David John Daniel

A Tassie Devil in the Top End David John Daniel

Corrugations, crocs, coral, cyclones, cannibals and Cape Crutch Rot provide a lighter look at the adventures, misadventures, hazards and hiccups, along with the serious undertones, of keeping Australia's animals and plants free from the ravages of exotic diseases and pests. To most people Cape York and the Torres Strait are places at the top end of Australia, remote and mostly unknown. To me they became special places steeped in history and intrigue and full of characters as wild and woolly as their surrounding landscapes and seascapes. These landscapes are still untamed, beautiful, seductive, alarming, compelling, tantalizing and fearsome, dotted with remote Aboriginal and Islander communities, cattle stations, mining camps, barra, reef, prawn and crab boats. My role was to institute programs to keep out threatening and close by exotic diseases and pests of animals and plants. Things like: foot and mouth disease, rabies, screw worm fly along with citrus canker, black sigatoka of bananas and the Giant African Snail. It was a challenge... Australia's export markets depended on being disease free and that depended on bonding with a wonderfully individualistic mob of characters who populated the remote north. Early detection and action meant everything and I had to convince them ... the cattlemen and women, fishermen and women, miners, bush nurses, yachties, hippies, hermits and other bush battlers. My old boss with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries had told me to 'walk the beaches' and I took him at his word. I did and loved every minute ... I had the best job in the world! Not long back from the agony of the South Vietnam war I also needed the space and time for contemplation and reflection and worthwhile task to get my teeth into.