leap to the top of the killing fence, only to fall, just short, to his death. Outside, in

the shadow of the gate to the death circle, the joey waits patiently for his mother to return.

Half past ten. The killing stops. It is time for morning tea.

Eleven am: the killing resumes. The joey has disappeared. The tension is palpable.

Throughout the morning protestors have been hurling abuse at the killers. Voices straining to

be heard. "Murdering bastards!" Voices, their only weapon. Voices thrown like missiles,

picked up by the wind and whisked away. A handful of protestors, at times outnumbered by

press photographers, bearing witness to a massacre of animals who at times look too, too

human. Watching as the machine methodically disposes of creatures. The long lenses of the

media position themselves along the fence line, occasionally jostling for the best position. The

cameramen settle themselves in staring down their lenses as the drama unfolds before them.

At first the usual greetings and acknowledgments between one another. The thoughtful

glances as they size up the competition. The newspaper cameramen most at ease, talking with

one another as they find the best positions. Some mutter to one another: "This isnt fair. This

is bloody disgusting, mate." The television crews come, then go. The young female presenters

dressed in their best totter along behind being careful not to break their stiletto shoes. The

mirrors, the make-up, the posture. They leave.

In the middle of the pristine middle class environment of the ACT, with its manicured

lawns and subjugated flowers, the killing at BNTS unfolds. Every morning people drive past

on their way to work. They do not see the bodies of the dead kangaroos being loaded into

chiller boxes. They do not see the joeys looking for mothers long gone. They do not see the

panic etched in the bodies of those still alive. In the evenings, on the way home from work,

they drive past once more.

The killings at BNTS have revealed the dark underside of European Australia, a society that

has never accepted the landscape and its wildlife. The kangaroos have been labelled "pests",

killed, body parts made into scrotum bags and novelties, devalued, brutalised, vilified, and

eaten. The fundamental ideology that animals exist to be controlled, utilised, exploited,

tortured, or killed by human beings is so deep seated and widespread, so embedded in this

culture and civilisation, that nearly all scientists cannot comprehend a viewpoint other than

this. In fact, "civilisation" it may be argued, is an elaborate project to try and justify and

rationalise distantiation from other animals and nature. The careers of most scientists are

intertwined with this neo-Cartesian, anthropocentric outlook. The only hope for a change

appears to lie more in the field of new ideas and protest arising in the fields of deep ecology,

eco feminism, cultural studies, or contemporary psychoanalysis. Australia has a long way to

go before a sincere acknowledgement of animal consciousness and suffering develops. They

remain objects to be controlled, managed, exploited and killed.

The ACT government, at first in denial that the Defence site would be used for high density

housing, has begun to hint that a small parcel of the Defence land, once acquired, and sans

kangaroos, may be used for housing, but nonetheless, the primary aim of the cull was to

preserve the native grasslands on the site. Those who do not accept the government line know

that Development is waiting, and while the government and its advising scientists are

presently feigning concern about vulnerable species (not kangaroos), the species will be soon

forgotten as well-heeled clients queue for waterfront housing. After all, they have built city

centres over other vulnerable grasslands, together with airport extensions and new embassies.

Where kangaroos once grazed, there is a splendid view of the wetlands at the bottom of the

gently undulating hillside of BNTS. The scientific community are now silent. No mention,

either, of the danger to rare species in the grasslands that extend outside the naval base

perimeter. Outside the fence cattle graze, and no scientific concern about their impact on a rare

moth. Killing the kangaroos at BNTS was always going to be the final outcome. To do

otherwise would threaten the very fabric of human belief systems. To do otherwise would

threaten powerful institutions that dominate our society. To do otherwise would pose a threat

to all we hold dear. Our anthropocentric view of the world, as with the Enlightenment Project,

places humankind at the centre of the world. Our drive for progress is ruthless and, in the

process, we write ourselves on nature at large. The current dominant paradigm places control

firmly in the hands of capitalism underpinned by an almost religious faith in the redemption of

science and technology.

Within Australia, kangaroo lives are almost valueless, other than as a source of meat or

hide. Comparatively few Australians admire their beauty and sensitivity - those that do love

them do so with great passion. Otherwise, the gentle animals appear to arouse an unreasoning

hatred among sectors of the population. Whenever the government announces a "cull" (kill)

thousands do not flock to protest the slaughter. And yet visitors to the country do adore them

and cannot understand the mass slaughter, which amounts to 3.6 million or more a year.

As the last kangaroos die, a handful of locals gather near the site to celebrate the "success"

of the cull with a banner inviting those passing to a barbeque of "roo steaks."

On site, across from the killing, a small group of protestors gather outside the perimeter

fence that looms above them, the barbed wire curled in a tight roll on top. The regulars come

every day. They take up positions along the fence long. Some bring binoculars, others cameras

of varying shapes and sizes. They have come to watch, to bear witness to the killing as it

unfolds. To bear witness so it is not forgotten. The silence is punctuated with the shrill

screams of those who are powerless to stop the killing. A man wipes his eyes with the cuff of

his jacket. Another, a real estate agent, distraught, coughs up blood as he screams himself

hoarse at the killers.

The machine is relentless.

Most of the killing now happens in the late afternoon, as close to dusk as possible. Those in

charge realise that most onlookers, including the press, go home by four pm. The images have

made national and international news so the killing takes place as late as possible in the day. A

few remain to watch the final roundup of the day. The kangaroos try to avoid running into the

killing arena now. Two run headlong into a metal pole that had been left standing in the

middle of the holding paddock in a valiant attempt to avoid being herded into the killing arena,

they fall to the ground, limbs awry. Panic, as the mob madly mills around, desperate to avoid

the entrance. Some flee to the outer perimeter looking for a way out.

Protestors camp at the front entrance of the Naval Station. An informal roster has been set

up in a caravan by Animal Liberation ACT. Most days the local hoons drive past the entrance

to the base screaming abuse at those who sit there. Occasionally interested individuals call in

to show their support for the kangaroos. A handful of visitors arrive, having driven from

Sydney; a mother and child; a retired barrister, an academic, some university students, and

wildlife carers from central Victoria. A delegation of indigenous people has tried to enter the

site, only to be arrested. A tense stand-off has been building between protestors and security

guards; and those that come and go from the site. By five oclock in the evening tempers begin

to flare. Two government four wheel drive vehicles approach the gate. They have finished

killing for the day and it is time to go home. But the protestors refuse their exit. It is the least

they can do. The guards move forward to push the protestors back. Scuffles break out as the

first of the vehicles attempts to move out of the compound. Protestors start banging on the

doors, the bonnet, the roof.

Protestors jump in front of the vehicle screaming "murderers!" at those who nervously

smile back at them. The new faces of execution, not wizened kangaroo shooters, but young

fresh-faced twenty-somethings, female, with the collars of their ranger uniforms neatly folded

over the neck of their jumpers. One turns and grins. Guards grab protestors and wrestle them

from the vehicle. Someone screams through a megaphone into the side window. The trucks

reverse and park in the shadows. The police are called. An arrest is made: Carol Drew is

charged with discharging a missle into Commonwealth Territory - to wit, a stone. A difficult

silence. Hidden conversations between the police and the rangers. The protestors huddle

around a small fire preparing themselves for the next confrontation. The engines are turned

over and the vehicles go back into the compound. They have been forced to leave by the back

gate. A small victory for the protestors. Although nothing will stop the killing now.

Dave has driven to the site from Melbourne. He will camp in his old four wheel drive near

the site, he says. Surveying the empty surrounding paddocks, the surviving kangaroos lying in

the tunnel, exhausted, to be killed tomorrow, he asks a photographer: "Where are all the

protestors camped?" He observes a few young joeys banded together in a small group.

Motherless. An ex-Navy man, now in his early forties, he has changed since his younger days.

Once there was a time when animals never entered into his awareness. Like others, life was all

about work and money, perhaps a chance at intimacy with someone. But a chance meeting

with a wildlife rescuer changed that. "Go," he was told, "and see if you can help in some way."

"Where are all the protestors? Where are we camped?" he asks.

"Theres no one left," comes the reply, "Only you and I."

"But theyre our national symbol!" He gestures at the nearby houses clustered on

surrounding hills. "Why havent they stood up for them?"

That night Dave checks on the joeys before he sets off for a meal at a nearby cafe and to

look up a friend.

In the darkness, the young kangaroos huddle together in the cold night air. The grass, stiff

with frost, crunches underfoot.

Four hours later, when Dave returns, the joeys have gone. All that is left is a tight circle of

trucks, headlights still on, pointing inwards, at nothing but bare ground.

On a Thursday, one week and four days after it started, the killing finally comes to an end.

Contracted security guards have helped round up the remaining, increasingly recalcitrant

kangaroos, for execution. It had become a game for the guards, yahooing and chasing the

eastern greys into the death circle.

Five hundred and fourteen animals are dead, packed into refrigerator trucks. They are to be

buried in a deep pit and a secret location at a local military base. The RSPCA announces that

they are convinced the "cull" was "humane."

About twenty five survivors have managed to escape execution and now graze in the empty

paddocks. Another mob of about thirty kangaroos with coloured collars around their necks

stand disconcertingly in the holding area, now rendered a dustbowl by the contractors and the

security guards. No word from the scientists of the vulnerable species now.

The experimental kangaroos have been randomly selected to take part in a research project

investigating methods of population control. This group have been sterilised. A young female

lowers herself groggily to the ground; she appears unwell. The others flick their ears as they

nibble on the grass near their feet, every now and then raising their heads to stare through the

fence. A few individuals are dotted across the rust coloured paddocks. A large, tall, male

stands fully upright, watching, his ears pricked. A protestor saw the kangaroo leap above a

four wheel drive with headlights blazing as contractors attempted to corner and dart him. He

listens for the roar of more four wheel drives, but the contractors have gone.

Down by the waters edge, among the weeping branches of the old willow trees from early

settlement, two old large male kangaroos stand together in quiet comradeship. Otherwise it is

empty, tall grass still pressed flat where their fellows rested with their families a week ago.

Down by the waters edge the grass is now starting to die, fading from green, to white, then

flattening out on the ground. The reeds around the edge of the lake, brown, and die. The last

few leaves of the European willow waft, and fall. The tall eucalypts are silent. The land, once

alive, is now dying. It pays a final tribute to the kangaroos that once lived there.

Down by the waters edge the two old males, strain their ears forward, flickering them

occasionally as if some sound has caught their attention. Then, once more, they stare through

the fence that has imprisoned them, turn, and slip quietly through their landscape out of sight.

Within weeks, a clean-up crew will have shot these refugees as well. Defence later

announces that the soil at the base has been poisoned for years but now 19,000 tonnes of toxic

waste -and kangaroos - have been removed the area can now be subdivided.

Post Script

The Canberra Times, Thursday April 30, 2009: "Defence land now clean' and available for

housing."

Works Cited Arthur Georges, Australian Science Media Centre, Science Blog. 17 Mar. 2008.

www.aussmc.org/ScienceBlog17March08.php (30 Apr. 2009)

Gordon Griggs, Australian Science Media Centre, Science Blog. 18 Mar. 2008.

www.aussmc.org/ScienceBlog18March08.php (30 Apr. 2009)