Throughout the history of Bendigo, animals have played a fundamental role in the survival, enterprise, prosperity and pleasure of its inhabitants. It is no surprise then that there are so many stories featuring animals in the city and surrounding region.
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A selection of these stories have been compiled for the upcoming exhibition Menagerie: animals in Bendigo history, opening at Post Office Gallery on August 26.
Stories about everything from monkeys at the Bendigo Botanic Gardens, to goat racing, horse-drawn transport and animals at the Bendigo show have been drawn together to build a picture of the role animals have played in creating the distinct composition and character of the Bendigo we know today.
This big municipal picture is complex and layered and highlights the great benefits, responsibilities, challenges and joys of living with animals.
In a short period of time after European arrival to the Bendigo region in the 1800s, a menagerie of foreign species were introduced into waterways, bushland and other habitats. The most prolific and destructive of these is the European wild rabbit. The wild rabbit was not the first rabbit in Australia. Domestic rabbits arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and were bred with varied success. Unlike its predecessors however, from the introduction of a small number of wild rabbit pairs in 1859, on the property of Thomas Austin, this hardy variety bred to plague proportions. In Britain, rabbits were royal fare and hunting them the recreational pursuit of nobles.
A successful sheep grazier, Austin established an aspirational estate just outside Geelong, complete with a stately mansion and rabbits for hunting. By 1874, Austin’s wild rabbits had eaten and burrowed their way across Victoria to NSW and were becoming a widespread nuisance destroying vast areas of land. Before long farmers and governments were discussing ways to manage the exploding rabbit populations.
In Bendigo, like many other parts of the country, rabbit trappers were employed and by the 1890s, systematic programs of eradication, trapping, carbon fumigation, digging out of burrows and poisoning, were underway across the district.
Although many of these control methods are frowned upon today, with a lack of choice and out of sheer desperation, people did all they could to attempt to quell the sea of rabbits.
Enterprising rabbiters developed master trapping skills and at the turn of the 19th century, a major industry grew around the rabbit. Rabbit meat and skins were exported to England and the rabbit became a valuable commodity; further complicating attempts to tackle the problem. During war years and in the Great Depression of the 1930s, rabbits provided a useful food source and trapping rabbits was a popular and sometimes lucrative boyhood pastime.
The exhibition will run from August 26 to February 12, 2017.