Toad Media
720 ABC Perth
Tim Winton shelves book for cane toads
Saturday, 4 June 2005
Presenter: Marshall Martin
Tim Winton's not writing at the moment. One of Australia's most
acclaimed novelists is giving all his time to a campaign to keep
cane toads out of WA.
The cane toad. And looks aren't everything.
The cane toad's initial threat is to WA's north. Winton has spent
time there and spoken to the people of the Kimberley. "It's
a struggle to imagine what it would be like with cane toads,"
he says, "...just massive local extinctions of native animals,
total loss of bush tucker."
Already cane toads are at Kakadu, 300km away from the Kununurra
wetlands. Scientists are suggesting that it'll take them merely
this wet season or the following one to bridge the distance. "It
really is a quarantine emergency," warns the writer.
And he brings the message home to people feeling comfortable in
WA's southern parts - "Once they (cane toads) get down into
everybody's place at Eagle Bay, and the Leeuwin Concert and people
are spreading their blankets out and there's toads about them, and
people are having the Skyshow and there's toads on the Perth foreshore,
it'll be too late...it could be beautiful one day, Queensland the
next."
Winton wants immediate action: "Let's not just sit down and
watch these things come across," he urges. "It's almost
like Vichy France, you know, 'oh the Germans they're not going to
be that bad - that's alright - the trains will run on time'."
Tim Winton does suggest a possible solution. "Trapping is
the go I think," he ventures. He refers to a cage developed
by Frogwatch in the Northern Territory. "It's just a steel
mesh cage with a solar panel on it and a fluoro light. At night
the fluoro light brings the bugs around."
As Tim describes it, the bugs attract the cane toads into the cage.
They can't get out. There's a bowl of water inside the cage, and
Winton reckons that the toads can even get fatter whilst being kept
captive until collection.
And the cost? "At the moment," explains our guest, "they're
coming down from about $300 towards $200...so for $1.5million you
could get ten teams of people out there in the Victoria River region
of the Northern Territory, working for three months during that
period (September to November) trapping and monitoring."
He puts it all in military terms "You're getting basically
a Maginot Line, if you like, against the toad. There's no guarantee
it'll work, but it's a damn side better than what's been done before,
which is nothing."
Fans of literature may wonder if Tim Winton has a current writing
project on the go, between talking Maginot lines and cane toads.
The answer is no. "I did have a current writing project on
the go. I was writing a novel, but it's sort of had to be put on
hold until this toad thing is got out of the way...this is what
I do all day and all night," he says. "I've been doing
that since March."
"If we can excite the government into action quick enough,
you know, the faster we do that, the faster I'll get back to my
real job, and I can spare you all a sermon on amphibia."
"I'd rather be home writing books," concludes Winton,
...but here I am. What's the alternative? This time next year it
could be all over. Some things are just more important than your
privacy and a little bit of comfort."
Tim Winton, writer
( Audio
in RealMedia format )
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