I’ve been reading Bill Brysons “In a sunburned country” – its a well researched travel book full of quirky facts about this country, so here’s a couple of nuggets he discovered:

“Acclimatization was one of the most foolish and dangerous ideas ever to infect the thinking of nineteenth century men” Tim Low

In 1859, a man named Thomas Austin imported 24 wild rabbits in to Australia (a country that had not produced any creatures like a rabbit in its entire existence), and released them in to the bush on his land as sport. As we all know, rabbits are not shy when it comes to reproduction, and as a result today there are in excess of 300 million inhabiting much of the eastern part of Australia.

In the 1920′s, camels were brought in to Australia and used to build the railroad from Adelaide to Alice Springs, but were set free when the work was completed. Today over 100,000 camels roam the central and western deserts of the country, the only place in the world where the one humped dromedaries exist in the wild.

The lesson? Perhaps to leave a country as it is…? A lesson that has been continuously ignored ever since…