I was accused of killing over 100 million rabbits across Australia

I was working the Sunday shift when the news broke and it immediately sunk in – the big kind that you hopefully only get once or twice in a lifetime. A potential biological control virus being tested to deal with Australia’s huge wild rabbit population has escaped quarantine and jumped some 250 kilometers off the South Australian coast to Yunta, a place so small it’s barely a speck on the map. The authorities said they only knew of two people who were in the newly quarantined area at Point Pearce and Yunta – and I was one of them.

This all happened in October 1995. I was a cub reporter based in Sydney for one of Australia’s biggest newspapers. There was a lot going on in my circle at the time, but one story in particular caught my eye: reports of problems with an ambitious plan to exterminate Australia’s vast population of feral rabbits—an alien species that had been introduced from Europe.

The project was managed by the main federal science agency CSIRO. In a quarantine facility on Wardang Island, a few kilometers off the South Australian coast, she tested for the deadly rabbit calicivirus disease. There was still a lot of work to be done before the virus was ready for full release. In particular, the scientists wanted to prove that native animals and the environment would not be harmed.

However, on 10 October, the CSIRO issued a statement that the virus had spread to two other locations outside its quarantine area, although it secretly claimed that the virus had not escaped from the island. A week later, when I got to my desk in the morning, there were reports that the virus had somehow jumped from Wardang Island to Point Pearce on the South Australian mainland. I suggested to my editor that the photographer and I should immediately fly to Adelaide and go to Point Pearce.

In the early afternoon, photographer Peter Rae and I drove a rental car across the arid landscape to Point Pearce to meet with government researchers coordinating the quarantine effort.

A member of the local Aboriginal community met us when we arrived and walked us the last few kilometers to meet the quarantine team. We were the only reporters, and it was clear that the rabbit apocalypse had begun – their bodies were strewn across the enclosures. We interviewed and photographed the researchers, then escorted them to the shed where the autopsies were being performed.

As the enormity of what we were witnessing became apparent to the Sydney newsroom, they asked me to find another angle on what it would mean if the virus continued its march beyond quarantine control. I called a rabbit meat wholesaler and he put me in touch with a gunner who supplies the furs needed to make the fur felt used to make Australia’s world famous Akubra hats.

The next morning we drove to Yunta, over 300 kilometers north of Adelaide. Waiting for us was rabbit shooter Clinton Degenhardt, who looked like a character straight out of the arena Mad Max film. We spoke to him as he sat in his car with his rifle propped up next to him, talking through the windshield where glass should have been. He and everyone involved in the rabbit meat and fur industry feared for their future.

The next day it came out as a big picture story on the front page, and as for me, I did my job and headed home. Nothing happened for the next 10 days. Then came that Sunday and the gut-wrenching news that the virus had made a huge leap into Yunta.

South Australia’s then Chief Veterinary Officer told reporters that Peter and I may have been inadvertently responsible for spreading the virus, and a press release to the same effect was distributed. My quiet Sunday shift was suddenly a frenzy of meetings as my editors tried to figure out how two of their staff ended up being the story.

In the following days, the then leader of the Australian National Party, Tim Fischer, commented on the topic in parliament. He said that if our involvement was proven, Peter and I should be “put to work on the dog control fence” – the 5,600 kilometer pest control fence that separates south-east Australia from the rest of the country.

Fortunately, the scientists responsible for the quarantine soon suggested that maybe it wasn’t us but the flies that carried the virus, and the news cycle continued. However, it always struck me as odd that of all the places the virus first got to after Point Pearce, it appeared in Yunta, the exact spot where we interviewed the rabbit shooter. Coincidence, conspiracy, fraud? I never found out.

Rival news stations had a field day with our big kick turned into an embarrassment. My friends and colleagues also liked to tease me. In the first intense weeks after being accused of spreading the virus, I received a copy Water boat downand countless people thought it was funny to call me “killer bunny”.

But on the other hand, it was also confusing because almost everyone hated wild rabbits and most Australians were impatient for the virus to be unleashed. Farmers, endangered species researchers and conservationists were delighted that one of Australia’s biggest pests was – at least for the time being, until resistance began to build – likely to be nearly eradicated. And indeed, in the first two months after that fateful October, at least 10 million rabbits died. Eventually, hundreds of millions more would perish across the continent.

Almost four years later I was on the 3000 square kilometer Erldunda Station, a cattle farm near Alice Springs in Central Australia. There were 20,000 wells on the property before calicivirus escaped. At the time of my visit there were almost zero rabbits. When owner Bernie Kilgariff found out I was a reporter who had been accused of spreading the virus, he rushed to get his guest book. He insisted that I sign as the guest of honour, even above the Governor General’s entry.

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