Read Online Into Thick Air by Jim Malusa - Free Book Online Page A

is its native home. It was introduced to Australia, as were rabbits, cats, and foxes. Like the cane toads, all have proved more successful than anyone imagined. The carnivorous cats and foxes are busy dismembering the increasingly rare native marsupials. The rabbits came from England in 1859, a couple of dozen hopping targets for sportsmen. The lucky survivors encountered few natural enemies. Like college students on spring break, there was nobody to control them. They bred like mad, and by 1940, 600 million rabbits were nibbling the landscape down to the dirt.
    People tried gassing the underground warrens and blasting at them with guns, but Australians could not slow the European bunnies until 1950, when they unleashed a rabbit virus from Uruguay. The number of rabbits plummeted, then bounced back to a diminished but still very hungry population of a hundred million or so.
    Aussie biologists found hope in the sudden deaths of 64 million European rabbits in Italy in 1986, and immediately went to work on achieving the same results. The killer—or savior, depending on your viewpoint—was a rabbit hemorrhagic virus from China. The pathogen was brought to an isolated island off South Australia for testing, yet in 1996 managed to escape the supposedly bio-secure laboratory. It’s heading for the Oodnadatta Track.
    Trouble is, rabbits are considerably cuter than many of their victims—the voiceless plants and the myriad animals that depend on those plants for food and home. Ranchers and ecologists might agree that the rabbit is the devil with floppy ears, but rabbit lovers smell a conspiracy in the “escape” of the virus. It’s no accident, they say—it is cruel bunny-cide condoned by the same government whose PR campaign insists that the “benign virus” is painless, and the infected rabbits “go quietly” in the privacy of their warrens.

    Meanwhile, there is a push to eliminate the traditional Easter Bunny and replace it with the Easter Bilby—a long-eared critter otherwise known as the bandicoot. It’s neither ugly nor poisonous, but its long nose gives it the look of an Easter Rat, so the Easter Bunny and the Euro-rabbits will probably win.
    Repeated invasion seems to be Australia’s fate, from the Aborigines to the British, the dingoes to the sheep. I’m part of the tourist invasion, and I’m glad someone got here before me—I need to fill my water bottles just as I pass the Copper Hills homestead.
    Hugh Fran is a rancher, hobby painter, and hospitable geezer who seems to have been expecting me all along. He gives me a slow tour of his little bungalow, pausing to hitch up his pants now and then. He gladly lets me try out his remarkable solar-powered telephone. When I succeed in connecting the computer, he hoots to his wife, “Honey, look, we’re on the Internet!” Laurel ambles over from the living room and says, “I’m not sure what that means.” I explain that it’s all the information you need, and more, before you even knew you needed it. Laurel listens politely, then says, “I’m going back to my ironing. Tell me if something interesting happens.”
    The Oodnadatta Track is not a happening place. At dusk, the only vehicle of the day passes me. I could camp in the road if I like, but prefer the clean sand of a dry creek bed. The land smells vaguely of broccoli. Night comes without a sound, without a puff of wind. Sixty miles of dirt road and I collapse into sleep.
    Sixty more miles of dirt to the town of Oodnadatta. The next day I bleed air from my tires, to soften the ride and help float through the sands. It works, but it also allows an unnoticed rock in the road to pinch my tube and give me the first flat of the trip. I pull out my pump and find it perhaps fatally bent. I get thirsty just looking at it and, beginning my descent into lunacy, give my pump a pep talk. “You better work, buddy.”
    It does.