History

If you ask someone today about what are the greatest threats to the Australian environment and wildlife you’ll probably get told about habitat loss, feral animals and climate change. Good answers, but in the late 19th and early 20th C, there was another threat, scientists and amateur naturalists. In their zeal for knowledge, and a bit of personal recognition, they roamed the earth, killing, trapping and destroying countless numbers of animals and plants for private and public collections.

Thomas Phillips Austin was one such man and in 1918 he published a paper titled “The Birds of the Cobbora district” in The Australian Zoologist, a journal produced by The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. The paper describes a decade of observation of birds and collection of eggs from his property on the Talbragar River east of the Goonoo forest. His property of 8,000 acres bordered the forest in the west at a time when it ran unbroken to the core of todays forest. Here are some edited excerpts from his paper;

Malleefowl: “this fine bird has now completely disappeared from the district. … I found one of their nesting mounds …. I completely enclosed it with wire netting … owing to the parents not being able to get at the mound the top set hard with the rain … the young birds could not work their way out and died in the shell”

Whistling Eagle [Whistling Kite]: “Before I eradicated the rabbits on the estate these birds were present in great numbers, and I used to take another 30 clutches of their eggs every year. … now I only see on an average about one nest per year.”

Brown Hawk [Brown Falcon]: “these birds were very common here, and I took 17 sets of their eggs. … the birds are seldom seen here now”

Sparrow Hawk [Collared Sparrowhawk]: “ A rare species here … I have only found four nests; one had young when I climbed up to it. I took eggs from the others, one nest two years in succession”

Little Eagle: “A very rare bird here. … as I was not sure of the species I shot both birds at the nest”

Painted Quail [Painted Button Quail]: “The first time I identified this species … I shot a pair. … My dogs have found a great number of young birds”

Musk Lorikeet: “Some years, these birds arrive in thousands … I have repeatedly seen them come and perch within a few feet of me when I have been chopping out their nesting hollow.”
Note: Now uncommon.

Little Lorikeet: “a common species … I have often chopped open their nesting hollows and had to pull the sitting bird off the eggs.”
Note: Now uncommon.

Chestnut-rumped Ground Wren [Chestnut- rumped Heath-wren): I had lived in this district over 16 years without identifying this species … I shot a fine old male and a pair of immature birds”

White-faced Titmouse [Southern Whiteface]: “undoubtedly the most common bird in the district. … I have often chopped open their nesting holes”
Note: Now uncommon. 

In Thomas’s defence “the past is a different country” and he lived in a time when the collection of large amounts of natural specimens was seen as a prestigious and scientifically valuable pastime. The development of evolutionary theory and our current understanding of the natural world owes a great debt to men and women like Thomas. And Indeed his paper contains detailed information about the behaviour, distribution and status of birds in the Goonoo forest and Dubbo area which still today informs us about the history and health of the natural environment in these areas and how it can be preserved.

In 1936 as moves were made to ban the collection and keeping of bird eggs, Thomas donated his collection of 15,000 eggs from 760 Australian bird species, the second largest in Australia, worth 10,000 pounds at the time, close to a million dollars today, to the Australian Museum.

It turns out that Thomas’s family had form with regards to the Australian environment. He was a descendant of Thomas Austin, who was the man who introduced rabbits to Australia on his western Victoria estate in 1859. DNA studies have confirmed that the feral rabbits that ravaged the bush for over 150 years were direct descendants of Thomas’s original 24 introduced rabbits.

Coincidentally I have a personal link to the Austin family. In the early 19th C my ancestor, Richard Burrows, and the elder Thomas Austin ran the only two ferry services on the Derwent River near Hobart. In 1818 Richard was drowned along with several passengers when his ferry capsized. Thomas was presented with a monopoly on the ferry service, made an absolute motza and became a gentleman farmer in western Victoria and a member of the Acclimization Society. Who knows how the history of the Australian environment, the fate of those poor nesting birds in Cobbora and my current bank balance might have been changed if only Richard was a better sailor or swimmer. 

Austin, Thomas Phillips. (1918). The birds of the Cobbora district Retrieved March 29, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-43040198