Toad Warriors

The Age

Saturday January 26, 2008

Mark Dapin

Having conquered the Top End, cane toads are on the hop again and spreading towards Western Australia. Who are the sandgropers gonna call? Mark Dapin joins the military-style recruits being deployed to repel the ugly invaders.

The poster in the arrivals lounge of Kununurra's tiny airport begs: "Help us fight an alien invasion." Its typeface bubbles with warty menace. From the corner of the page stretches the splayed foot of a cane toad.

"In the movies, the aliens are always from another planet," reads the text. "But WA is facing an invasion from a creature that is alien to Australia."

It goes on to tell the familiar story of the giant toad introduced to Queensland from Hawaii in June 1935, to fight a pest on the sugar crop: the cane beetle. One hundred and two toads came by ship to Gordonvale, Queensland. They bred enthusiastically and two months later, when they were released in sugar-growing areas, they numbered 3000. They ate moths, plants, lizards, frogs, fish, mice, household waste - virtually every small thing except the cane beetle, which lived either on the cane, where the toads could not reach it, or in fields without ground cover, where the toads had no reason to go.

The beetles were eventually controlled by pesticide, but eastern Australia is now home to 200 million wild cane toads. When threatened, the toads secrete a poison, bufotoxin, from sacs behind their eyes. Bufotoxin will kill most native animals, including the saltwater crocodile, and even the cane toad's eggs and tadpoles are poisonous. The toads are a menace to the ecosystem and a threat to biodiversity - two long words of comparatively recent origin and broadly accepted sanctity - and they are also quite ugly. Therefore, almost nobody likes them.

The toads have spread throughout coastal Queensland and the hinterland to northern NSW and Darwin. The poster hints at a specific inspiration for the toads' expansion. Ever since they arrived in Australia, "They've been moving steadily ... towards WA. And now they're almost here."

They have been chasing down the sandgropers all along!

Lee Scott-Virtue is a Kununurra archaeologist, specialising in Aboriginal rock art. She has an air of hygienic efficiency about her, like a ward sister in a teaching hospital. She and her partner, electrical contractor Dean Goodgame, became alarmed that toads in Kakadu had wiped out populations of the endangered northern quoll, decimated the number of large goannas, and killed crocodiles. They formed Kimberley Toadbusters, the Kununurra-based volunteer group, in 2005, while the toads were still hundreds of kilo-metres from the WA border, so that WA would be the first state to comprehensively organise against the invaders before they arrived.

Kimberley Toadbusters takes the fight to the toads, searching out and destroying breeding colonies in daring cross-border raids on the Northern Territory. The group claims 1700 members, although not all of them go out busting - some are involved in educational and support activities - and many live outside Kununurra. Commando teams bust every weekend and often on weeknights, too.

There is an odd tendency among busters to view the toads as a force that is as organised, disciplined and motivated as the busters.

"We're dealing with up to 10 major colonising movements," says Scott-Virtue, "all heading across to WA, determined to hit the border at several points."

Goodgame is away on a "men's weekend" at El Questro Wilderness Park, but he usually joins his wife on toadbusts. The pair met in 1999 and married in 2006. Like many women, Scott-Virtue cherishes sweet memories of her wedding night.

"We caught 777 toads," she says.

Was there a toadbusting weekend scheduled to clash with their marriage?

"No, there wasn't," she says. "We actually worked the whole marriage around our toadbusting. Dean and I had decided we wanted to have a commitment ceremony, and toadbusting has become such a focus of our lives that we thought it was really appropriate to do it catching toads.

"We did the whole ceremony up at Victoria River Roadhouse in NT, and all the toadbusters organised it. Roy and Theresa had actually set up a honeymoon suite for us - with a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne - which was really wasted because we toadbusted through most of the night."

And then ...?

"We were too bloody tired for that," she says.

Scott-Virtue has busted through two Christmases and two New Years. "I'm afraid we're all a bit addicted to it," she says. "When you go out to an area where the toads have just arrived, and you've got dead freshwater crocodiles everywhere and long- and short-necked turtles, and birds of prey are literally falling out of the sky - that keeps you motivated."

The toads take food from the native frogs. "They're unbelievably ferocious eaters," she says, as the toadbusters dig into buttered rolls, roast chicken and salad, at a lunch stop at Saddle Creek, just inside the NT border.

A large part of toadbusting - like most Australian bush excursions - seems to be eating. About a dozen of us set out from Kununurra an hour and a half ago, and we are already on our second helpings.

It is also the second time retirees Norma Glenn Wainwright and her husband, Bob, have been out looking for toads, but last Sunday they only busted one tadpole.

"So I've written a poem about my first toadbust," says Norma Glenn, alarmingly.

It turns out she is the author of verses such as The True Story of the Menopause and The Scourge of the Silent Fart, and also Scott-Virtue's aunt. Another woman, Val, is Scott-Virtue's mum. Anthony, who drives a trayback ute with quad bikes on the back, is Scott-Virtue's son.

"One of my sisters arrived from Perth on holiday," says Scott-Virtue, "and she was out toadbusting in a day."

Not related to Scott-Virtue is Juju Wilson, a Miriuwung-Gajerrong woman who is one of the area's traditional custodians and has been on every Kimberley Toadbusters bust.

"I don't like the cane toad in WA," she says. "The first time we done it, we seen some dead fish - like bream, barramundi - and goanna."

Wilson brings along her grandchildren and nephews "so when they grow up, they can teach their children to keep the place clean, so we don't have any dead goannas".

Today, she is with her son, Alphonse, 38, his girlfriend, and four local children: Domino, 14, Fire, 13, Colwyn, 8, and Tyrese, 4.

There are a few toadbusters with us who are part of neither the Scott-Virtue nor the Wilson families, including veteran buster Sharon McLachlan, and a couple of West Australian backpackers.

The toadbusters believe they are having an effect on toad numbers.

"As of about three weeks ago," says Scott-Virtue, "the tally is 128,038 large, mature toads taken out of the system."

"And the tadpole, don't forget," says Norma Glenn Wainwright.

After a long, dusty drive deeper into the Northern Territory, the toadbusters set up camp at Auvergne Station, a 400,000-hectare property owned by the Packer family's Consolidated Pastoral Company. Here, 100 kilometres from the WA border, is the toads' front line, and it seems they are deploying their special forces in their planned invasion of WA.

"There's something quite frightening about this new breed of toads that are making their way to the Kimberley," says Scott-Virtue. "They are bigger, they're faster, they breed better. They can swim in really quickly flowing water. They have grown longer legs, they can move greater distances in a shorter time.

"Those front-line colonisers just keep on moving, and they leave behind a certain number to continue breeding. There's some very sophisticated behaviour."

Before we get down to busting, we must, of course, have a barbie. The toadbusters fortify themselves with steaks, sausages and marinated chicken pieces, while I fiddle ineffectually with my tent. Juju Wilson's family set up camp about 50 metres from the rest of us, but we all come together to eat around the same campfire.

Auvergne Lagoon is one of the cane toads' major breeding areas: last year, the toadbusters pulled out 48,000 toads. They have not visited for a few weeks, but recent catches have only numbered about 400, so it appears the big busts do make a difference.

Toadbusting is satisfyingly heavy on equipment. As well as the quad bikes, Anthony's trayback carries cages, traps, canisters of carbon dioxide and several kits of torches.

"I'm gonna give you guys a radio," says Lee Scott-Virtue, handing me a two-way.

Now she's talking my language.

Juju Wilson says some indigenous people continue to hunt and fish at Auvergne Station for goanna, brolga, bush turkey and barramundi - even wallaby and kangaroo.

"The old people from the community still come out to get the billabong turtle," she says, "because they eat that. It's lovely."

She tries to explain to them that their traditional food sources are endangered, but most do not listen, and will not kill toads when they are out hunting.

"It's only me and my family," she says.

Wilson, a part-time tour guide, hopes to bring more visitors to the Kimberley.

"Tourists want to come out and see the place nice and clean," she says. "They don't want cane toads hopping around when they have their meal in the afternoon. If they get up to go out for a walk, they don't need to step on a cane toad."

That's going to happen to me tonight, isn't it?

"Yes," says Wilson.

"And you'll probably see your fair share of snakes," says Scott-Virtue.

Fantastic.

I have my radio, my torch, my gloves and my luminous safety vest. I am the Toad Terminator. Anthony and the backpackers have gone off on the quad bikes, surveying nearby lagoons for toad populations. Colwyn and Tyrese are given short-handled nets, and encouraged to trawl for tadpoles. In the early evening, it is also easy to spot metamorphs (the life-cycle stage between a tadpole and a juvenile toad): perfect, tiny replicas of toads, beautiful in their detail, like miniature sculptures in jade.

"They're gorgeous, aren't they?" says little Colwyn, who is swamped by his safety vest.

Scott-Virtue plucks the metamorphs from the bank, lays them on the ground and sprays them with Dettol. "Do they die?" asks Colwyn. "What for they die?" (They die in an efficient and humane manner, says Scott-Virtue later.)

The busting of adult toads does not begin until dusk, when the nocturnal creatures come out to mate. Everyone has their individual busting style. Anthony favours one-handed busting, because he works from the quad bike, with the other hand on the accelerator. He rides at about 2kmh, scooping up the toads as he goes.

Toadbusters on foot operate on a buddy system. One handles the torch, spotlights the quarry, and holds open the bag, while the other picks up the toads and drops them in.

We are divided into team A and team B. Predictably, I am in the B team.

Something less than military discipline prevails among the children. Colwyn, for instance, wears his net on his head. When we spot the first toad under a tree, Colwyn peels off his glove, gives it to me and commands, "Grab it!"

The toads move very slowly, if they move at all, but apparently they have recently become evasive. "When we first started toadbusting, the toads would go, 'Oh, hell-o!', and you'd pick them up very easily," says Scott-Virtue. "Now, in areas where we've busted consistently, their behaviour has changed completely."

However, it would still be difficult to characterise the appeal of toadbusting as the thrill of the chase. It is less like fox hunting, more like pulling weeds. At first, however, there are not many weeds around. We poke around in the dark, occasionally spotting a single toad sitting sentinel among the mangroves, scooping it, bagging it and moving on. Females are the prize catch. Every time we pluck one out, says Scott-Virtue, "That's 30,000 fewer eggs."

Although I am reluctant to touch the toads because they look kind of icky, I am

finally forced to take one from Scott-Virtue's hand. The captured toad looks up at me with John Howardy eyes, and promptly demonstrates the "trickle-down effect" so beloved by Liberal economists.

"It weed on you! It weed on you!" shout Colwyn and Domino.

In the first 15 minutes, we catch only five toads but, suddenly, our luck changes.

"They're coming out of the water!" calls Scott-Virtue, as if it were the Normandy landings. "There's another one! Look, guys, they're coming out of the water!"

Scores of toads break cover, and stage a suicidal dash for the banks of the lagoon. They almost bust themselves, as we fill our bags with passive prisoners.

Then Wilson calls, "Snake! Snake! Snake!", and points to a keelback, one of the few native snakes thought to be immune to bufotoxin.

"I hate that thing," says Colwyn, backing away.

"You're standing on my foot," says Sharon McLachlan.

"But I'm scared," says Colwyn. "I'll stand on someone else's foot, then," he declares, and comes and stands on mine.

During the course of the bust, I am gradually stripped of the symbols of my authority. Colwyn takes my torch, Domino commandeers the radio. Instead, I end up carrying Colwyn's tiny boots and the fishing net he was wearing on his head.

Colwyn's attitude to the cane toads changes completely in two hours, as he becomes a skilled and efficient buster. As the bust gains momentum, when he drops a toad into the bag, he warns, "Careful, big boy. Time to die!"

The bust ends about 11pm, when we return to our tents. in the morning, I wake up camped by a billabong, under the shade of no kind of tree. The toads wake up jammed inside large green sacks, which wriggle and jerk as if there were bound human bodies inside.

After breakfast, the busters pull the toads out of the bags, determine their sex, measure them and record the details. One bagged amphibian is bigger, slimier and uglier than all the rest. It turns out to be one of Domino's shoes.

From the green sacks, the toads are dropped into white bags, where they are gassed with carbon dioxide. It takes about a minute for each pulsing bag to fall still.

When the figures are toted up, the final tally is 226 toads busted. The largest animal was 14.5 centimetres long, the smallest seven centimetres. We got 110 females and 116 males. It is a much lower total than previous nights, which means the population has dwindled.

"Basically, I'm thrilled with the results," says Scott-Virtue, "because we've pretty much busted them. Our biggest drama now is going to be to get to the sites that are directly along the Victoria River in relationship to Bradshaw, because that's where the toads are coming in from, and we've somehow got to try to block any more colonising fronts coming though. The idea is to keep busting from the front, knocking them back, reducing toad biomass, but also busting from behind."

It echoes the strategy used by the Allies against the Nazis in World War II, with conventional forces engaging them at the front, while partisans harassed them from the rear.

There has been no shortage of recruits for militia-style actions against the toads, but - as is often the case - the actions of the irregulars have sometimes damaged the broader cause. In 2005, the then federal Liberal MP for the NT seat of Solomon, the highly irregular David Tollner, said Territorians should be encouraged to hit toads with cricket bats and golf clubs, which was dog-whistle politics for the normalisation of two sports long popular with young northern Australians: cane toad cricket and cane toad golf.

To Scott-Virtue's dismay, the Australian army has been reluctant to enter the War on Toads, although the local reserve unit has provided the toadbusters with maps, and the federal Ministry of Defence has given them permission to work on Bradshaw Military Base, near Timber Creek, NT.

"The military should be involved in this right across Australia," she says, "but we're not getting anywhere with them. The toads from Katherine have moved into the Fitzmaurice River system on Bradshaw, and then west. So a lot of the toads that are at our front line made their way off that military base."

In the face of official inaction, the toadbusters were forced to call in the dogs of war. In June 2007, six Vietnam veterans and their wives travelled up from the Bunbury area and spent a month busting at the cane toad front.

"And they did a brilliant job," says Scott-Virtue. "It was run as if they were still in Vietnam. They were out there making bridges to get out to water in the lagoons. We sent equipment, like the traybacks and the quad bikes, and they came up with all sorts of ingenious devices to get the quad bikes on and off the traybacks."

She wonders at "how systematically they went about deciding on how they were going to survey the various areas for toads. Half the joy for them seemed to be in setting up the military precision. And also the record keeping - I just couldn't believe it! They really kept impeccable records of toad sizes, toad information, where they were."

The veterans loved their return to the field.

"We all retired from the workforce early, at 50 to 55, on Veterans' Affairs pensions," says ex-soldier Peter Chapman, by phone from Bunbury, "but we think we've still got a bit to offer the people and the land."

They camped out by the lagoon, living "like Robinson Crusoe", building a jetty and a table from foraged timber. "We were out using our bush skills again, from the army days," says Chapman. "You're doing your navigating and your map reading. I enjoyed it, and I think all the guys felt the same way. Vietnam is not all jungle. Often Vietnam is very similar to the bush of the northern parts of Australia."

The veterans busted about 4000 toads, and are coming to the Kimberley for another camp next year. "I suspect eventually we may find Kimberley Toadbusters being directed and run by Vietnam vets," says Scott-Virtue.

The Kimberley Toadbusters are impeccably green and animal-friendly. After being busted, the toads die quickly and apparently painlessly.

"I love it," says Anthony Scott-Virtue. "It's the most exciting thing I've done in a while."

It seems as if everybody in the bush wants to go hunting for something, that there remains a deep-seated, bucolic need to stalk animals and catch them in the dark. There is something about toadbusting, with its semi-official status, quasi-military materiel, front lines and euphemisms (like "busting" and "controlling") that suggests a craving among gentle people to wear a uniform and fight a war, in these days when the only respectable warrior is an eco-warrior.

And I cannot shake the feeling that the cane toad is so easy to kill because it is unattractive and foreign. I have no doubt that the impulse to wipe out toads to save native animals springs not from a desire to destroy the ugly but to protect the beautiful, but it seems unsettlingly convenient that it is so much fun.

Except for the toads.

© 2008 The Age

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