New settlers landing in Australia for the first time found a very strange land indeed: the trees shed their bark and not their leaves; the swans were black; it was warmer in the hills; some mammals laid eggs while others raised their young in pouches. Nostalgia for the home country could be strong, and so the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria was formed in 1861. Its purpose was to encourage the importing of animals because the local varieties seemed deficient, but also to make the place feel a little more like England. One of the society’s members was Thomas Austin, who introduced twelve rabbits to his estate in Victoria. ‘The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting,’ he said.
He was wrong about the harm. In less than a decade, the plague of rabbits had spread across Victoria and South Australia and into Western Australia, fundamentally altering the ecosystem as they went. They competed with similar-sized marsupials for food, destroyed perennial grasses, evicted burrowing animals from their underground homes, destroyed crops, and eroded pastures. In 1901, the Western Australian Government decided to fence off the whole State to protect its prized agricultural areas. It took six years, with work gangs of up to 400 men making posts from timber found along the way, digging a trench so that the distinctive hexagonal wire mesh could extend underground. The rabbit-proof fence was 1827 kilometres long when it was finished, and the longest fence in the world.
But they were too late. Colonies of rabbits were already inside the fence, so they built another one. Fence number two starts at Point Anne, just east of Bremer Bay, and runs through the eastern Wheatbelt to join fence number one near Cue.