The Dingo Fence

The Dog Fence, the worlds longest fence.

The Dingo Fence or Dog Fence is a pest-exclusion fence that was built across the south east corner of Australia during the 1880s and finished in 1885. Originally purposed and built as a rabbit proof fence which proved unsuccessful, it was however well suited to keeping out feral pigs, brumbies, kangaroos and emus. In 1914 it was converted into a dog-proof fence to keep dingoes out of the relatively fertile south-east part of the continent in order to protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland, New South Wales and South Eastern South Australia. By 1914 dingoes and wild dogs had largely been exterminated throughout the south east.

It is one of the longest structures on the planet, and the world's longest fence. It traverses a sometimes tortuous path through the outback and stretches in total some 5,500 kilometres from Jimbour on the Darling Downs near Dalby through thousands of miles of arid outback country to the Great Australian Bight ending on a high bluff at Nundroo. Estimates of the total length of the fence vary with the consensus being somewhere between 5,200 and 5,600 kilometres total length.

The fence in Queensland is also known as the Barrier Fence or Wild Dog Barrier Fence and stretches some 2,500 kilometres. It is administered by the Department of Natural Resources and Water.

It joins the Border Fence in New South Wales, where it stretches for 584km along Latitude 29. The fence passes the point where the three states of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia meet (Cameron's corner), where there is a brass plate on the survey monument. It is known as the Dog Fence in South Australia, where it continues a twisting course towards the ocean over another 2,500 odd kilometers.

The fence is 180cm high made of wire mesh, and extends for 30 - 50cm underground. The fence line on both sides is cleared to a 5m width. Star pickets are spaced every 9m. The wire strainers are joined with Gripples.

Sheep and cattle stations in Australia protected by the fence are often very large. While varying in size, some of these stations can be larger than some small European countries. Prior to the completion of the fence, one station alone in South Australia lost over 11,000 sheep in a year due to dingo attacks. As recently as 1991, there were reported losses on one station of 3000 sheep in a single year. Sheep farmers have fought back by using poisoning, shooting, and eventually constructing the longest fence in the world. Aerial 1080 poison bait drops are still used today.

Parts of the Dingo Fence are lit at night by 86 mm (3.4 in) cold cathode fluorescent lamps which are alternately red and white. They are powered by long life batteries which are charged by photovoltaic cells during the day. A series of gates allow vehicles to pass through the fence.

Although it is only 1.8 metres (6 feet) tall, you can make out the path of the fence across Australia due to the presence of maintenance tracks which run along both sides using google earth. A good place to pick up the fence easily using google earth is  Cameron’s corner  where the Dingo fence joins the tri-border of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

Despite the fence’s age it has never been officially surveyed, so an exact path is hard to pin down. Google Earth Forum user A185F has created a placemark file which gives you a rough idea of the fence’s route and its enormous scale.

The Dingo is a survivor and the top of the food chain in the Australian outback. Believed to have been introduced some 5,000 years ago they dominate as a predator and scavenger throughout their range. Today, dingoes are legally classified as vermin and carry a bounty of $20 AUS a head. Rewards for dingoes caught on the inside (southeast) of the fence can be upwards of $500 AUS.

Although the fence has helped reduce the loss of sheep to predators, the exclusion of these predators has allowed for increased pasture competition from rabbits, kangaroos and emus. The use of poison is a common practice in Australia by lacing waterholes with chemicals. There is strong evidence that shows kangaroo and emu numbers are lower outside the fence, but this could be related to the reduced amount of man made water sources outside the fence as much as to the fences exclusion of the dogs.

Today, the rate at which feral camel are smashing down sections of the fence is fast increasing in Southern Australia. Plans for restructuring the Dog fence to be taller and electric are being considered.

Camping and Fishing on the Darling River

Our Christmas Trip "Up the River"

Our neighbours over the lane, the Bessell family, often go away to the Darling River to camp and fish and we decided to join them and head up for the week ourselves. This summer the weather has been surprisingly mild so  it was an ideal time to enjoy a visit to the river and the Menindee lakes.

After a few evenings work rearranging the back of the trusty Landrover Defender 130 I was all set. I built myself a camp kitchen with gas cooking and running water and also put a bunk deck system into the back of the Ute so we had options on where to sleep depending on the weather. 

Rather than camp in a traditional tent we set up a mosquito tent which is screen on all four sides with a roof area overhead. This proved to be the ideal outback "tent" as it allowed ample room for all our kitchen gear, fishing gear and bedding and was very quick and easy to erect and pull down. The cool breeze at night through the screening was great.

Many people in the outback use swags to bed down with but they do have a couple of disadvantages. You can't cook and eat in them away from the flies, the mattress is at best only 60mm thick and they can feel stuffy and restrictive on a hot night, even with the best ventilation arrangement. Of course if it rains really hard and sideways, the mozzie tent is next to useless, so the bunk setup in the back of the Ute was the fallback plan.

The camp kitchen was modelled on the brilliant designs of Luke from Drifta kitchens based in Gloucester NSW. I would suggest you take a look at Luke's website for some great camping ideas. http://www.drifta.com.au/  I would have purchased one of these myself but the idea was too close to the trip and the kitchen would not have been freighted out in time for the trip. Having purchased all the materials and spent the time building one myself I can happily say Luke's pricing is very reasonable indeed.

We left Broken Hill at around 2am and stopped on the way to Menindee to drop some yabbie nets in a friendly Cockie's stock dam. Sadly the yabbies were not there in the numbers we expected so we hit the road again. Bessell nailed a pair of 'roo's with the bullbar once we were back on the highway. Kangaroos are a real hazard when night driving in the outback, the best advice is to brake firmly and stay straight, swerving madly to avoid hitting a 'roo can easily get you down onto the soft shoulder of the road and result in a rollover. The best bet is to have good driving lights, back off every time you see anything remotely the shape of a 'roo near the road and stay straight. As it turned out is was pretty quite on the yabbie front for the entire week, we dropped nets in the Darling river, Lake Pamarmaroo and Lake Wetherell. We did get some yabbies and shrimp, enough for bait but not enough for a big boil up feed.

The Darling river was the highest I'd ever seen it and had a discernible flow as the water authority had opened the valve at the Block Dam to allow water to run into the river downstream of Lake Pamarmaroo.

Our usual camping spot, a rare flat sand bar on the river was 3/4 under water when we arrived and by the time we left was completely submerged. This made launching and retrieving the boat interesting as the banks of the Darling are quite steep all through this region. If you look over young Bessell's shoulder in this photo of a nice Golden Perch he landed you can see the angle of the bank clearly. This is the way the banks are for many miles along the river.

Although the yabbies and shrimp just weren't around in numbers like we'd expected the fish certainly were. I suspect the lower than usual water temperatures for this time of year and the good rains and flows through the system all this year have the yabbies dispersed into areas we just didn't get to. The Perch were fighting fit and in good condition with all of us pretty much catching our bag limit each day from the boat or banks.

As usual the Carp were a pain in the ass and prolific everywhere we went. The best Golden Perch landed for the trip was about 5 pounds on the old scale and was a good fish indeed. The bulk of the catch were around 2-3 pounds and fairly lean compared to impoundment fish like those caught in Windermere Dam near Mudgee. What the Perch gave up in size they made up for in fight and taste with many fish fried up or cooked in foil on the campfire coals and gobbled up straight from the river.

I took a small folding solar panel along on this trip and it came in really handy for charging up all our 12 volt lights, phones and batteries during our stay. A larger set of panels, a deep cycle battery and a 12 volt freezer would be a useful addition to my camping kit for the future. I took more gear this trip than ever before and mostly it was useful and worth the space. As usual I took way too much food and not enough cold drinks. Bessell took too much beer. I was really glad I quit drinking 16 years ago when I saw how crook he was the first morning out in the boat fishing in the hot sun on the river. He had lost his Akubra hat the previous night and was in a sorry state indeed. He ended up throwing up over the side while we all laughed our heads off and stirred him up relentlessly. It didn't stop him catching a bag limit though, being raised on the river he really out fished me in every situation on the Darling. His brother was equally as skillful in hooking the wily Perch. After a couple of days practise I got into the swing of things and landed some nice scrappy little Golden Perch. The Carp I caught were mercilessly dispatched by the young bloke, it is best not to return carp to the river, they are an introduced species and a pest, they compete directly with native fishes over habitat and food.

I have spent too many years catching large fish from the surf rocks and beaches where the fish literally smash the bait or lure and hook themselves with little if any effort required by the angler apart from good gear, bait and rigging decisions. A bait or lure in the right place with a natural presentation generally results in a solid hookup. The perch require a real finesse to get a hookup with local knowledge beating broader experiences on locations and species hands down. I was literally ignoring bites that I thought were just tiddler bait fish picking at my bait but which were in fact good Perch biting. This went on for a couple of days till I twigged. Even once I knew the deal, I had countless missed strikes and many fish that I did hook managed to get free by running into the cover of the fallen trees we were fishing in and wrapping my line up in a tangle in about 3 seconds flat. I fished for an average of two hours for every fish I landed, Bessell averaged about ten minutes per fish.

The young bloke landed his first Darling River Golden Perch on our last day on the river completely unassisted, I was up the bank fetching a cold drink. Needless to say he was pretty chuffed. We had already packed up the Defender at this stage, planning to leave after dinner. We knew solid rain was coming according to the reports and it had already sprinkled a bit the previous night and that morning. I winched the boat and trailer up the steep bank for Bessell just in case, after he had described to me how quickly the dry clay banks could turn into a mud slide quagmire if we got ten or twenty millimetres of rain. No sooner we got the boat up onto the flat then down it came hard. It teemed straight down for about half an hour and we were all in a mad scramble packing up. The formerly dry flat ground on top of the bank turned into a slippery sticky thick mud in minutes. My thongs weighed 2KG each and the mud was easily 100mm deep, luckily it backed off for long enough for us to finish packing. Not long after that we left in a convoy of 5 vehicles to slip and slide our way along the track off the floodplain and back to the far more stable red sand access road to the highway.

The "real" off road vehicles, including a 100 series cruiser, a Triton Ute towing the boat and my Deefer had no drama's at all with the clay track, but one of the smaller SUV type 4WD's got into real trouble, the mud was so thick and sticky the vehicles rear wheel arches soon became completely packed with clay and so the additional clay being lifted up by the rear wheels had nowhere to go. The rear quarter panels of the vehicle were being bent and forced outward. When we hit the sand road it took half an hour with a long handled shovel to remove enough of the compacted clay so the suspension and brakes could even function again. The vehicle could not do more than 40Km's an hour without bad rear end vibration and had to have the wheels removed and all the clay washed and scraped out before it could be driven on the highway.

Bessells Quintrex 3.85m boat with the Honda 30 four stroke outboard motor performed flawlessly for the entire week and although small and light it comfortably accommodates four people and all their gear for fishing up and down the river. When we got home to Broken  Hill the boat was half full of water and even had a couple of yabbies swimming around in the back amongst all the gear that had been hurriedly stacked into the boat during the downpour pack up. The only thing this great little boat lacks is a folding sun awning.

The small depth sounder was very useful enabling Bessell to put us over the deep snags where the fish were gathered with considerable accuracy.

Everything was wet and muddied and had to be washed and dryed out in the sun before it could be packed up ready for the next trip. It was pure luck that I managed to be fully packed up before the downpour as it was an unusual way for the rain to start, high grey cover with some drizzles that suddenly opened up with no noticeable front or change in the breeze. Normally in the outback you can see a solid storm front approaching from 100's of kilometers away and you get ample time to get your gear under cover or packed up. Many times a storm front will arrive with a dust storm and hard winds, thunder and lightning before the first drops even fall. When it does rain out here it rains hard generally, the ground often flash floods while it is teeming down and then an hour or so later it's all over as the storm moves through heading east and the water all just disappears.

We saw a lot of different species of birds and waterfowl during the week. Plenty of insects, ants, spiders and bugs. The mozzies and flies were light at worst which was great. Lots of kangaroos, a few emus, goannas, goats, a couple of rabbits and one drowned feral pig caught in a fallen tree snag on the river. Snakes were notorious only by their absence in general but no doubt they were around. The spider pictured here is what is locally referred to as a wolf spider and was a good size as you can see. In general the whole area was teeming with life and looked healthy and green. This was a huge change from my previous trip to the river a few years ago when it was very low and the land was dead and dusty with nothing moving apart from a billion flies in the dead dusty heat.

If you are planning a trip out to the Menindee lakes choose the season carefully and make some enquires about the state of the catchment and river, a trip to this region in a good season is a visit to an outback eden well worth the effort. A good site about the region is: http://www.menindeelakes.com All said and done this was a great week up the river and I'm looking forward to heading back again soon. The temperature never got above 35 degrees and although it was more humid than normal for the outback our campsite was shady and well placed to take advantage of the breeze. The kids all had fun playing around with the camp fire and swimming in the river and all us oldies got to forget about work for a while.

Mike's Top 15 Aussie Songs

Welcome to the Top 15 Aussie Songs page

Looking at the music of Australia and listing only 15 to go into a best of type list is bloody hard work.

These 15 were shortlisted from a list of over 60 great Australian tracks and no doubt some of you will suggest that some of those (or other) songs should have been given a top 15 spot.

Well I had to draw a line so here is the final list: Top 15 Aussie Songs!

Top 15 Aussie songs

 15 You're the voice - John Farnham

14 Reckless (don't be so) - Australian Crawl

13 What's my scene - Hoodoo Gurus

12 Holy grail - Hunters & Collectors

11 Take me back - Noiseworks

10 Need you tonight - INXS

9 Thunderstruck - AC/DC

8 Sounds of then (this is Australia) - GANGgajang

7 Beds are burning - Midnight Oil

6 Am I ever gonna see your face again - The Angels

5 You shook me all night long - AC/DC

4 Working class man - Cold Chisel

3 Great southern land - Icehouse

2 Downunder - Men At Work

1 Khe Sahn - Cold Chisel

A short 4WD trip around Broken Hill

A visit to Daydream Mine

This afternoon was very mild as far as temperatures normally go for this time of year, so after work and school my son and I decided to take a trip out of town to explore some of the tracks up around Stephens Creek catchment in the rugged hills of the Barrier Ranges. We ended up out at the abandoned settlement from the late 1800's known as Daydream mine. I amazes me how industrious these men were, that's a full blown smelter built up on the hill there and the black piles about halfway up the hill are massive mullock heaps. There is no permanent water supply here at all. They had to have been tough as nails to live and work out here in the barren ranges.

We've had a lot of rain, more than I've ever seen since we moved here to Broken Hill 5 or 6 years ago and the desert was green with good pasture as far as the eye could see. Even though there has been a great amount of rain this year Stephens Creek and all it's feeder creeks were all bone dry, the water just flash floods through these watercourses then disappears into the ground about the same time the rain stops.

The trip out and back with a bit of side track exploration included took us around 4 hours and we negotiated around forty dry soft sand creek crossings in total, along with some sections of badly water eroded track. There are scattered rocky outcrops up in these hills and we checked a few out finding quartz, mica, galena and other minerals just lying around all over the place. There was one particular spot I intend to head back too and check over with a metal detector as it had the look of classic Hill End or Sofala gold bearing creek eroded hillside.

As we were making our way back down to the Creek valley we spotted a feisty Stumpy Tail Lizard who wasn't keen on giving up his late afternoon sunning spot on the track to the Land Rover. We also saw flocks of Galahs, a large mob of Roos, a few scattered Emus including one hen with three chicks in tow, a couple of good size Feral Goat herds, one lonely rabbit and one cunning little fox who did not hang around much.

We didn't spot a single snake which surprised me for this time of year. The sheep on the station country were healthy and fat with lots of grown lambs amongst them.