Australia's Rabbit Plague

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2017

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades, Australia's countryside was ravaged by billions of rabbits. So in the 1950s, the government released the disease myxomatosis to kill off the rabbit plague. We hear from farmer, Bill McDonald, who remembers Australia's battle against the bunnies. (This programme is a re-broadcast).

(Photo: Rabbits around a waterhole at the myxomatosis trial enclosure on Wardang Island in 1938. Credit: National Archives of Australia)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. Choosing what to
0:32.1	watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:36.5	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:41.5	telly we share what we've been watching.
0:43.7	Cladie Aide!
0:45.7	Loads of games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:48.2	Lovely.
0:49.0	Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:51.2	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:54.7	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds hello and thank you for
1:00.9	downloading the witness podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex
1:05.2	Last.
1:06.3	And today we go back to the 1940s and 50s to tell the story of Australia's Rabbit Clegg, which devastated the Australian countryside.
1:15.6	In 2014 I spoke to a farmer who had firsthand experience of the battle against the Gunnies To say that the ground literally moved isn't an exaggeration.
1:36.0	The rabbits were that thick and there was that many of them
	...

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