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When rabbits started to invade W.A. from the Eastern States (where they had originally been released by Thomas Austin in 1859), it was feared that farming land would be ruined by the pests and so a fence was constructed from near Starvation Bay on the south coast all the way across the state to Eighty Mile Beach on the north coast. Construction started in 1902 and the first fence was complete by 1907. At 1,832 kilometres long this is the longest fence in the world.
Before the fence had been completed the rabbits had already gone past it so a second fence was built from Point Ann on the south coast to Cunderdin, and Yalgoo before joining up with the first fence.
This was another failure as the rabbits had gone further west and a third fence was built, all to no avail as the enterprising bunnies had already gone past it.
Rabbits were a two edged sword, on one hand they were a very destructive pest that caused erosion and destroyed food crops, on the other hand they were a great food source for people on the land during the Great Depression in the 1930s and they were locally called 'underground mutton'.
It was not until the development and release of rabbit diseases that rabbit numbers came under some sort of control. Even so the rabbit is very adaptable and those individuals that are resistant to disease quickly built up the population again and they can still be seen all over the state but not in the huge numbers they once were.
The world’s longest fence has been both friend and foe to the settlers as it was a useful landmark if someone was lost, but an awful nuisance if it lay between your property and a nearby waterhole as many people had to travel miles extra to pass through one of the gates. |
