The Rat and the Camel
I started the week reporting on how two participants in the reality show, 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here,' were facing criminal charges for allegedly killing a rodent and then using it as the main ingredient in a rat risotto. I've finished it filing despatches on the emergency camel cull in the Northern Territory, where some 3,000 animals have been shot and left to decay in the dust of Australia's red centre.
Obviously, it's tempting to conflate the two stories. With the first, Australian officialdom came to the belated defence of a solitary rat because they alleged it had been killed for the purpose of entertainment, which violates its code of conduct. With the second, the cull of thousands of camels was officially-sanctioned by the government of the Northern Territory. In one, Australian officialdom played the role of animal defender. In the other, it adopted the role of animal slayer.
Regular readers of this blog know that I am the correspondent who came to Australia vowing to steer clear of animal-related stories, but who happened to touch down in the week that the 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin was killed by a stringray. And ever since, I've ended up breaching the no animal doctrine on numerous occasions.
Some are daft. Some are crowd-pleasers (just about the easiest way to get lots of hits on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú website is to put up an Aussie animal story on the front page). Some take you down the most unusual of journalistic pathways. Not so long ago, I had to field a question about Koala chlamydia on the World Service. And some are genuinely intriguing and newsworthy.
The Docker River camel cull falls into that last category, because this remote outback community was being terrorised by camels, according to the locals. At dusk, hundreds of camels would come into the settlement in search of water, intruding into peoples' homes and even learning the trick of pushing over fire hydrants to get access to a fountain of water. This week the camels were herded by helicopter onto a patch of land outside of Docker River and gunned down.
Animal welfare groups have said the authorities were being trigger happy. But the Northern Territory argued that so severe had the problem become that it had no other option.
What always strikes me about these stories is the vast difference between the coverage they get in Australia and the headlines they generate abroad. The rat risotto was the front page splash on Sunday in the News of the World, Britain's most read newspaper. Similarly, the Docker River camel cull story was the 'most watched' news piece on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú website. That day, I had to look hard to find the story on the ABC Northern Territory website, ditto the Northern Territory News website, which is normally a treasure of animal stories.
I guess the dichotomy is fairly easily explained. Animal culls have long been a fixture of Australian life - vehemently opposed by animal welfare groups for sure, but hardly out of the ordinary. Not even appearing on the country's coat of arms offers any immunity, for millions of kangaroos are slaughtered every year.
So is it simply the case that the Australia bush and outback can be hostile environments, and that tough measures have to be taken against feral animals to prevent them becoming even more so? Or is there a 'cull culture' which goes too far?
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