Men who stare at feral goats

Fish and crays and right hand breaks
Are marvelous to see
But the wonders of the north-west coast
Extend beyond the sea

Many rare and special plants
As hardy as can be
Stabilised the coastal dunes
And grew right to the sea

But the coastal dunes were hammered hard
By feral goats and sheep
And the awful damage these have done
Would make a strong man weep

The blasted sheep are bad enough
But with the feral goat
If these are not soon all gone
We will have missed the boat

The coast north of Carnarvon is spectacular. White spray towers up red cliffs battered by massive blue waves and sheltered coral lagoons teem with fish and crays. This is the home of the Blow Holes, the legendary right hand breaks of Red Bluff and spectacular mass gatherings of sharks and whales. Tourists, surfers and fishermen come in their droves but few take much notice of the land and its degradation.

The low, grey coastal flora is at first sight uninspiring but if you look closer and you will be amazed at the diversity and particularly in winter when everlasting daisies light up the landscape in a blaze of native colour. Here too, if you are lucky, you may see Tyler’s Chocolate Lilly that I discovered in 1981 nestling in the dunes. This is the land that supported the coastal Baiyungu people for millennia. Here in abundance, for those who know, is food, medicine and tools. Unfortunately most of those who know are gone and this marvelous ecosystem is being trashed by sheep and invasive Buffel Grass introduced by the pastoralists. Are these fragile dunes really sustainable sheep pasture? We know they are not and just one look at the plummeting carrying capacity over the past century underscores this point. Much of the saltbush that sustained the sheep in the early days is long gone but the sheep herders continue to ply their unprofitable trade and sustain themselves on the back of tourism and the husbandry of feral goats. It is a terrible irony that the attraction of tourists to this marvelous coast is allowing the destruction of the coastal ecosystem by sheep to continue.

And worse than the sheep are the feral goats also husbanded by the pastoralists. Commercialising vermin never works. All it does is exacerbate land degradation. The pastoralists unconvincingly argue that their commercial harvesting of feral goats keeps the population at sustainable levels when blind Freddy can see that the active farming of goats is destroying the country.

Wouldn’t it be marvelous to see the Ningaloo Marine Park extended southwards to the Blowholes and including the fragile coastal strip. With sheep and feral goats gone the land could begin the slow road to recovery and our marvelous natural heritage would be accessible to all Australians.