The Rabbits!
Rabbits in Australia, they’re absolutely everywhere but they’re not from here. Like most of us and most other things now in Australia, rabbits are here because of colonisation.
The colonisation of this continent has caused incredible dispossession, destruction, desecration, and genocide. We are yet to reckon with the realities of this history, and the deep destruction that the brutal colonisation of this continent has caused. Destruction like introducing rabbits into Australia just for a laugh.
In 1859 wild European rabbits were introduced to Australia. They were only introduced so that the colonising settlers could shoot them for fun. That’s the only reason. The colonisers wanted to shoot them.
On 25 December 1859, Thomas Austin, a coloniser, gave this continent the worst Christmas present ever. Austin released 13 European wild rabbits on his estate, Barwon Park, in Winchelsea, Victoria. The rabbits had been specially collected for him by his family in England. By 1866 hunters had bagged 14,000 rabbits on Austin’s estate alone.
Within 50 years, rabbits had spread almost across the entire continent devastating the unique flora, fauna, and landscapes of this ancient, beautiful place. For rabbits to spread across the whole of Britain took 700 years, while in Australia they took over an area 25 times larger than Britain in only 50 years. According to the National Museum of Australia, the rate of the spread of rabbits across the continent is the fastest colonising mammal anywhere in the world. Second after humans, I imagine.
There have been many methods tried to eradicate the rabbits from Australia. Rabbits were trapped, fumigated, and hunted. Fences were erected across the continent. It’s estimated that at the height of the fence-building boom, 320,000 kilometres of rabbit proof fencing had been built across Australia. That’s almost as long as building a fence from Australia to the moon.
By the 1940s it was estimated there were over 600 million rabbits in Australia.
Australia even developed two viruses to kill the rabbits. First myxomatosis which killed hundreds of thousands of them very quickly, until the rabbits developed a resistance to it. That’s when calicivirus was released in 1995 and the rabbits developed a resistance to that too.
The effect of rabbits on this continent has been catastrophic and devastating. To think they were only released so bored, rich, white settlers could shoot them for fun.
A lorry-load of rabbits. Source: National Museum of Australia
